Crysis 2 Review

Written 4/10/2011

Note: This review is for the PC version of the game. Screenshot and video taken from my machine.

I don’t think any self-respecting PC gamer neglected to have the original Crysis on their radar when it was initially released, and even some time afterward. It was beautiful, had a pretty good story, and some very unique gameplay opportunities. It was also the benchmark for how powerful your PC really was for at least a good three years. Now Crytek seeks to torture our PCs (and consoles now too) yet again with Crysis 2. Aside from the beauty, can it even hold a candle to the original?

Visuals and Presentation

Crysis 2 is built on Crytek’s new CryEngine 3, so you can expect the game to look a great deal more amazing than the original Crysis. I was actually surprised that the game looked so good without having any DirectX 11 functionality available, but Crytek assures that there will be a patch that adds DirectX 11 options to the game. Weapon and character models, as well as animations are all equally improved, but the real star here is the environment. The entire game takes place in New York City, and it’s looking worse for wear due to the constant fighting that’s been going on. The streets are mostly abandoned, buildings are crumbling, and a strong sense of emptiness permeates the entire city. It’s a chilling and serene scene to behold, and it almost startles you when you come across any sign of military or alien presences that begin opening fire on you. The game also improves visually as you progress through the campaign, so there’s never a shortage of “Wow, look at that!” moments. My only minor complaint is that the bloom effects in the game can be pretty overpowering at times. I didn’t mind it, but I’m sure some of you will absolutely hate it. It just depends.

The multiplayer maps that I was able to see (more on that in the Gameplay section) are all equally stunning. It doesn’t appear as though any of the major visual bells and whistles were removed to improve gameplay, which is very impressive in itself. There’s no performance hit in the multiplayer maps, even though they look almost exactly like their campaign counterparts. As I said in my demo impressions of the game, Crytek must have used a similar black magic to what Valve did in putting so many enemies on screen with the Left 4 Dead games.

Visuals and Presentation Rating:

Sound

Let me get this out of the way now, the sound in Crysis 2 is really loud; so you may want to have your volume a little lower than your normal unless you want to possibly blow your speakers. With that said, all the sounds, music, and voice-acting are quite rich and detailed. The guns sound satisfyingly powerful. The music is quite excellent and should keep you pumped up throughout the game. The voice-acting, while well performed, suffers in the writing. I can probably attribute that to the confusing story though. There’s also a sizable amount of unnecessary language in the game, especially toward the end. It wasn’t quite as bad as Splinter Cell: Conviction’s language, but it was pretty dang close. Overall, while everything is great, the writing and language really drag down the sound package.

Sound Rating:

Gameplay

I’m going to do something a little different this time and talk about the game’s negatives first. To make a long story short, I couldn’t play the multiplayer in Crysis 2 due to consistent and repeated connection losses. Now before you start suggesting that it’s my internet connection, I just played a full round of Team Deathmatch in Black Ops to assure that my connection is stable, and it is. In Crysis 2, it’s easy enough to get onto a server, but the problem is staying on it. Every 2-5 minutes guaranteed after joining a server, I would be exited out to the login screen with an error saying that I had lost my connection to the opponent, and to please reconnect. I went through this process at least 15 times in one sitting before deciding to quit. The game’s demo also suffered from a similar instability, but was still more playable than the full game’s current state. So if you want a better explanation of the multiplayer, read my Crysis 2 demo impressions.

With that said, the campaign is very much playable and equally enjoyable gameplay-wise. The most noticeable differences from the original Crysis’s gameplay are the way your Nano-Suit functions, the flow of the environment, and the ability to upgrade your suit with different perks on the fly. In the original Crysis, your Nano-Suit’s armor ability was always on by default and drained no energy for being active, and your speed and strength abilities could be toggled at any time. In Crysis 2, your speed and strength abilities are always active in the background, and thus not selectable from the suit menu. Instead, your speed ability automatically activates when you begin sprinting and deactivates when you stop. The same is true with strength, as it will only activate when you hold the melee button to charge an attack. The armor ability is now no longer active by default, and so when you are attacked without it now, the damage goes directly to your health instead of your armor. If you want to benefit from the armor ability, you must activate it; which is really hard to remember to do if you’ve played the original Crysis. Once its activated, the armor ability drains your suit power in the same way that the stealth ability does, except without the movement penalty the stealth ability suffers. It then also drains your suit power when shot while the armor ability is active. This means that you are no longer the near-invincible tank you were in the original Crysis, because your available suit power is a greatly reduced commodity, and thus forces you to fight more tactically.

To help you do this, you now have a Tactical Visor, which allows you to scour the battlefield from a safe distance and plan your attack accordingly. When in use, you cannot use your weapon, but can see flanking and sniping positions, opportunities to sneak around the enemy with your stealth ability, places where you can climb up, and ammo supply crates. You can get by without taking any of these tactical advantages if you see a more efficient way that suits your playstyle. I mostly made my own plans of attack, but found the suggestions in the Tactical Visor to be a good starting place to examine the field.

Another new addition that helps you tactically play the game is the ability to customize your suit with different perks. For example, you can enhance your suit so that it will show you where shots are coming from so you can more quickly find enemies who are hidden behind cover. To buy new perks, you collect Nano-Catalysts from the alien enemies you defeat. Just like with weapon customization, you can change your perk configuration at any time, even during combat; but you will be extremely vulnerable.

Finally, the environments are not nearly as open as in the original Crysis, considering that the whole game takes place in the city. While this provides a more focused experience, I was hoping to experiment with different ways I could tackle a given situation in an open sandbox environment like in the original Crysis. That’s probably just a personal complaint though. Overall, the campaign is solid, but I hope a patch is released soon that will fix the connection issues and at least let me try the multiplayer.

Gameplay Rating:

Story

WARNING: Spoiler Alert!

Wow, this story is a mess! You start the game out as a normal Marine heading to your next assignment in a submarine. The sub is then attacked, you escape, pass out and wake up wearing Prophet’s Nano-Suit. Yes, the same Prophet from the first game. He tells you the aliens infected him, then promptly shoots himself. After that, the story tries to make you believe you’re on a quest to help cure this infection. That route is soon abandoned in favor of a classic “survive the alien invasion” theme, with you being the only person alive with the ability to do so. Then the infection is mentioned again and abandoned again. You blow up some alien structures, and that’s it. If that’s not confusing enough, I seem to remember in a developer interview somewhere that they were going to scrap the first game’s story and restart it in Crysis 2. Why then are the island from the first game and the events that took place on it even mentioned, much less construed as significant? It makes absolutely no sense, and left me little more than annoyed and confused. There’s potential in this story, but it needs to be cleaned up a lot to become even remotely coherent.

Story Rating:

Replay Value

The campaign took me 14 hours to complete on the normal difficulty, which is really quite good for a shooter. It’s fun, and probably worth a second or even third playthrough, but the real replay value is in the game’s multiplayer; which is currently broken (for me at least). Until a patch is released that fixes the connection issues, there’s not much to do here outside of the campaign.

Replay Value Rating:

Final Thoughts and Overall Score

All things considered, Crytek really did a good job on Crysis 2. The real test for them will be to see if they patch the game’s glaring issues sooner, later, or ever. Don’t pull an Ubisoft on us Crytek! Oh yea, one more thing, can we have some mod tools for the game please? The game is available for PC, 360, and PS3.

Crysis 2 Overall Score:

System Requirements:

• OS: Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, with the latest Service Pack
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo at 2Ghz, or AMD Athlon 64 x2 2Ghz, or better
• Memory: 2GB
• Hard Disk Space: 9Gb
• Video Card: NVidia 8800GT with 512Mb RAM or better, ATI 3850HD with 512Mb RAM or better
• Sound: DirectX Compatible Sound Card
• DirectX®: 9.0c   

Crysis 2 Demo Impressions

Written 3/2/2011

Note: This review is for the PC version of the demo. Screenshot and video taken from my machine.

The original Crysis was without doubt the best looking, as well as most system intensive, game of the past five years or so. Not only was it stunningly beautiful, the inclusion of the Nano-Suit and all the powers that came with it basically guaranteed a great gameplay experience. Soon though, we will be making our computers cry even harder as we attempt to run Crysis 2.

If you thought the original Crysis was beautiful, get ready to change your definition of beauty. The Crysis 2 demo is absolutely, unequivocally gorgeous! That speaks multiple volumes, because this is a multiplayer demo! If anything needed to be stripped out of the single-player campaign visually or if Crytek is holding back some of the eye-candy in this demo, I simply cannot wait to see what the full game looks like. This vast visual improvement is thanks to Crytek’s new CryEngine 3. On a somewhat unrelated note, some videos I’ve seen of the CryEngine 3 creation tools make the game seem stupidly easy to mod for. If that’s the case, I’m very much looking forward to what I and other modding hobbyists/indie developers can come up with. The sound in the demo is also top-notch, and almost equal the quality of the visuals.

Gameplay-wise, the demo will feel familiar to those who have played the original Crysis and/or Black Ops or Modern Warfare 2. It’s much faster paced than the Crysis Wars multiplayer, and more focused. The main differences are in how your Nano-Suit functions and the inclusion of Suit Abilities. In the original Crysis, your Nano-Suits Armor power was always on by default, and never drained your suit’s power unless you were being shot. In the Crysis 2 demo, your Strength and Speed powers are not selectable, but activate automatically when I need to jump high or run fast. Your Armor power must also be toggled on now, and drain your suit’s power in the same way your Stealth power does. This can take some getting used to, especially if you’ve played the original Crysis. I can’t tell you how many times I forgot to turn on my Armor power because I just assumed it was automatically on. The Stealth power seems infinitely more useful in Crysis 2 multiplayer than in Crysis Wars, and it is now entirely possible to stalk your enemies without them ever noticing. Suit Abilities are basically the Crysis version of Perks in Black Ops. They can range from simple weapon efficiency abilities to more extravagant abilities like Power Slam, which has you jumping in the air and slamming your fist into the ground which causes a slight earthquake around you and kills anyone in range. It’s a difficult ability to use, but extremely satisfying if you land your mark.

The two maps you’ll be playing in the demo are Skyline and Pier 17. Skyline is set on a large New York City building rooftop, and is well thought out in its flow from interiors to exteriors. Pier 17 is the larger map set in a largely destroyed and abandoned ship dock, and shows how remaining cloaked to cross open areas can save your life more times than you may care to admit. Both maps also use vertical vantage points effectively, so make sure to look up while you’re also looking around. The maps also both work well for the demo’s available gametypes: Team Instant Action and Crash Site. Team Instant Action is exactly what you think it is, and is fun in the fact that it lets you freely kill other players with the awesome Nano-Suit powers. Crash Site is basically a team version of King of the Hill, but with the hill moving every two minutes or so. Both gametypes aren’t exactly the most original things in the world, but are still worth it for the simple fact that the Nano-Suit changes core FPS mechanics enough to breath new life into the same old same old.

In all, it’s a lot of fun, if you can actually connect to the game that is. The biggest issues by far are the terrible connectivity issues and a bug that refuses to start a match once you finally get a connection. First off, just accept that you’re going to lose connection to lobby servers a lot, but not in-game servers as much. Once you do get a solid connection though, prepare to sit in a server’s lobby and wait for the final countdown timer to reach its end, freeze, and start over again, and again, and again. This forces you to leave that lobby, even though you had a good connection, and start the whole process over again until you get lucky enough to land on a server that works. Once you do though, get ready to have a blast! Crysis 2 will be released on March 22 on PC, PS3, and 360. Let’s hope that the issues I’ve just mentioned can be resolved before then. If you think you can handle the frustration though, you can grab the demo from the official Crysis 2 site, or FilePlanet.

Crysis 2 Demo Impressions: