Crysis 2 is a disappointment and great fun at the same time.
All of these screenshots were taken by me with the game on "Very High" with no AA at 1440x900. It is not at the max settings.
STORYThe story is much better than the first Crysis, but that is really not saying much. The story seems a bit far fetched, like a traditional alien invasion movie. Nomad and Psycho (main characters in the first Crysis and the expansion) are literally nowhere to be found in the game, not even mentioned. I felt that they did it to suite the console gamers (how I feel about a lot of this game) because they wouldn't know who they were. I'm not going to go into the full story because I don't want to spoil the game for anyone, but I will say that it is a rather interesting idea and did not develop how I expected it to. Prophet (squad leader in first Crysis) is the only returning character from the first Crysis along with the daughter of a scientist you save in the first Crysis, that's it. They also give a name to the Alien race, the Ceph. I found that the Ceph I was fighting nowhere near resembled the aliens I fought in the first game, which I though was pretty stupid. Not only does Crysis 2 not stem off from the ending of the first game, it just kinda throws you into the action when New York gets invaded. No mention of what happened when they went back to the island. I am surprised that they even named the game "Crysis 2" since there is only a faint connection between it and the first game. Despite being a bit disappointing, the story does keep you somewhat interested in the campaign.
GAMEPLAYThe gameplay is superb.......once you fix the glaring problems Crytek left when making the game, but we will get into that later. The game is very fun. Some may claim they dumbed down the nano suite by getting rid of the speed and strength modes, but in most cases, it makes the gameplay much smoother. Sure those settings may have worked great in the jungle where you rarely had to jump to high places and there was a ton of room to sprint around, but in the city there are a lot more ledges to jump to and there really is no room to use a sprint feature. Being able to jump high without having to switch to strength mode every time is a great time saver and makes combat much smoother. The nanosuite also has an upgrade function where you can buy upgrades based on stuff you pick up when you kill an alien. The gun play is very similar to the first game and all the customization of your weapons is still there. Except that in Crysis 2 you can actually find SCAR ammo in the map.
There seems to be more action in Crysis 2. I found myself in a lot of small areas with a ton of enemies, which brings me to my next point. The game is painfully linear. The huge open areas from the first Crysis are gone, replaced by more constricting areas of New York City. It is not a mostly free roaming game anymore. You still get battlefields that are big and open for you to choose where you want to go, but they are nowhere near as big as the levels in the original Crysis. This is most likely due to consoles not being able to handle huge areas or Crytek's fear that it would be a turn off for the console gamers who mostly like linear shooters. This is probably my biggest complaint of the game. I miss the open world of Crysis. The gameplay is crazy fun though, and it is definitely action packed. I beat the game in about 9-10 hours, which is much longer than a lot of singleplayer FPS games that have recently came out.
MULTIPLAYERA joke. It is esentially a CoD rip off with stupid nanosuite functions. Who's brilliant idea was it to let player use cloak in a multiplayer game? As if camping wasn't already bad enough. The multiplayer is full of bugs and a lot of people are reporting their stats resetting and their unlocked weapons disappearing. But hold on, it gets worse. Crysis 2 shipped with NO ANTI-CHEAT SYSTEM. That is right. The brilliant minds at Crytek felt that an anti-cheat system wasn't needed for a PC game. Good thing I didn't buy this game to play the multiplayer, or I would be pissed.
CONSOLIZATIONNow I hate using this word because most of the time it is used by pissy PC gamers when they don't get their way, but it is exactly what happened to Crysis 2. A new story that almost completely forgets the first one, no open world, and a huge mistake that will surely have you saying "What the hell was Crytek thinking?" First off, Crytek though it would be a great idea to ship Crysis 2 for PC with a console-like field of view, which means your gun takes up an insane amount of the screen. This is easily fixable by using the console in game, but it is still an annoyance. The game ships with automatic mouse acceleration and a ton a blur, which have to be turned off through a 3rd party program. That's right,
there is no advanced options for graphics. Instead, there are 3 settings. High, Very High, and Extreme. What the fuck was Crytek thinking? Lucky for us, a generous user over at gamespot.com has created a program that lets you choose advanced settings. It also might be worth it to mention that the game only ships with DX9, but it is supposed to have DX11 patched in in a month or so.
GRAPHICSThe graphics are beautiful once you take all of the shitty blur off. but despite being great, there is still something that bugs me. The graphics are still worse than the first Crysis. Crytek has released this great new engine, and they can't even produce graphics on the same level as their game from 2007? Give me a break. There is no doubt that Cryengine 3 can easily produce graphics beyond Cryengine 2, so why did they not do it? This is most likely due to the game having to be on consoles as well. Even though the graphics are not as good as the first Crysis, they are still better than 95% of PC games out, and that is never a bad thing.
SOUNDThe sound is superb. The music is perfect for each situation and the sound effect are also good as well. The voice acting is top notch and the characters seem alive and not like zombies with a voice talking behind them if that makes any sense.
OVERVIEWThis game has everything it needs to be a complete disaster, yet it is not. The great gameplay and decent story makes you want to keep playing, and that is a great thing for a single player campaign to do. Despite all of its glaring flaws, the game is still very enjoyable. If you are looking for some great fun and enjoyed playing the first Crysis, I would recommend Crysis 2, but not at $60.
FINAL SCORE7.5
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