The story begins with you as Alcatraz, a United States Marine Corps Force Recon on a mission to New York when suddenly the sub you are on is hit by the Ceph. Prophet, from the first Crysis, save your sorry behind and bestows upon you the power of the Nanosuit version 2.0. As Prophet severs the connection the Nanosuit has to him, he leaves you with a mission to find and protect Doctor Gould.
The game then proceeds into a series of ‘catch me if you can’ missions for the first few hours as you try to meet up with Gould. The story is weak and thin throughout and the missions ‘redonkulously’ (as Husky Starcraft likes to say) simple.
Now I am not a big fan of Crysis. At the time, I considered it a game with lazy graphic coding done for the sake of taxing PC hardware. But I have come to realise that developers wanted to make a game that will kill most PCs trying to play it on max details. For two years Crysis ran supreme, no PC could really tame it.
Its legacy cannot be said to have carried on in Crysis 2. While Crysis was made to show off extreme hardware, Crysis 2 seems to have been made to capitalise on the casual gamer market. No longer are there critical decisions to be made on a snap of the mouse that separates you from certain failure but rather to choose which of the available winning tactics displayed on the screen fits your mood for clearing the zone.
I actually have a lot more complaints for Crysis 2 so sit back and grab some popcorn. Let’s start with the story. If you are waiting there for a moment or two that was it. It practically had no story for the calibre of franchise it came from. It felt like playing F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin but at least for F.E.A.R. 2 the gameplay experience was enjoyable.
Speaking of gameplay, most of the elements stem from the Nanosuit 2.0. This little marvel of technology is too much of a marvel of technology. Allowing you to activate two abilities at once to deal with whatever so called challenge the level designers had in mind.
Let’s say we are dealing with the Ceph troopers, they go stealth and are jumping all over the place. You hit Nano Vision and Armour to spot them and stand there and pound the Ceph’s headgear till it flies off. Easy.
Now dealing with Cell soldiers does not even require you to use dual abilities. One only needs to use stealth and thanks to the Nanosuit’s super fast recharge of 2-3 seconds you only need to duck out of sight for a few moments before sneaking off again. And if they do spot you can safely duck behind any cover as bullets seem to have no penetration power. Should they do get you before you find cover behind that office desk just power up your Armour mode and you are good to go.
Another thing tooted is how wonderful the A.I., wonderfully stupid. One first thing you notice is the lack of alertness the Cell soldiers have. I mean virus outbreak, rioting civilians, alien attack and psycho in an advance Nanosuit would have you keeping not one eye peeled for danger but two. The Ceph have their own problems. Their energy blasts have such a large mass that it cannot pass through chain fences or small spaces. And since the environment is 95% non-destructible you are pretty safe under tight cover. But that really is a non-issue as the Ceph just simply charges you if they are not invisibly bouncing around.
Unfortunately, Cell soldiers are not as well trained as they seem to be. If you stealth kill one of them his partner will go on alert but will not notify any of the other soldiers nearby about an invisible killer about. And should they spot they will make a bee-line straight for you. They will only take cover if you hit them, so hold back a bit, find a little cover, Armour up and let loose when they all line up like ducks in a barrel. Another interesting thing is that no more than three to four enemies will fire at you at the same time. No matter if there is ten of them with clear line of sight, the rest will just take cover and wait. Allowing you to manage large groups with else.
And do not get me started about the explosive barrels, Cell soldiers are attracted to those barrels like bees to honey grouping together around several when there is better and safer cover to shoot at you.
Multiplayer may be some small measure of a saving grace for Crysis 2, allowing the player to escape the mediocre story and exact some fantasy vengeance after a day of trolls and other annoying net denizens. But for players that are starting multiplayer matches there is a huge balance issue in terms of Levels. Players of higher levels unlock incredibly powerful Nanosuit abilities like auto targeting (think wallhack), slap on a fully tricked out sniper and you will find yourself cursing like a real marine.
Other players will utilise the lag from the ping difference to engage in stealth ninja-ing with either a silenced shotgun or knife. This makes it impossible for you to deal with them when they use speed to round the corners. Then you have level designers making maps which have so many obstacles that there is no other play style but to go old school Unreal while cloaked.
Overall, Crysis 2 is not a remarkable game, some may call it more of an evolution than a revolution but that’s even more of a stretch. For me it lost its identity and has digressed into what is the standard fare of console First Person Shooters out there. And if you think the multiplayer mode can save it think again, almost from the beginning most rounds end up like a flashback to Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament 2004 matches.