Pooping on Crysis 2 Supersoldier Difficulty

So I recently sat down to fully finish Crysis 2 on the hardest setting and, after finishing, found myself questioning the game and my tactics within it. Figured I'd bounce it off you guys.

I know I did a review on the game a while back, but to sum it up, I like the game a lot. It's not a perfect game, but it's a lot of sandbox goodness and the suit works well in making you actually feel like a badass. Sorry Chief, but no dice to the Mark suits of old. The Nano Suit is the shit.

On to my observation.

The game on Supersoldier doesn't screw around. If you aren't careful with balancing suit powers and using cover you'll be mowed down incredibly fast. You also have to understand how the suit works on a deeper level like knowing how many shots you can get away with while invisible before you quickly kill the suit power. When the switch powers to optimize the life of the suit. And always watching the suit levels to monitor how much farther you can go cloaked or how much more damage you can soak up before dying.

I decided, since the game will let you play however you want, that going stealthy as much as possible would most easily lead to my success. So I set out to beat the game by killing as few enemies as I could. Since death comes so easily if you're clumsy I didn't want the frustration and, in a sense, I wanted to test the game to see just how little killing I could get away with. Turns out you can get away with a lot of "not killing."

Beating the game on Supersoldier was fun and certainly tests patience and timing more than talent in killing, but it wasn't overly hard. Sure there are several battles in the game where you fight Pingers and normal enemies at once and they are very difficult (and again test your knowledge of how the Pingers work, too), but overall the game wasn't too hard because of the suit. My management of the suit allowed ultimate success, but at the same time....I felt like I cheated.

My question to you is does it seem like cheating to use the suit as I did? Avoiding fights and killing stealthily? To take the hardest difficulty and instead of duking it out to turn it into a game of cat and mouse?

Should I commend the developers for allowing me the freedom or scold them for allowing me to take the easy way out? I think I lean towards commending them, but I guess after playing CoD SP so much on Veteran (and cutting myself nightly because of it) that it felt like I cheated.

I applaud my skill of the suit and the developers for giving me the chance to play how I want, but I guess it doesn't feel like a challenge unless I'm about ready to blow a gasket.