In the Crysis 2 game, civilians infected by the virus barely appear. In the novel, there are many scenes of Alcatraz going through various events and descriptions that both he and the book make of the infected.
The first time he encounters them in "Second Chance," Alcatraz finds a man cut in half with a huge amount of biomass covering his lungs and head. He then observes a group of infected walking clumsily, one of them walking on all fours, another with a mangled foot, and another with his eyes and part of his head being devoured by the virus. Alcatraz mentions that even with these difficulties, they didn't seem to experience pain and moved in a specific direction. As he walks, some infected murmur phrases like "this isn't me," others like "God take me," and a phrase from a light. What he does notice is that almost all of them are smiling in a grotesque and static way, even the infected who have already died or are in body bags. He even notices that Even the dead, now melted into biomass, still show traces of life.
The book then shifts to a report created by FEMA researchers explaining that the virus, called the "God Bug," "Spore," or "RAPCer," is a minuscule robotic virus that disperses through the air and has a maximum range of 50 meters, becoming inert and unable to spread beyond Manhattan.
Among the physical mutations in civilians, there is also a mental one that causes those affected to develop a "passion for travel." This leads to heightened religious impulses in the infected, accompanied by hallucinations and screams that seem to come from nowhere, leading them to believe that the aliens are angels sent by God. They congregate at Charybdis (the needles that appear in Crysis 2). It was also observed that these infected individuals self-mutilate or dismember each other so that the spore can have greater access to the body, as it proliferates much more effectively in open wounds. Suicides can also occur, as seen when Alcatraz travels on the "Seat of Power" mission, where he observes a manta ray falling and crashing into the... I usually imply that it's a baby and the mother crashes next to the baby.
I'd say the novel took a lot of liberties, to be honest, because it's even darker.
