Crysis 2

Hello and welcome to the review of Crysis 2, where New York City is under attack by a familiar alien force and a horrifying disease. Today we ship out to New York City to help save the world from the Ceph.

 

Prophet

Today we are a marine named Alcatraz and we are on a submarine heading into New York City. Our missions is to aid a specialist by the name of Prophet and a civilian Dr. Gould. It seems odd to send in a armed squad of marines via submarine insertion for a strictly humanitarian crisis and the team mentions this before we get a short briefing. After we are briefed we start heading out to get ready to leave the sub and start our mission.
Then it all goes to hell. Something hits the sub and it starts to sink, the captain orders abandon ship and your squad rushes to get out. After a few seconds of intense action and a swim out of the sub that feels like it takes forever you are out and floating on the surface of the upper bay with a view of Lady Liberty.

 She has seen better days.

She has sadly taken damage from some sort of attack, showing quickly that the sub sinking was not a accident and that New York City is under attack by something. Then it is revealed the Ceph are here, returning from Crysis to fight and take Earth from humanity with no surrender possible, total annihilation of one race or the other is the only out come. From here on out things are going to be bad if not out right lethal with aliens running around the city plus a virus that takes out anyone not in a full environmental suit to protect them from it. As the gunship comes around to finish us off someone comes in and draws its fire before shooting it down. And to be honest this is a amazing entrance for both Prophet and for the Nanosuit 2.

Saved by Prophet he finds out we are all that is left of the strike team sent in to extract him and Gould from New York City. At this point he gets frustrated, but then tells us that we are his last hope, and also everyone's last hope of driving back the Ceph. We wake up to see the man named Prophet dead laying on the ground and a pistol on the floor. We then get a flash back explaining why we are now in the suit, why he had to kill himself, and that we must get to Gould. As such we head through one of the CDC's facilities for figuring out what the Manhattan Virus is and having to dispose of the sick and dead, we hear some logs talking about C.E.L.L.'s brutality towards the survivors, the infected, and the CDC staff, it ends with the CDC workers being executed. Here we start getting some basic functions set in the suit such as binoculars, strength, speed and jump. Later while going through a CDC camp we get the ability to stealth and have to sneak through the lightly guarded facility and can either choose to directly assault the C.E.L.L. members or to sneak around them. To be honest stealth is faster and more fun.

Once through the camp we hit the streets which are eerily quiet and abandoned, we also see a Ceph ship fly through the buildings gliding eerily quietly as well and being truly alien in this environment. Slowly we move our way through sewers, over roofs, and evading blockades on highways towards Nathan Gould. As we head along we hear more about what has been going on in the past few hours and also what is needed to hopefully find a cure. Eventually we make it past the C.E.L.L. Private Military forces and a ambush or two by the Ceph we get to a major road block set up just for us. Now either running or careful shooting will get though these guys, but it is a long walk and a hard fight. But, C.E.L.L. is a bit stupid and kept a Infantry Fighting Vehicle or Armored Personal Carrier with the keys in, and as such you steal it and go on a high way joy ride. Once done you break into a Crytek laboratory and destroyed the location of Gould's safe house. Now we meet this man and we, well the suit AI comes clean about Prophet's death and our replacement of him. From here things pick up and it is running through the deserted streets and subways of New York City against aliens and C.E.L.L. Eventually things change drastically and this is as far as I take the story as any more would spoil past the first hour of this surprisingly long and challenging first person shooter.

I give the story of Crysis 2 a solid thumbs up, it is good and surprisingly so for a first person shooter. You rarely have the problem of exposition theater. This is good and the story never pulls anything out of it's ass and it keeps with a consistent ability and things that for in universe make sense and are logical directions for things to go. However there is one point later in the game that just boggled my mind with the implications. I will let you all find it yourselves, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Anyways, yeah I would say that given the other games released in the past year I would put Crysis 2 above all other first person shooters. This was a bit surprising, but considering the other shooters that I got that came out in the past year being Halo: Reach and CoD: Black Ops not so much, though Reach did have a very close second.

Game Play:

Crysis 2 uses a streamlined nanosuit which is nice, as now many functions are just a key press and not having to use a menu. However it is noticeable that there is no more going prone nor can you lean any more. This is sad as it is clearly a console port which makes it weaker on the PC. It is sad, but, I can understand why they went for a port and not a full separate game in terms of mechanics of gameplay. Basically I am saying the controls where simplified to far to the point of loosing things that where nice in Crysis. Like I said going prone and leaning are what I miss. However I will say between consoles and PC Crysis 2 looks amazing and plays smoothly for the level of graphics, surprisingly smooth. To give you a idea of this I am on a Nvidia 8600GT and I was getting between 16-35 FPS, and the only time it dipped was when levels where loading. This is a amazing level of optimization graphics wise and I commend Crytek on this stunning achievement with the Cryengine, my hat goes off to you guys and gals. And before I forget it is a standard affair in terms of controls, any more I really can just say "Same controls as the run of the mill FPS game on computers" and hopefully people will know what this means. If not well it is quick to pick up and is in the manual.

Balance: 

A tall order, but you are Post Human Warrior

From my time playing of the campaign twice I will say it is a constant challenge with new environments and challenges every level, it never is repetitive except for two points just due to having to repeat a action a few times, but, after fighting in different scenarios and locations. I feel that the campaign besides one point is well done. This one point is where I had a lot of problems as I am a PC gamer and use a keyboard and mouse and this part was not optimized for PC players. This point is the last minute and thirty seconds of the game and for me it was the hardest due to the minute and a half quick time event that sent me into a rage due to I could not do it tell I went and just moved so I could smash the 'W' key like a mad man with my index finger. It was painful, stressful, and blatantly not designed with PC players in mind, you can tell it was meant more for pressing 'A' on a 360 controller or 'X' on a PS3's controller.

AI:

The AI in Crysis 2 is superb, to the point that really it is some of the best AI out there for first person games. You rarely see the AI go and run though a open field to get to cover when they have some nearer or are under fire and have some cover by them. However, I did notice when Crysis 2 released there where a few points where AI's could not understand knee high walls and would repeatedly smash into the barrier not understanding they could not go through them. This could only be corrected with killing them. Though I will say Crytek did a good job at removing the bug after the first patch on PC.

Replay Value:

Crysis 2 had hidden memento's through out it that unlock side story and concept art which gives people who love getting 100% in games a nice challenge. The story is good and integrate enough that it is not annoying the second time through. Crysis 2 also allows for going through many different tactics and you can approach situations in many different ways. I truly believe that Crysis 2 has some of the most replay value of a FPS game that I have played to date, more so than Crysis.

Final Verdict:

If you have a PS3, Xbox 360, or a computer that can run it I would recommend snatching up Crysis 2, though I may disagree with the $60 USD price tag, however, it is well worth it. I sadly cannot comment on the multiplayer as I have yet to have the time to get into it in any depth but it looks different which is neutral for me, but could be fun. The story and single player is solid and enjoyable. However, it misses Nomad and Psycho which is sad, but, it make sense in terms of story why they are not in here. Though I am hoping for a Crysis: Warhead like expansion with them in it and with co-op would be amazing. Then again I am a sucker for co-op games and the more together in a campaign a true long campaign the better.

As always screenshots for my review and any other art is found here.