If you know me, then you probably know I loved Crysis. It is by far the most fun I have ever had with a first person shooter. The wide open areas, the beautiful environments, the (somewhat) unique take on an alien invasion, everything was just perfect to me. When I heard there was going to be a sequel, I was overjoyed. Then I heard that it was going to be coming to consoles and I couldn't help but worry that Crytek was going to take the game in a completely different direction because not everyone who'd be playing it on the console would know the story behind the first game. By the time it was released I was completely uninterested, as from what I had seen, my fears were confirmed. But I my friends kept talking about it and it sounded like fun so I figured I might as well get it.
Oh boy do I have a lot I need to get off my chest. Sorry in advance if this all sounds scatterbrained, I'll sort it out eventually.
One of the first flaws I found with Crysis 2 was the incredibly limited customization options for weapons. Crysis 1 let you stick almost anything on any weapon, whereas Crysis 2 is much more restricted. To illustrate the point, here's a side-by-side comparison of the weapon mod options for the same weapon in both games.
Now I don't know about you, but I'd rather have one gun that I could adapt to any situation than a bunch of guns that I have to keep switching between. Which brings me to my next point.
You can't carry enough. All you can take with you in Crysis 2 is two guns, a rocket launcher, and some C4. This is extremely confining, almost moreso than the painfully linear levels. The worst part is that unlike the original, there is no secondary weapon section, meaning a pistol will take up the same slot as say, a sniper rifle. Or a shotgun. Or a submachine gun. This gets especially weird with the AY69/Feline relationship. The AY69 was a sidearm micro-smg from Crysis Warhead. It did its job well, being a reliable backup weapon to fall back on (or run in guns blazing by dual-wielding them). But Crysis 2 also brings us the Feline SMG, a nice beefy primary weapon that can turn enemies into chunks with its high rate of fire and good damage output. Now I ask, why would you pick the AY69 over the Feline? The Feline gets all the attachments the AY does, and then some, making it completely obsolete. This could have been averted if there was a secondary slot in addition to the two primaries. That way, the Nova, Deagle, Majestic, and AY69 would not have to compete with primaries like the Sniper Rifle, SCAR, and Shotguns; and would instead be able to better perform their role as backup weapons.
As you progress through the game, you start fighting aliens. This is not a surprise, they were all over the promotional trailers. But when I first came across them, I had to ask myself. Who the hell are these guys? I assume they're supposed to be the aliens from Crysis, but they have almost nothing in common. The original aliens followed a neat, chunky, War of the Worlds-esque design, with their
massive quadruped walkers and
tentacled gunship brown townogs. The Ceph on the other hand, follow a more utilitarian, for lack of a better word, design.
Their gunships just look like machines, rather than some techno-organic creature. Same goes for their
walkers. While the Alien infantry consisted of what was pretty much miniaturized versions of the tentacled gunships, Ceph infantry is pretty much your run-of-the-mill footsoldier, with a few specialized variants thrown in.
They all look like Makuta, and then once you shoot their helmet off
they look like Deadpool. Now compare that to
the original aliens. Sure they look somewhat alike, but then again cats and dogs look somewhat alike. And the dissimilarities don't end there. The original aliens lived in an environment consisting of double-digit kelvin temperatures, but now they're content to just walk around earth's surface half-naked? That would be like sending a human to Venus in a loving speedo. And what the hell happened to the ending of Crysis 1? There were
thousands of alien gunships flying out of the ice sphere, and the only thing we see of them is three heads mounted in Hargreave's office. Its' like the sequel severed all ties to the first game, which is something no game should ever do. And this is just looking at the Ceph as compared to the old aliens. As I looked at the Ceph as their own species, I found even more problems.
It is strongly implied, and outright stated by Hargreave, that the Ceph evolved underwater. So how and why the hell do they hide underground beneath major population centers and just go unnoticed for centuries? That's just idiotic and I felt stupid just looking at the ending showing the locations of other Ceph activities (which showed some locations under like, London and Moscow). Why couldn't they have stated that the Ceph originated from like, the Marianas Trench? It's underwater, it's unknown, and it's cold. That would make a perfect point of origin for some ancient aliens that evolved underwater and love the cold. I'm not against changing the enemy's appearance, but they don't even attempt to explain it, and went about it in the dumbest way. And that made me mad.
Probably the most major gripe I have though, while most of you would look at it as insignificant, is the music. The music in Crysis 2 is just bland. It's not memorable, it's not particularly impressive, it's just there. While Crysis and by extension, Warhead, gave us some amazing scores like
A Warm Idaho Welcome,
Phyrric Victory,
Hovercraft Pursuit, and the
entire Airfield Suite (which while amazing on their own, have to be heard at the events in which they play ingame to be fully appreciated); Crysis 2 really has no memorable tracks except
Insertion. I can't remember a single other track from the game.
Don't even get me loving started on the multiplayer. It's a terrible CoD-like, and I can say without a doubt that it is the worst multiplayer I have ever played, somehow managing to be even worse than the first game's multiplayer in all its' unbalanced glory.
There's also some disease thing but it doesn't seem to have any relevance to the plot whatsoever except for an excuse for Prophet to shoot himself and for CELL to be richards. In fact I completely forgot about it until right before I posted this.
I can't even begin to understand what the hell the nanosuit is supposed to be now. In the first game, it was simply a super-advanced suit of power armor that could adapt to many different situations quickly, providing plenty of tactical flexibility. I thought it was called the nanosuit because speed and strength modes injected nanites into the person to augment their muscles or something. But now, the nanosuit is some reverse-engineered alien technology or something that's a bioweapon and it melds with the wearer and keeps them alive and I just don't even know what the forget anymore. It made sense before and now Crytek is just throwing me a curveball. I just don't know what to make of it.
And that's just from the story perspective. As far as the actual gameplay goes it's even worse. Compared to the first nanosuit, the C2 nanosuit is about as "tactically flexible" as an I-beam as compared to a spaghetti noodle. Clunkiest controls ever. The first suit had four modes. Armor, Speed, Strength, and Cloak.
Armor was the default mode. It functioned sort of like how Halo's shields work, providing you with a recharging barrier in addition to your more static health bar. You could sprint with any mode, but only sprinting with speed mode would reduce power because then it kicks you up to like 40 miles per hour for about two seconds. Running without sprinting in speed mode puts you at the same speed as sprinting in any other mode, but you shoot less accurately, have no shields, and aren't invisible. Strength made you shoot more accurately, punch harder, throw bitches farther, and jump higher. Cloak was invisibility. It hasn't changed.
Now the Nanosuit 2 rolls around. The default mode is now nothing. Like, you might as well not even have the suit if you're not in a specific mode. Armor is now just a bulletproof shield that drains energy, and Speed and Strength have been merged into "Power". Now, I liked that merging. Combining Speed and Strength was good. However, you can only switch to "power" mode when doing a "power punch" or "power kick" or sprinting or crap like that. This is a load of stuff. I liked being able to run at a brisk jogging speed without losing suit energy, and having the option to switch to speed if I really needed to go somewhere. In order to play Crysis 2, you have to forget everything you knew about playing Crysis. This makes for a horrible sequel.
HOWEVER. Once I got accustomed to how different the game was, and sucked my brain out through a straw, I had quite a bit of fun. The Ceph are threatening without being overpowered and there's a god damn microwave gun. For as much as I harped on it, the story is pretty neat, it's just I was expecting a proper sequel instead of something resembling a spinoff. I would definitely recommend getting this for Xbox, as it seems to be a pretty good console shooter. As for the PC version? Just go buy six copies of Terraria. I wish I had.
tl;dr
Skip the PC version, get the console one. It's a good game, but an awful sequel.
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