I have been playing the campaign on normal difficulty, and even now, at times, I find myself reading war-related quotes.
I can imagine that enemies react faster and are much more accurate with increasing difficulty level.
What I really want to know is, the single-player experience is pretty linear and the enemies monotonous. They just don't move much and stare at you a long while before registering you stand right ahead
I'd like to see a bit more intelligence and tactics, like the Half Life marines. While some would suppress me with fire and nades, trying to get me out of my hide, others would try to flank me.
Is this what I am going to see when I up the difficulty to Hardened or Veteran, or am I going to just get shot faster from farther distances?
Best Answer
The enemies generally take more shots to go down, and they have better aim. You can take less hits before you go down. Frequently there are scripted sequences where you have to move up in order to stop enemy spawns, so you'll have to move quickly once you down the enemies in a room in order to stop them from spawning.
There's no difference in their AI or the quantity (aside from it being more difficult to stop the infinite spawns) from what I can tell.
I play for the achievements, so I always finish the game on Veteran, but it isn't difficult so much as it's frustrating. Often times you won't have time to stick your head out before they've almost completely killed you. Get used to the death and loading screens, because even if you're epic in multiplayer, they're still going to kill you often.
I'll leave you with a few tips on strategy. There are two types of situations you will be in. The first is "kill x guys to proceed" and the second is "push the enemies back to proceed." The game doesn't give you any indication of which situation you're in, but you can determine which it is by shooting a few of the guys in a room. If, a few seconds later, they're replaced with more guys in the same position, you're in the "push them back" mode. It's certainly the harder of the two to deal with.
Strategies for pushing back:
I suppose in general you should not be focused on trying to kill them. Even if you manage to snap aim and kill all half dozen of the guys in a room, you're still not going to be fast enough to move up without more spawning. Add to that the fact that they spend 80% of their time in cover usually, and you're just asking for frustration.