Gamespot score:8.5(Great)
my score:8.0
(+)Pros:-Nanosuit is still great and provides a ton of variety of ways to kill enemies,- visually stunning city environments,-solid multiplayer,-large scaled battles in the campaign make it rather memoriable,-lenghty campaign,-nanosuit upgrades are great.
(-)Cons:-Half assed story that starts to get predictable,-takes awhile before the campaign heats up.
Gameplay time:20-30 hours
Crysis 2 may be a sequel to crysis, but the story isnt directly linked. It takes place after the events of crysis, but it stars Alcatraz (cool name bro) as its main character. Nomad is out of the picture, and so are most of the original cast from crysis. Alcatraz is a regular marine sent to fight off the alien invasion, but the ship he was in got smacked right down by aliens, and the entire crew was almost wiped. Prophet (those who played crysis should know him) was walking by, and saw Alcatraz, close to death. Prophet picked Alcatraz up and brought him somewhere discritive, there, he gave Alcatraz his suit. Prophet was already infected by a plague infected the city, the manhattan virus, and since he was already near death, he passed the suit onto Alcatraz, so that he could complete his objective. Of course Alcatraz isn't just holding the suit to complete prophet's initial objectives and fight off aliens, but also to stop those evil doers from getting thier hands on the suit.
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| Maximum armor now looks downright ugly, but you'll get used to it. |
Crysis 2 takes its fight from the jungle scene in the original crysis, to the urban city wellfare. You do combat in new york city, and are faced with tons of enemies. Like the original, you will be confronted with tons of soldiers that mistake you for prophet, and want you dead. Soldiers are SLIGHTY smarter now, and cloaking yourself in one spot for too long doesnt really work as well anymore. While they are still vunerable to backstabs and stealth kills, it doesn't take a genius to see that these american soldiers don't get fooled as easily as north korean soldiers.
While you still combat soldiers, the game takes it to another level when you combat the aliens. Unlike crysis where you spend only the final segments of the game combating aliens, in crysis 2 you spend a huge bulk of the game fighting them. And of course, the aliens come in a good amount of varieties this time. Crysis aliens look huge and fly around, in crysis 2 the aliens evolved and took more humanoid forms, appearing smaller in size and they walk around on thier hands and feet. You will encounter aliens using guns, aliens that crawl around and maul you with thier claws, or even little scarab dudes that just scurry around. The variety isn't as much as you'd expect, but the alien designs are pretty cool, and when you take the fight to bigger armored alien enemies that take a buckload of shots to kill, the fights get a lot more intense.
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| Take time to admire the beautiful urban areas as you shoot your enemies. |
Like its predeseccor, crysis 2 just isn't about its enemies and graphics, the gameplay, especially the nanosuit technology, is top notch. They buffed up the nanosuit to be upgradable now, and while you can still hook tons of different attachments to your gun, the true fun comes only when you begin beefing up your suit. Speaking of the suit, it works differently now. Instead of armor, speed, strenght and cloak, you know only have armor and cloak. Armor soaks up hits and grants you extra survivability, while cloak grants you invisibility. To run faster, you just sprint, it takes up energy, and if you want to jump higher, you just hold the jump button.
You upgrade your armor using nano catalyst, glowing shit that drops out of dead aliens, and this can be used to purchase stuff like being able to soak up more damage, or granting access to new abilities. Having these abilites (the ground stomp especially) makes you feel like a powerful soldier, and as you graze through the lenghty campaign's few memoriable moments where you take out huge walker units, or hold out in a last stand against hordes of incoming alien fire, you really feel like you're making a difference. As mentioned, crysis 2 also has its own multiplayer. On the surface, its nothing more than a modern FPS's multiplayer with the same few modes, but crysis 2 gives players full suit upgradability, giving players quite the choice. You can focus upgrade points on armor or invisibility, making them stronger. At least this gives players a variety of enemy types to face, since players mostly focus only on one path. Then again, I havent played alot of online, but the little time I had with it was great.
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| Cloak mode is great for campers. |
Crysis 2 may have a slighty draggy campaign at the start, but the overall experience is still a greatly statisfying one. Be it shooting soldiers or clobbering squids, you will have a lot of fun in crysis 2. I havent played a lot of multiplayer, but my little time with it was great. Overall, crysis 2 is an enjoyable package that provides great pleasure to all its fans.
Happy gaming.
