Coming from Crytek, the makers of Far Cry and Crysis (did you spot the connection?) you’d expect Crysis 2 to be a spectacular adventure, but nothing prepared me for just how slick the Crysis 2 intro would be. The gap between movie and game production values narrows again thanks to the visual delights of CryEngine 3.
Set in the year 2023 (a few years after the events of the first Crysis game that was a PC exclusive), Crysis 2 begins with TV news footage of an outbreak of the "Manhattan" virus, a horrible affliction that causes complete cellular breakdown in humans and, unsurprisingly, a massive panic in the population, thought to be brought about by the Ceph, (the same tentacled, bio-mechanical squid-like alien race that featured in Crysis). The Manhattan area is suffering a complete breakdown in social order and has been placed under martial law. To police the crisis the beleaguered U.S. Defense Department bring in a private army of soldiers from Crynet Enforcement & Local Logistics (known as C.E.L.L.) As a member of a US Marines Recon unit you are on your way to being deployed into New York City via submarine on a mission to extract former Crynet employee Doctor Nathan Gould, who has vital information on how to combat the alien race. Naturally, the insertion goes tits-up and pear-shaped when the Ceph attack the sub, and Crysis 2 goes a bit Medal of Duty as your first task is to escape the sinking submarine...
Struggling to the surface you have a near miss with the Ceph ship that destroyed the sub, the next thing you know you’re being dragged to safety by persons unknown and when you regain consciousness in a building on a pier in Battery Park you discover that you were saved by virus-infected Laurence "Prophet" Barnes and have been “installed” into his high-tech Nanosuit 2.0!
Apart from looking cool and upgrading your visual capabilities, the Nanosuit gives you brief surges of immense power and enhanced movement, allowing for long and high jumps, improved armour strength/bullet/shock resistance, faster running and even an invisibility cloak that Harry Potter and the Elites from Halo would be proud of. Activation of the cloak (RB) is accompanied with a very Predator-esque sound effect, and the visor also has Nanovision, a sort-of thermal vision mode that looks just like what Predators see. But the Nanosuit has a limited power supply (which self-recharges quickly) meaning you can’t sprint far or remain invisible for too long. Gameplay is, initially at least, pretty standard FPS stuff, and the near-future setting means all the weapons you use are good ‘n’ chunky projectile-based and explosive, so no ray guns or magic moonbeams. You have a “cover mode” of sorts (hold L trigger near a wall or cover scenery, from where you can lean out or pop up) which is similar to Medal of Honor’s, but doesn’t work anywhere near as well as the vast majority of walls don’t seem interested in letting you use them. You can also do a baseball-style slide (similar to Bulletstorm’s) by pressing ‘B’ when sprinting to slide into cover or evade enemies. The game really isn’t a cover shooter, it’s more about using your cloak and armor abilities at the right time; knowing when to stealth kill and when to hit hard and fast and then retreat to recharge and attack again.
Your Nanosuit also comes with a visor that allows you to scan the surrounding area at any time and tag enemies and useful items so you know where they are even if your line of sight to them is blocked. This also helps because enemies can be very difficult to pick out from the scenery at distance, and this is on a 32” LCD HDTV so god only knows what it’d be like if you’re trying to play the game on an old CRT TV. This scanning of an upcoming area obviously comes in very handy when you’re heavily outnumbered or outgunned and gives you a chance to form stealthy attack plans or ambushes. The Nanosuit’s enhancement modules are ‘bought’ by gathering nano catalysts from downed Ceph (the nano catalysts look like a sparkly cloud of dust). The enhancement modules do things like add stealth or agility, and one of the Nanosuit’s advanced abilities even highlights an enemy’s patrol path. Once you’re informed by Dr. Gould that the Nanosuit has a cloak, the gameplay becomes a mixture of run ‘n gun and MGS-esque stealth, often depending on your frame of mind, ability or which difficulty level you’re playing on. The city is heavily policed and patrolled by the C.E.L.L. troops and there are also a lot of the infected civilian population left wandering around suffering from a nasty-looking pulsating growth-whatever it is, I don’t want to catch it.
If and when you play the campaign through for a second time you’ll be pleased to find that all the enhancements you’ve earned are still present which makes things a lot more fun from the start, and playing on “Veteran” or “Supersoldier” certainly forces you to think a bit more, and I suspect, play more like the game’s designers intended you to. One major gripe is that the distance between checkpoints can be far too great-die and the chances are you’ll be retreading old ground, and sometimes it’ll seem really old, particularly on the higher settings.
The devastated city has tons of detail and even phones, lamps and drinking fountains still work. Souvenirs, dog tags, keys from vehicles and Emails on randomly placed laptops would appear to be collectibles, so good luck finding them all! Amongst all the concrete, tarmac and glass the organic side of Manhattan also looks wonderful, with trees and water given plenty of attention - the rivulets of water that run down your visor are remarkable to see, as are flames and embers that emanate from here, there and everywhere. Compared to the rest of the scenery the infected civilians themselves look rather low detail though, and probably for certification reasons (Crysis is rated a ‘16’) you can’t even put the poor saps out of their misery. The game has frequent cut scenes and real time events, many of which blend or lead into gameplay seamlessly and use the game engine to extremely impressive effect (except for some jerky shadows and texture pop here and there). You get the feeling that there might be a blockbuster movie-quality set piece around nearly every corner.
A major flaw is that although it does work most of the time, the enemy AI seems to lose the plot altogether now and then, a thing that quickly sucks immersion from any game. The C.E.L.L. soldiers are well-modelled and animated, but their pathfinding AI is shockingly bad at times, as they’ll get stuck in places they shouldn’t, moonwalking, and even die inexplicably because they try to get past impassable obstacles. We’ve even seen dumber ones fall to their deaths from elevated positions or get killed by their own grenades. Sometimes you’ll shoot them and they seem to get hit only to fall over and "bounce" up again, which looks daft. Elite forces these definitely aren’t, they’re more like the Keystone Cops at times. The Ceph aliens suffer from the same problems, frequently spazzing when they get stuck on a piece of scenery. We’ve even downed a helicopter only to find enemies supposedly alive, but upside down and inactive in the burning wreckage, which makes you wonder what happened to the ragdoll effects that look so good the rest of the time... The game has also exhibited a few other glitches, the weirdest being the one when I was hit by a Ceph drop pod and driven through the bottom of the map, and couldn’t find a way back to the surface. With no checkpoint restart available from the pause menu this meant that quitting to the main menu and reloading was my only recourse! I've also had rare but annoying aiming issues (e.g. couldn't fire through one set of handrailings that were 12" apart) and the inevitable “invisible walls” that form the boundaries of levels also seem a bit clumsy and arbitrary, with some areas that look like they “need investigating” blocked off for no apparent reason.
Many of you will have experienced the Crysis 2 multiplayer mode thanks to the impressive open Beta, and the finished game seems even more solid and playable. There are 12 maps; Terminal, Downed Bird, Parking Deck , Sanctuary, City Hall, Impact, Evac Zone, Statue, Wall Street, Lighthouse, and the last two Pier 17 & Skyline which were used for the Beta. There’s a lot of detail on the maps, with a good deal of destructible scenery, so it’s no surprise that games are limited to 2-12 players. The maps vary from smallish to medium-large by today’s standards. Game types are Team Instant Action and Instant Action (straight deathmatch), Crash Site (each team tries to capture alien pods), Capture The Relay, Assault (attack & defend) and Extract (extract alien bio-ticks from behind enemy lines). The MP game is extremely slick, with quick and painless matchmaking that actually allows you to play with similar ranks only. The MP game features everything you’d probably expect; you can armour up your Nanosuit and use the cloak to go invisible (same limited battery as in the campaign so things don’t get silly), as well as the usual classes (Assault, Scout, Sniper, Gunner) and custom class that allows you to choose your own loadout and name the class. The MP Nanosuit has various modules that can be selected (depending on class) and these range from things like Air Stomp and Stealth Enhance that the Campaign Nanosuit has, to multiplayer-only specials like Radar Jammer and Weapon Pro (superfast reloading). Play long enough and you’ll unlock the ability to call in an Orbital Laser Strike or a strafing run by a friendly Ceph gunship. Advanced modules will give you almighty perks like being able to see all other players on the radar at all times or remove other player’s Nanosuit abilities. You can also specify parameters like score limit, respawn delay, headshots only, the amount the radar shows and whether friendly fire is on or the level of damage sustained by friendly fire. You can even turn the Nanosuit abilities off, making the game perfectly suited to clan matches of all kinds. The game also allows you to go into a multiplayer map and explore, so you don’t need to go in cold, something all MP games should do in my opinion.
Crysis 2 multiplayer is definitely a “Marmite” experience, and you’re probably going to either love or hate it. The fact that enemies can just vanish in front of your eyes (using their cloak), or make a huge leap to safety just when you thought you had them can get annoying, but you of course have the same abilities so it’s up to you to learn how to best use them, or go back to playing good old CoD.
Crysis 2 is without doubt one of the best-looking games yet, on any format and has some tremendous effects (particularly the explosions) and set pieces. When a freeway overpass or a building collapses you will believe you were there. But getting this cutting edge game to work on the 360 means that it feels kind of... fragile somehow, like it's all going to chug to a halt at any moment. I know it's drawing a highly detailed and mostly destructible section of Manhattan at all times and switches from epic outdoor sections to interiors beautifully but it doesn't feel anywhere near as solid as, say, the Halo Reach engine to me. As for glitches, the texture pop is often horrendous - especially when using the telescopic zoom on the sniper rifles. I don't recall ever going "eeek!" at texture pop so often when playing Reach, Black Ops, Homefront or even Bulletstorm.
As for the gameplay I'm of the same opinion. I never really felt quite as powerful as I thought I was going to. It's certainly given me some thrills, but the fact that you can only use one of each Nanosuit enhancement at a time seems ridiculous, and many levels feel like a set test rather than something dynamic, varied and exciting.
Nonetheless Crysis 2 will give you some unforgettable moments, and battles and shootouts that demand a second run through, so you can experiment and ‘try something different next time’ - Crytek don’t skimp on weapons or ammo in their games and so if you explore a bit you’ll find a lot of firepower and new ways of getting past obstacles that might at first seem tough. Personally I think the game is much better and plays more like the designers intended it on the hardest ‘Supersoldier’ difficulty setting, it makes the game a lot more intense, but like Halo on “Legendary” also makes you feel extremely vulnerable. Whatever difficulty you play on some of the action is just SO darned cool that the game cries out for a replay function like Halo’s Theater mode, which would have made Crysis 2 simply unputdownable and immensely replayable, but then, as I’ve had more than one developer tell me that they have no idea how Bungie achieved a replay mode of such depth and solidity that it must be “witchcraft or something”, its omission isn’t a surprise. But here’s a thought: racing game designers have long realised that players like to review their success and spectacular crashes, so why don’t more FPS have replay modes, eh?
Crysis 2 may not be the absolute pinnacle of FPS gameplay but it’s not far off, and the campaign story also gives you a bit more bang for your buck than some FPS of late. It even does that cool movie trick of making you think it’s building to a climax and then going on to another mission a couple of times. Its multiplayer mode is also of such a high quality that I urge you to try it, although I suspect that EA’s continuing use of their “online pass” idea will dissuade a lot of people (who want to get the best price for their second-hand game by not using their online code) from trying it out properly, it certainly took me more than a few sessions to fully appreciate its qualities.
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