Yeah, I definitely wouldn't say anything here was groundbreaking unless you count the nanosuit. The weapons are pretty standard, except for the TAC cannon at the end (which involves a fun but difficult boss fight). The zero-g segment was neat, too. I don't claim to be a master of the topic, but those seemed like the major innovations apart from the audiovisuals, of course. It's definitely more playable and fun than Doom 3, but it's not quite as good as Far Cry in terms of drawing you in. For a good 3/4 of the game, you don't know what's really going on (gasp, aliens!), and by the time you do, it's over pretty fast. In Far Cry, you picked up pretty early in the game about the Trajans, and that story gradually unfolded. Still, neither game can compare to Half-Life, Halo, or Mass Effect in terms of story.

Then again, they left the sequel pretty much mandatory at the end, so maybe that's where they delve more deeply into the alien's culture or mission. They hinted in the first game that they might just be trying to get back home (too bad there's no phone here either).