Crysis 2

It’s hard to put my finger on it, but for some reason, getting through Crysis 2 was work; and not the fun kind of work of a challenging game that has me yearning for the each trial. No, this was labor in the “I should be getting pay for this vein.” I can’t put my finger on exactly why this game was laborious; it has all the aspect of gaming I like in a first person shooter: sci-fi story, incredible graphics, and puzzles. Still, I was relieved when it was over without the “let’s do that again” desire I got from other games.

The game is played through the character Alcatraz, an unlucky marine who washed up in Battery Park only to be discovered by the protagonist from the first game, Prophet. Prophet gives you his special suit of armor, and in doing so he gives you his identity too. You spend the rest of the game learning to use the suit, and fighting through hoards of mercenaries who believe you are profit.

The game was developed by Crytek using the Cryengine 3 gaming platform. Cryengine 3 renders some of the most beautiful and realistic environments in gaming. Crysis 2 applies the imagery to downtown and midtown Manhattan in amazing detail. I often found myself wandering around the map looking for landmark buildings and places I have visited.

The story line is a bit disjointed and uninteresting. Alcatraz fights through mercenaries, then through aliens, then more mercenaries, then more aliens. He is guided through the city with no apparent purpose, until he is led into a trap. After overcoming the trap, the mercenaries ally with Alcatraz for the final battle. As human enemies, the mercenaries are fairly easy enemies with little variety in their encounters. The aliens have a bit more variety in the types of enemies you face. The types, though, are few which lead to very repetitive levels.

Alcatraz’s suit provides him a stealth mode that renders him invisible to enemies. Mercenaries, in particular, are easy to fool in stealth mode. If you tire of shooting, you can simply go into stealth mode and sneak past enemies to the next checkpoint. Speaking of checkpoints, the game uses an auto-save mechanism to save your progress at each checkpoint. Checkpoints are reasonably frequent, but a couple of times I found myself repeating long sequences because of an ill-timed death.

While Alcatraz’s suit gives him some fun abilities, driving is not one of them. Vehicles in Crysis 2 are clumsy to drive due to awkward use of the controller. Crytek could learn a thing or two from Bungie or Gearbox with regard to making driving fun

Of all the (Xb0x) games in our collection, Crysis 2 is probably my least favorite. That’s not to say that it’s a bad game; just not one that I enjoyed as much as others.

Geek Cred Amazing imagery of New York City; enemy’s behavior is pretty believable.

Geek Crud Uninteresting story; lack of variety; awful driving mode.