Betol-betol Hangat! Game Review: Crysis 2

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.

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Betol-betol Hangat! Game Review: Dragon Age 2

You are one of the few who escaped the destruction of your home. Now, forced to fight for survival in an ever-changing world, you must gather the deadliest of allies, amass fame and fortune, and seal your place in history. This is the story of how the world changed forever. The legend of your Rise to Power begins now.”

Sounds fantastic, right? Sounds epic, right? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Dragon Age 2 (DA 2) is the much hyped sequel to Dragon Age: Origins (DAO). You play a human character called Hawke, who has fled Ferelden with your family during events in DAO to Kirkwall. There, you become a refugee and embark on your journey to becoming the legendary figure known as the Champion of Kirkwall.

For the gameplay, DA 2 introduces a linear framed narrative story where your choices affect how your saga is told by one of your old companions, a dwarf named Varric. I’ll comment more on the ‘consequences’ of your choices later on in the review.

The game begins with a character creation screen. Pick a gender and class for your character, either: Warrior, Rogue or Mage. One thing different from DAO in DA 2 is that I have found is the Rogue is more useful here. You rarely end up getting killed. Later on in the game, you will be able to customize your character’s appearance, attributes and skills.

The leveling up process itself is quite simple. For Attributes, you will need to allocate points to the different traits such as STRENGTH, DEXTERITY, etc. DA 2 features a skill tree to level up your passive and activated abilities. Once you reach level seven and level 14, you are allowed to access the three specializations available for each class.

The first thing you will notice in DA2 is its animation. When compared to Mass Effect 2 and some other games out there, you can’t help but notice that the animation is below the standard you would expect from the market nowadays. Textures seem flat. Facial expressions seem stiff and bland. Only the great voice acting helps to save and sell the story.

Another disappointing feature that becomes quickly apparent is the level designs. Even though the locations you can explore are limited, the layouts for the different areas do not vary much (or vary at all) such as in warehouses, mansions and so on. You feel a haunting sense of déjà vu as you traverse from one area to another.

DA2 carries on Dragon Age’s traditional party system, allowing you take up to 3 companions as you explore and battle your way through the story. Each companion has a homebase where they will wait if not selected as a party member. Here is also where key companion conversations take place and quests are given.

Although DA 2 touts strategic combat as a key feature, I found that it’s more of a click-n-slash combat system like God of War. Even the “cross-class combos” did not have any dramatic impact on the outcome of the battles.

You can also customize the combat tactics for your party members but I found that made little difference in the gameplay.

I found that I still had to pause, direct my party members to fully utilize their powers and to make sure they didn’t get knocked unconscious. If your health bar is knocked into the black, don’t worry, your character loses consciousness and player control is transferred to one of your remaining conscious party members. This player control switch continues until all party members are down, then it’s game over.

DA 2 allows you to upgrade the weapons and armour for you and your companions by adding runes to the enchantment slots. Do they make a drastic difference in battle? I couldn’t really tell to be honest.

This brings us to the story itself. What set Bioware’s games apart from most others are their endearing characters and great dialogue. DA 2 did not continue this tradition. Most of the companions’ personalities and stories in DA 2 seemed lacking in depth. Still, there were a few companions such as Isabela and Varric whose dialogue stood out for me.

Depending on how the companion reacts to your choices, they will develop Friendships or Rivalries with you. This has an impact on certain events in the game.

Other than the relationships with my companions, there was very little consequence for my actions. Events that were supposed to lead to a future consequence were left hanging. An example of this was Hawke being asked by a magistrate to bring in a wanted man. Depending on how you chose to deal with the man, the magistrate could thank you or threaten you by making sure your family never reclaims its noble title. I kept waiting in the game for the magistrate to cause me trouble but he never did. It made events in the game feel unresolved and the story itself incomplete.

During quests, I would try save before key conversations and battles. Try a dialogue option then reload the save game and try another dialogue option. I discovered, much to my surprise and disappointment, that no matter which dialogue branch I chose, the end result was the same.

For me, the ability to romance companions, another staple of Bioware games, was another letdown as well. However, unlike previous Bioware games, in DA 2 almost everyone in your party will be able to romance Hawke, regardless of the character’s gender. I felt that this took away some realism to the story and characters.

I believe the root of the problems which DA 2 has is that it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be: an action or a rpg game. In the end you get an action game that has traces of RPG elements. Hardcore RPG fans would be disappointed in DA 2 and action enthusiasts will feel the action dumb down and lacking. The quests themselves were more like set-ups for battles and more battles. After playing act after act, you will get tired of them as they were predictable and formulaic.

After completing DA 2 at 51 hours, I had felt that after a promising start, the game quickly went downhill and wasn’t worth my time in the end. DA 2 feels cobbled together and lacks the epic mood of a truly great rpg game. Due to its flaws in gameplay, game design and story, DA 2 is not polished enough to make it a gem of a game. I recommend giving it a miss.

Source: Hotlink Game Review

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