The first Crysis game released back in 2007 was met with joy amongst
hardcore PC gamers across the net. A game that pushed the latest
hardware of those days to the highest limits, and delivered fantastic
and spectacular effects not seen before in the PC gaming world. Crytek's
lauded CryEngine 2 was the talk of everything for a while.
When Crysis 2 was announced, everyone had high hopes for this game to
finally fix all the gameplay issues of the first one, while bringing
even newer and better graphics than the original to the forefront of
their high resolution monitors with CryEngine 3.
Did Crytek succeed in doing just that?
Well...yes and no, and I'll tell you why.
The fundamental topic of Crysis 2's hype is the Nanosuit 2.0, a more
powerful, and more simplified, version of the Nanosuit of Crysis 1. Gone
is the need to switch constantly between all modes of your suit in
order to maximize your cybernetic potential, the only two modes you are
allowed to switch to now are Cloak and Armor. Everything else is placed
under the Power tab of your suit's energy. Sprinting and high jumping
are some of the misc skills that go under it.
The console-itis shows itself immediately from this fact alone. No
longer can you run at super speed to dash into cover or hold your gun
perfectly steady with Maximum Strength. Not only this, sprinting itself
now costs suit energy and can be detrimental to survival for those
unprepared in the combat scenarios. Other features of the Nanosuit 2.0
is that it is now customizable with modules that you 'buy' from
retrieving Nano Catalyst from dead alien soldiers. These can increase
your abilities by letting you run longer and climb faster, or take more
damage in armor mode, and even regenerate and recharge in half the time.
However, the suit has no default mode because everything costs energy
now, and you are always vulnerable unless armored up or cloaked and
sneaking.
Gameplay has also been consolized. Unlike Crysis 1, Crysis 2 lacks
important PC options like going prone, the ability to lean freely, and
the ability toggle your crouch and ironsights. This confused me early
on, because I was used to how Crysis 1 handled this better.
However, there are some good new additions to the abilities of the
Nanosuit operator. For one, you can now slide under obstacles when
sprinting, and you can slide into enemies to knock them over. In Cloak
mode, if you can approach the enemy from behind, you can now quietly
kill them, which also works on aliens. With a certain upgrade module,
you can even perform what is called an Air Stomp that can devastate
groups of enemies but leave you very defenseless.
You can still grab enemies like in the first game, and it is much more
generous with the window of opportunity you get to do it. When you have
enemies in your grasp now, you can instantly kill them with a neck snap
or knife to the throat, and you can do this while cloaked.
To speak practically of these abilities now, some of them are not useful
and won't be of any use. For one, stealth killing, while fun and is my
personal method of clearing out the game, can leave you open for
whatever reason. The AI sometimes magically sees you in the temporary
de-cloak when performing the silent takedown and you can be shot while
still in the animation. Also, if you do not approach directly from
behind when doing the stealth takedown, you run a high risk of causing
the enemy awareness meter to rise and then everyone will know you were
there.
Sometimes, I've even been shot while hiding, even in cloak mode, they just knew where I was.
Sliding is not very useful, and is only a quicker way of getting under
the occasional raised obstacle. The distance traveled and the speed at
which it is traveled is very bad, because the sprinting speed is
dramatically lower than the first game. The only times I used it were
when there was only one enemy left and I just toyed with him. Obviously,
if you slide down a ramp, you get more speed, but the ramps often have
walls right in front of them anyway, which pretty much negates the
purpose of it.
You can still use melee in this game, but to use stronger hits, you will
have to use a "Power Strike", which means just holding the melee key.
When you do this, you instantly kill the enemy and lose all of your
energy simultaneously. It only leads to death and doesn't do anything
new for you. There are also context-sensitive parts when it comes to
kicking cars, and unless you waste all of your energy for a power kick,
you only do a light kick that barely does anything. So honestly, it's a
pointless feature that will never be used, and in the rare chance it
does, it's probably only to just see it once. It's only because of how
quick you can die, because the suit no longer defaults to armor mode and
you will die just as quick as you do in the first game.
This kind of thing is what a PS3 game called Vanquish did, but that game
was an extreme case of whenever you meleed an enemy, no matter how many
hits you did, you always lost all of your energy when it was over.
This also might be a glitch, but using power strikes isn't necessary
anyway. You can melee attack faster than you can run, so you'll always
do more damage just mashing the button. Sounds very consoleish, doesn't
it?
I said that leaning is not possible anymore, at least freely. You are
now restricted to a Killzone-esque lean system that only works if you
find a form of cover that Crytek felt like putting the "Lean" code in.
Only a very small amount of the environment can be "leaned" around or
over, and it's also tied into your ironsight key, so you basically lock
yourself into place and become vulnerable.
Also gone, as said previously, is the ability to prone. I used this
feature liberally in Crysis 1, because to me, it was fun to sneak around
and find cover in thick bushes or behind smaller destroyed sections of
the structures that dotted the island.
You can only crouch now in Crysis 2, and it is just as you would expect
from any FPS, your aim becomes better and you can avoid enemies.
To use your high jump, what was known as the Strength Jump in Crysis 1, you only have to hold space now.
Moving on, I want to cover the AI next.
The AI is more or less the same as it was in Crysis 1, but I dare say
the Crysis 2 enemies are slightly worse than their Korean counterparts.
As was the case in Crysis 1, enemies can and do get stuck in geometry
and can become lodged in walls or in the ground. Their pathfinding can
get muddled and they will do nothing at all. Sometimes, the AI seemed to
have spawn without weapons and all they do is follow you around like
resistance fighters following Gordon Freeman.
However, their awareness has been toned down and fixed, and the AI now
acts more realistically instead of blatantly cheap ways of seeing you
across the map through a whole forest and even shooting at you and
hitting spot on each shot. The AI accuracy is balanced, and they often
use cover, jump over things, slide under things, and later on, enemies
jump across the walls and higher than you, adding a feeling tension in
your hunt.
There is one thing that might bother those going for stealth gameplay,
and that is if you ever kill the gunner who's in a jeep and sitting
there watching the place, everyone immediately goes on alert and
reinforcements are called despite nobody ever seeing you. Very cheap
things can still happen, because the event mapping is somewhat off, and
the AI can and will see you across the field if you aren't cloaked and
shoot you. There is no subtle 'cover' system like there was in Crysis 1
with all the foliage, that is why.
I said before that the AI has periodically shot me even though I was
cloaked. They do things other than this. Even if you are hiding after
cloaking, the enemy does know where you are sometimes and they come
running right up to your hiding spot while you're probably trying to get
energy, and they will kill you most likely. Also, the game likes to
spawn enemies not previously there, and this happens very often early on
in the game, but mysteriously not after the halfway point.
For example, during the Northlights Pier level, I could not kill every
enemy there. For some reason, every time I killed two people, four more
came down a ramp out of nowhere. And even when I moved to the other side
of the area, they just started randomly spawning behind me, and try as I
may to wipe out the area, I could not because of this. Thankfully, this
does not happen much after that particular level.
The binoculars you have are also improved. They let you tag enemies with
the press of a button, and you can see them on the hud afterwards. You
can also tag every specific gun drop on the ground and ammo crates, and
even tactical objectives. This allows you a whole new way to plan
varieties of assaults on your enemies. It will also show their health in
the visor mode, and their weak spots.
Now to talk about the biggest thing in this game. The graphics.
From the demo alone, which I had to bring in about five friends to walk
around the levels with me just so we could look at the graphics, the
game looked absolutely stunning. With the fully optimized and maxed out
full version, it looks unbelievable. And, this game has much lower
system requirements than the first. This is a true example of perfect
optimization, and is without a doubt, superior in this regard to the
first game. Crytek accomplished a great thing with CryEngine 3.
The lighting and modeling in Crysis 2 is the most detailed I have ever
seen in my fifteen-some years of video gaming. Your guns are modeled so
perfectly that you can see everything down to the small numbers on the
rails, and the logos on the sides of attachments and the gun itself. The
foliage looks even better, but sadly, you cannot shoot trees into
segments and make some firewood like before.
The texture mapping is vibrant and well-done, from the rooftops to the
sewers and to a small off-shore island, Manhattan is brought to a
breathtaking life. Not only that, there are so many subtle visual
effects to your Nanosuit and the briefing screens that just makes you
think this is a movie. The cinematic factor is very high. My personal
favorite part of the game's graphics was when you are on the off-shore
island, you could see the lit-up city at night with all of the bullets
and energy projectiles flying back and forth in real time. It was, for
lack of a better word, simply superb.
Do I even need to say that consoles have nothing on this?
Sadly, even though consoles are holding us PC gamers back, EA wanted to
make this game approachable by console players, and that really is why
this game isn't as good as it should be, but there is still enough good
in it that it is a fun game.
After two playthroughs, I still feel like I could stomach another one,
simply because the stealth factor is handled so well, and it is fun to
secretly wipe out a whole base on your own. Of course, there are more
play styles than that. You can go rambo if you'd like, and bring out all
the stops to annihilate the enemy with armor mode. The Heavy Machine
Guns you can rip off of the top of jeeps or on the sandbags are
devastating to every enemy in the game and you feel like a true walking
tank with it in hand.
Grenades are a lot better in this game as well, they no longer bounce
all over the place and you can easily cook them off to wipe out groups
of enemies in seconds. They're a lot easier to aim and are a lot more
useful. For some reason or other, decent grenade systems are so hard to
find in FPS, but Crytek got it right.
Weapon customization returns from Crysis 1, but it feels a little
shafted in Crysis 2. The SCAR rifle, for whatever reason, cannot be
supressed anymore (yet a shotgun can be silenced now?), and is only
useful to carry around for the extremely powerful Gauss Attachment.
Silencers are much more important in this game because, like the first,
they prevent you from being found out by the enemy if you want to fire
from cover and take people down one by one.
Sound effects now.
The effects in this game are very good, and would probably be even
better if you had a high-end sound card and some surround sound
headsets. The gun sound effects are really crisp and new, and the sound
effects of your nanosuit shifting into separate modes feel new and sound
great. Nothing in this game is harsh on your ears.
On the subject of sound comes a real treat, the game's soundtrack. A
high majority of all FPS these days lack compelling soundtracks, but
Crysis 2 safely avoids this, for it was composed by none other than Hans
Zimmer. Though Inon Zur is and will forever be one of my favorite
composers, Hans has proven that he is the man for the job when it comes
to Crysis.
Crysis 2 features a plethora of warming and stressful pieces. You will
hear a warm piano during the times you are out of combat and viewing the
effect the alien's invasion is having on the populace, and during
combat, you will hear a variety of tense and thrilling music tracks. Not
just combat will your ears find joy in, but in the cutscenes, both
in-game and rendered as well.
It all flows so well as the story shifts into high and low gear.
The special soundtracks made for all of the cutscenes are enjoyable, but
hard for me to describe personally. Suffice it to say that if you are
an audiophile, you will love this every step of the way, and for those
who aren't, you will still enjoy the light touch given to Crysis 2. It's
fitting and goes well with the combat.
There are very irritable bugs in the game as well. For one, no saving
and loading feature that we PC gamers deserve. No quick saving either,
just nonsensical console checkpoint silliness.
If you amass a bit of Nano Catalyst and you quit the game and come back
later, you will find that you have lost all of your Nano Catalyst, and
for some reason, you can't even get anymore if you are collecting it.
The bug goes away when it feels like it, but thankfully, I was able to
get everything on the first playthrough.
Before I close this, I must mention some big problems. First, this game
does not have the large, open areas of Crysis 1, and you are restricted
to linear environments. Though this sounds short, you can still take as
much time as you'd like. The gameplay changes often with how you play.
If you are spotted, you get reinforcements called in, sometimes
helicopters and APCs. What can and will probably take away from the
enjoyment is that you can sneak around and not fight any enemy for a
majority of the game.
Secondly, the story. Though Crysis 2 starts off very slow and doesn't
tell you anything, it does eventually start to make connections to the
first game. I won't spoil, but I was impressed enough that I am
interested in seeing what happens in Crysis 3, and I will be eagerly
awaiting how the trilogy ends.
You cannot tweak your graphical options unless you edit a game file to
do so. We're only left to "Gamer, Advanced, and Hardcore" Options. Oh
wait, that was pre-patch. My PC only gets the options "High, Very High,
and Extreme", I am not sure about others.
They also locked the console pre-patch, and we cannot not use Cvars.
This game could have been the next great PC-centric FPS, but due in
large part to EA's greed and their unjustified hatred of the PC platform
they opted instead to sink their fangs into Crytek and drained the life
out of this once proud supporter of computer gaming, in turn causing a
disaster similar to what was seen with Bioware and their consol-ified
Dragon Age sequel.
The game's length is typical of what we expect in modern FPS, no doubt
due to Crytek's desire to fit each zone into an area that could be
easily written into the paltry 512MB of DDR3 RAM without much disc
thrashing. sadly, because Consoles cannot handle the huge environments
Crytek obviously wanted with this game.
Thankfully Crytek didn't skimp on the gameplay, which is this games only
saving grace. While it's length and depth may be lacking, the sheer fun
present in its singleplayer mode manages to keep it from becoming a
complete waste, especially once you witness how well balanced the games
combat is.
While I may sound harsh, I have nothing but respect for Crytek and hope
they one day return to their PC roots and remember the PC gamers who
brought them to the level of success they are now.
