As usual, Hilary Goldstein's slop is completely unworthy of being read. I should have checked the name of the reviewer before getting halfway through. I don't know why that fucker still has a job.
That isn't to say I think he's wrong, necessarily. I'm a Starbreeze fanboy, but there's been a little bit of niggling doubt in the back of my mind simply because of the way the game came into being in this new incarnation (and that there wasn't a big push for "Hey, let's do a sequel!" right off the bat, and they were doing a slightly improved version of Butcher Bay instead, making this the third release). Still, I'm not going to take Goldstein's word for it. Probably not G4's, either.
It's interesting to note that both of these reviews complain that the stealth gets dropped toward the end of Dark Athena and the game turns into more of a shooter, which it doesn't excel at. Condemned 2 suffered from the exact same problem. I think developers sometimes have a bad habit of trying to up the excitement in the endgame and make things play out too generically instead. Just because something is faster and has more explosions doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be more exciting.