Crysis 2 comes after a three year hiatus from Crytek, their last offering being Crysis Warhead, the expansion for the original Crysis. Have I said Crysis enough for you yet? No? Good. Then I’ll begin.First impressions are pretty good. The game opens with you in a submarine in the Hudson River, heading into New York. Your commanding officer wakes you from your hangover, and the game begins. Hangover. OK, so that’s why you’re not speaking, you feel like shit. Gotcha. That works, for a couple hours of game time, I suppose. Of course, adrenaline is a great way to eradicate a hangover, and you’d be generating a lot of that pretty soon after, when some kind of cataclysm strikes the sub, and you’re thrust into one of those “here is a tutorial but it’s in the game aren’t we clever” sequences that are so often employed. I can only applaud this, in all honesty. Separate tutorials are a bit of an arse, and do somewhat break the suspension of disbelief. That said, all FPSes use very similar controls - hell, the basic controls are almost always identical. Ergo, I don’t think they really need to explain every control. Most people could find their way out of the sub without the messages that pop up telling them what key to press.
Moving on, however, you get out of the sub to find yourself in the water near a jetty. Suddenly, a bizarre-looking gunship flies overhead and strafes the shit out of you and your squad, killing them and severely injuring you. A man in a nanosuit kills the gunship with a minigun, drags you out of the water, naming you in the process, and you pass out. Upon awakening, you discover that it’s Prophet, the much-loved squad leader of the first game. Now, every now and again, an NPC in an FPS really sticks with you, and generates much goodwill. These are the Captain Prices, the Eli Vances. Prophet was one of these. I’ve never met anyone who had a bad word to say about him. So imagine my surprise when the first thing you see him do is shoot himself in the head. Hmm. Interesting choice there, Crytek. You have a character everyone loves, and you kill him. Not in a dramatic, revenge-sparking way. No. Anyone new to the Crysis series would have no idea who he was, and so wouldn’t care. Anyone who’d played the original would love him, and feel cheated that he’s gone in such an ignominious way. OK, fine. It’s explained in that the nanosuit won’t properly bond with a new host until its previous one is dead and gone. But still, that could have been handled better.
This is where the game proper begins. And, overall, I think Crytek have done a good job. The interface is clean, and logical. The graphical quality is, as ever, excellent. It’s not quite the benchmark-setting behemoth that its predecessor was, but nothing really can be these days. Graphics seem to have reached somewhat of a plateau for a while - they’re all good ENOUGH. There’s not much improvement available. We’ve reached the long-awaited point of photo-realism, far as I’m concerned. Sure, it’s clear that it’s not actually real. But it wouldn’t take much more than a slightly different filter or texture to make it so. Most of the time, a game not looking perfectly real is a stylistic choice, not a technical limitation.
So, good so far. But there are problems. Of course there are problems. The excuse as to why you’re a silent protagonist wears thin pretty quickly. OK, you’re hungover. This doesn’t mean you CAN’T speak. And in a situation where someone’s pointing a gun at your face, you’re likely to speak to allay their fears. Somewhat unrealistic that you wouldn’t. You also get the hang of the suit pretty quickly, despite not knowing they existed beforehand.
Speaking of the suit, they’ve streamlined its features somewhat. Where before you had strength and speed, you now have power. Your binoculars have tactical functions, allowing you to tag enemies, weapons dumps and points of interest, such as a roof to climb onto, or a sewer to drop into. These aren’t problems per se, but they do somewhat change the gameplay. For example, I spent most of my time in the first two offerings in speed mode. I legged it across open terrain, up long stretches of road, etc. In this game, stealth and armour mode were the two I switched between continuously, only using power mode when I had to kick an obstacle aside to continue. It doesn’t feel like the same game.
The suit is also upgradable, once you meet the aliens that gunship clearly belonged to. They drop nano-particles of some sort, which apparently mesh with your suit, and act as a point-buy system for getting upgrades. You have four slots, with three choices of upgrade in each, but you can only have one per slot active. And, unfortunately, you can’t have all three choices from one group and one from another. But c’est la vie. Several of the choices are useless for my gameplay style anyway. Early on, the particles are hard to come by, but later the aliens are EVERYWHERE.The plot seems a little forced. You’ve been sent into Manhattan to save a scientist, who somehow knows Prophet, and thinks you’re him until you meet (because you can’t speak, you see, so you can’t tell him). After this, you find that the PMC (Private Military Company, for those not in the know) that’s locked down the island after an outbreak of an ebola-like virus is also looking for him, and you have to run away from them, but then you’re running TO them, and... well, let’s just say it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I haven’t yet managed to complete it, so perhaps it sorts itself out, but so far there are a lot of dropped threads in the story, with no signs of them being picked up again.
Weapon choice is, as before, wonderful. There are a huge selection of different rifles, SMGs, pistols and heavy weapons. Each seems to be quite realistically modelled, a .50 cal having considerably more stopping power than a rifle firing NATO standard rounds. Annoyingly, the alien weapons are as yet unusable.
Crysis, of course, along with its soul brother Farcry, is one of the few FPSes with actually playable vehicle sections. The APC/gun platform things that you find yourself stealing and driving handle like a dream, and the weaponry mounted on top is wonderfully intuitive. Unlike, say, the abominable “hold left click to drive” cars in Call of Duty: Black Ops. So, hats off there.
In all honesty, I was very impressed with Crysis 2. I wasn’t expecting much from it, but it really delivered. It has certain problems, mostly regarding the plot, but the gameplay was excellent. Hugely entertaining, which to my mind is what’s important about a game. If you have to struggle with a game in order to play it, then it’s not really a game as far as I’m concerned *cough*Armada 2526*cough*.
Until next time,
CSquared
Keywords: Crysis 2, Crytek, Xbox 360, PS3, P.C, Cry Engine 3, 3D, Prophet, NATO, Crysis Warhead
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