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by KYABen on 03.28.11  It’s the year 2023. Amidst a catastrophic outbreak of what has been come to be referred to as the Manhattan Virus”, New York City has been invaded by aliens. As the U.S. military concludes its evacuation of the city, the Crynet Corporation’s private army known as C.E.L.L., begins its search for alien technology and anything else it can use to avert the crisis. The U.S. Marines send in a Force Recon unit to extract Dr. Nathan Gould who, aside from being something of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, holds invaluable knowledge on how to combat the aliens. Their sub is attacked and the force is eradicated by the alien invaders. Luckily, at the last minute, Delta Force officer Prophet shows up and pulls the sole survivor out of the river. Unluckily, however, our old friend has been infected with the Manhattan Virus, and shortly after relinquishing control of the Nano Suit 2, blows his brains out. Now it’s up to you, Alcatraz, to accomplish your mission by saving Dr. Gould, and the world. Graphics Crysis 2 is quite possibly the most beautiful game I have ever played. Actually, strike that. It is the most beautiful game I have ever played. When I walked outside for the first time, I could almost feel the sun shining on my face. The lighting is superb, and the attention to detail is amazing. From stores with broken windows and looted shelves, to the out of service subway tunnels where the last vestiges of humanity waste away from the ravages of the Manhattan Virus, I found myself time and time again walking around just looking at stuff -sometimes that’s all there was to do, but we’ll get to that part later. In some cases there was so much detail that I found it hard to see the enemies, but instead of being troubling, it only added to the reality factor. That being said, the system requirements are demanding, and in order to get the full effect, you’re going to need a pretty powerful GPU. As a matter of fact, the graphics settings start with High and go from there to Very High and Extreme; subtle, no? Sound The sound is good, but not great. I didn’t find very much of the music particularly moving, and aside from a lot of chatter you pick up on with your nanosuit’s radio, a lot more could have been done with ambient sounds to really make the game feel more “real-sounding” (it was certainly real-looking). Then again, a city that’s been evacuated probably wouldn’t make a whole heck of a lot of noise, however, the faint sounds of fighting in the distance, or military convoys cruising by, would have helped the game feel more real. I have to say the voice acting is mediocre at best. The dialogue is cheesy and being hammered with constant “Come on!” and “Hurry up” when you’re in the middle of trying to stealthily eliminate your enemies can get old really fast. One of the A.I. bugs shows its ugly face here as well. Sometimes when an NPC discovers one of their comrades you killed while stealthed, they’ll get caught in a dialogue loop where they stand over the corpse constantly asking “Hey man, are you alright, Where were you hit, and Oh man, he’s dead!” over and over again. Gameplay As with the original Crysis, you have a host of abilities at your disposal a la the nanosuit 2. Stealth causes Alcatraz to go invisible for a short while, allowing you to sneak past enemies or take them out via your silenced weapons. Harden makes your nano suit, well, harden; which will reduce falling and combat based damage. The strength and speed abilities have been folded into one for Crysis 2, and they augment an array of actions. Using this nano power gives the player the ability to kick automobiles across the screen into a group of enemies, jump to superhuman heights, steady the recoil on your automatic weapons as well as sprint from cover to cover. Also, as you progress through the game and kill off aliens, they will drop nano essences that you can collect. The more you collect, the more upgrades to your nano suit you can purchase. Unfortunately, these despawn after a short time, so if you wait until the area is clear of enemies to collect your reward, you’ll most likely miss out. Another down side to the upgrades to your nano suit is that, in my opinion, several of the upgrades were borderline useless. The two I purchased, extended stealth duration and extended harden duration (must-haves, in my opinion) were the most useful of them all. The others varied in differing degrees. One power puts tracers on enemy bullets, another shows their patrol routes (I’m guessing to make sneaking past them easier), and yet another will reduce the energy cost of sprinting and jumping; marginally useful, at best. My favorite was the stealth tracker. It basically makes enemies that are in stealth mode easier to see. Problem is, I only came across stealthed enemies once, at the very end of the game. There are other powers, but I will leave their discovery up to you, and let you judge whether or not you find them useful. I found the controls to be a bit on the sluggish side right from the get-go. When I would move my mouse to the left and right, there was a slight delay in the movement of my targeting reticule. Couple this with the aliens leaping from ledge to ledge across your screen, an incredibly fast rate of fire on your weapons and you’ve got the potential for some very frustrating combat situations. While ammo is pretty plentiful, located in various places throughout the game, the guns fired so fast and did so little damage it could easily cost you half a clip (40 bullets if you use the Scarab, a typical assault rifle) before your enemy dies. This situation can sometimes be remedied by the use of head shots, however, with the somewhat less than responsive controls, head shots were almost guaranteed to miss on anything but stationary targets unless you’re stealthed. Grenades as well reacted sort of oddly. They didn’t bounce or slide much, and often landed in unintended areas- I really didn’t use them much at all. The A.I. is riddled with bugs as well. Aside from the dialogue loop I mentioned above, enemies would get stuck on the terrain, running continuously into a wall it doesn’t recognize as being there or trying to jump with an outcropping overhead, resulting in a continuous series of repeated micro-jumps. Also, there were several moments where the A.I. would fail to react. After the initial “There he is!” or “Whaa…?” They would stand there for several seconds before attacking. While not every encounter included these bugs, enough of them did to make it worth mentioning. When I mentioned above that I couldn’t help but walk around and look at stuff, it wasn’t just due to the beauty. Part of it was because, quite frankly, there wasn’t anything else to do. While there is a good deal of action in the game, there are also several places where I found myself walking around doing absolutely nothing. Several times, on my way from point A to point B, there just wasn’t anything there. Enemies in this game seem to be placed in what I can only describe as “pockets of resistance”- small, concentrated areas where enemies await your arrival; with the rest of the game being relatively devoid of any life at all. Sure, it’s a deserted city, but if I wanted to sight see in New York, I’d go there. Crysis 2 will periodically inform you that there are tactical options available. You can then access your tactical HUD through the nanosuit’s visor and survey the area before you attack. On your HUD, you will see where ammo dumps are, where enemies patrol, and you’ll be presented with various options on how to proceed. Through your tactical HUD, you can mark any of the things mentioned above and use that to your advantage. I didn’t use this very much at all. While it’s kind of a cool idea, I much prefer to plunge headfirst into the action and shoot from the hip. However, the more strategy-minded player might find a valuable tool. On the whole, I really didn’t find combat in Crysis 2 all that fun. Due to the crappy targeting and general pain-in-the-neck of combat, I opted to sneak past the majority of my foes. This, too, got pretty boring after awhile. While it is possible to take them out in stealth mode, they really aren’t placed very well for that. Once one of them goes down, the rest are usually alerted to your presence and you end up having to shoot it out with them anyways. It doesn’t seem like a whole lot of thought was given to the technical aspects of single player combat. Story Lastly, let’s touch on the story a bit. The overview I gave above pretty much sums up what the game gives you in the beginning. After that, the story is moved forward by a series of communications you get during the game via your radio. These communications are pretty brief, and add very little to the game other than to convey to the player what their next goal is. Crytek has a pretty neat bit of background with Crysis 2, however, I feel that they failed to really use it to any effect at all. It could have been pretty epic, had they put more effort into moving the story along, but sadly the little you get from your comrades serves basically to convey little else than an update on the status of the mission. I realize that in an FPS, the draw is the action- not the story, but other games did much better with very little; Deus Ex and the Call of Duty series come to mind.
Multiplayer There are 6 different multiplayer modes in Crysis 2, including death match, team death match and capture the flag. Four different classes you can choose from, and five extra slots so you can create your own custom class. What makes multiplayer interesting is the nanosuit. You can utilize all of the abilities in the single player mode in multiplayer as well, this includes increased armor, stealth, power-sliding and power-kicking trucks into your opponents. Success here is going to require slick use of your suit’s abilities, as you will quickly find yourself outmatched if you concentrate on just trying to shoot it out. There are 50 ranks to climb during online play, and along the way you can unlock various perks that will assist you in your ascent. Conclusion Not every game can have everything. What Crysis 2 has, are looks. The graphics are an experience unto themselves, an experience that I recommend you try for yourself. Despite the dodgy, frustrating combat, the lack of story and general emptiness of New York, I still recommend playing it. It’s a truly cinematic experience that few, if any, games on the market right now can deliver on the level that Crysis 2 does.
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