Crysis 2 puts us gamers back in to the role of dawning the Nano Suit once again to fight an alien invasion and to save man kind. But this time we are not fighting North Koreans and the Seth on foreign soil. Crysis 2 places us gamers in the heart of New York City while we fight Cell Soldiers, and a more advanced Seth. But this time, instead of having to ward off an possible invasion, we have to retake the City of New York that the Seth already control.
These images will be in no particular order, I will be using a resolution of 5760 x 1080 at a Gamer preset.
Storyline
The story line of Crysis 2 is top notch, it is easy to fallow and understand what is going on and what is needed to be done. Crysis 2 does not start us off from where Crysis and Crysis Warhead left off. There is a bit of time from the first two original games to where Crysis 2 picks up, we are not returning to the role of Nomad, or Psycho. This time we gamers are playing the role of a marine that was left for dead after an attempt of the Marines to retake the City of New York. This marine was rescued from one of the most unlikely people from the original Crysis, Crysis Warhead characters, Prophet. Prophet rescues Alcatraz from the wreckage of a U.S. submarine after a failed attempt of retaking New York City, then sacrifices himself so Alcatraz can proceed with Prophets mission of locating Dr. Gould. Crysis 2 uses flashbacks of Prophets memory (which is imbedded into the suits memory) to bring us up to speed on what exactly happened to Prophet during the first two Crysis’, and in between the time of the first two Crysis’ up to the time he sacrificed himself in the beginning portion of Crysis 2. These flashbacks are unlocked at certain levels as we play through in the game of Crysis 2, and we can view these flashbacks at anytime from the main screen of Crysis 2. We also get music unlocked at certain levels that the development team used on this game.
Graphic’s and Performance
This is the graphical anomaly I mentioned in this portion of the review.
Graphically and performance wise this game ran fairly smooth, unlike the first two Crysis’ where it felt like a “port” on our computer based gaming systems. Port to us computer gamers means that the game is extremely sluggish, not very responsive, also no matter what hardware we used on a port, the game still ran like shit. This is when companies try to save a few bucks and only optimize the game for one platform not for all platforms, in this case the developers of original Crysis’ games used the coding from a Xbox (console) then used that same coding for us PC users. The two gaming platforms may have some similarities in some areas, but hardware wise they are very different as the PC uses a lot more and very different instruction sets, and has a lot more capabilities then our console counterparts. While I played Crysis 2 I did not have this “Port feeling” it ran exceptionally smooth and it looks absolutely gorgeous. I also can run Crysis 2 on a multi monitor platform right out of the box, and still get decent frame rates as I played Crysis 2. There are few graphical anomalies within Crysis 2, every so often I find a bad guy I just shot stuck in the wall, or I would got stuck in a specific spot and it was difficult to get myself out of it. Also there are graphical anomalies that dealt with the heat effects when in a smokey or dusty areas that did not quite look right, and ruined the overall look of the game at these times. I will not say it was so bad that I could not play the game, it was occasional, and I could continue on my killing spree. these anomalies were more of an annoyance then a hindrance. The developers of Crysis 2 could have done a bit better job.
Now all of my programs I use for benchmarking (MSI Afterburner, Fraps, to name a few) kept telling me this engine uses a Direct X 9 API, normally I would hold the use of this ancient ass API against a game, but Crysis 2 looks absolutely great if it does indeed use a Direct X 9 API. I have been unable to get any more information one way or the other on what API was used for Crysis 2, but I will not hold this against this game. Crysis 2 does not give us PC gamers any true adjust ability towards the graphical adjustments, we are instead given a few different presets with no customizing the games overall look to our specific computing needs.
Combat Sequence
The combat sequences of Crysis 2 I will have to say top notch, the AI was not repetitive, they were some what adaptable to what was going on whether I was sneaking about while cloaked, or while I decided to go all balls out. The developers of Crysis 2, also tweaked the way we interacted with the Nano Suit this time around, instead of having to access the overall options, (X or middle mouse button) the developers decided to use short cut keys for quick reaction to the different modes of the Nano Suit. These short cut keys are Q for the Armor, E for quick action with the cloaking, and H for the added modifications to the suit, X for the weapon modifications. We also no longer have to access the strength mode of the Nano Suit if and when we needed to kick a car half way across the level, to grab a bad guy, or to jump high. This mode is more automatic to us, the V is a unilateral button, we can kick a car, stealth kill an enemy, or to melee something or someone. Another tweak that was done, is the speed, we no longer have to access the Nano suits menu then select speed to run this also is automatically built in to the suit, what this means is we can sprint while clocked, while we are in armor mode, or we can use a combination of speed and high jumping at the same time effortlessly, and quickly. The energy drain of each capability of the Nano Suit has been slightly tweaked as well, since I like to take the stealth approach I prefer the clocking capabilities. I was able to get a lot more time in clocked mode so I can sneak up on an enemy easier and it did not drain my energy as fast as it did in the original Crysis’ games. The only time it that cloaking drains the suit energy fast is when I was upright walking normally, or when I choose to sprint while cloaked. As you can tell I did an awful lot of crouching while cloaking. Armor mode lasts a lot longer, if it was needed (and occasionally it is needed) I can activate armor mode and last a lot longer in the firefight with out constantly worrying about my suits energy level. Trust me when I say this, just because the energy lasts longer does not mean this game is easy. The AI is somewhat adaptive and you will find yourself asshole deep in trouble if you just go right in and start blazing.
Unlike the original Crysis’ games were we could not customize the nano Suit, in Crysis 2 we are giving the option of being able to customize the suit to our specific gaming play types. My personal type of gaming style is being sneaky, so I prefer to have a bit more cloaking capabilities. These upgrades we can do for our suit is by us collecting nanites from the dead Seth that has been killed by us or by the AI. And each Seth type of character gives us a giving amount of nanites, some give us 20, the majority of the Seth give us 100, there are few that give us 300 and 500 and even some that give 2000.
Online Play
I have tried a little bit of online gaming with Crysis 2, and I found it be quite insane. Online playing is definitely not your typical lets grab some guns and start blowing holes in to people. This game is extremely fast paced, and we gamers need to think outside of the box if we plan on going very far playing online. Everyone is evenly matched, you can cloak so can they, you can run like a bat out of hell, so can the opposition. The only real differences is the weapons themselves and how the player uses those weapons. Crysis 2 uses the same basic Idea from Call Of Crap ( Oops I mean Call Of duty), where it is based on a ranking system this ranking system gives us points for kills, and assist on kills that we use to upgrade our weapons and armor. If you just jumping in the online play of Crysis 2 for the first time it will be rather rough but the other players and or playmates do seem to be quite helpful with newer players. In my case since I had the weakest weapons, I found myself with another team member teaming up with me and helping me get some kills so I may be able to get some points for upgrades. So play nice, and help one another out. the only thing I did not like about Crysis 2 online is we do not have a chance of making our own maps or the capabilities of LAN’n this game.
Ending thoughts
I could go on and on about Crysis, but I will end things up right here. Crysis 2 is another prime example of a game being purchased just for its single player campaign. It also is a great game to play online as well. the bad points I made about this game are The graphical anomalies I particularly care most about is about the heat effects when in a smokey or dusty areas, this did ruin the over look of Crysis 2 at these point and times. Also the inability of being able to customize the game engine to my computer specific requirements also hurts this game title. Another main area I did not care for is the non ability of map making and no LAN capabilities. I realize most people play online more then they do LAN any more but I still like to be able to LAN a game among just us friends and not have to go Online and deal with lag and connections etc. etc. So I give Crysis 2 a respectable and well earned a:
7 out of Ten and the:
Silver Dragon Award
Dragons Gaming Central 