Crysis 2′s single player campaign takes place in New York City and is surprisingly accurate
Since I still don’t own a PC that can play Crysis, I ended up missing that boat. I wasn’t planning on getting Crysis 2 for console, but those New York, New York trailers really got to me. I guess I’m a sucker for music in advertising. I’ve played through about half the campaign, and although I was having trouble at first, I’ve started to really become fond of the game.
As espion4ge noted in his Crysis review, what’s most unique about the game is the nanosuit you wear that gives you different abilities. The nanosuit helps Crysis 2 straddle the lines between Halo and Call of Duty. The game and action moves quickly like the Call of Duty games, but you also have some super powers like Master Chief. I find it to be a great mix.
The really nice thing about the nanosuit is the fact that you can customize it to your playstyle. You can buy different abilities using nano somethings you pick up from dead aliens, and they really add to the experience. There are also some tactics involved, because there are different categories of upgrades, out of which you can only activate one at a time. For example, at any given time, I can have one strength and one stealth upgrade active, but I can’t have two stealth upgrades active. You can activate and deactivate upgrades to fit the situation you are in. This leads to some strategic planning that can be a lot of fun.
Adding to the strategy is the opportunity for you to “tag” items in the environment before you begin an engagement. You can mark enemies, strategic flanking points, ammo caches, etc. At first, I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to use it properly, but as the game has progressed I think I am starting to get the hang of it. I’m still not quite sure whether the feature is well implemented or not, but I can definitely say that at the very least it’s useful to tag enemies.
I’ve been playing the game mostly as a stealth character, so it’s almost like I’m playing Metal Gear Solid or something. I find sneaking around and killing people to be more fun (and more productive) than engaging in all-out combat. Another interesting aspect of the game is that even though you have this supersuit, it’s still pretty easy to get taken down if you’re not being tactical. So that’s a plus.
There are some negatives I’ve noticed however, and bad AI is at the top of the list. I wish the AI was a little smarter – that would make being stealthy even more fun. It’s quite dumb. Usually they just run at me one at a time when I’m cloaked until I kill them.
Overall, I must say I’m really enjoying Crysis 2. It looks beautiful, the storyline is relatively interesting, and I’ve always been a fan of shooting squid headed aliens. I’m pretty sure espion4ge will have a review on this game eventually so this is the last I’ll be writing about this game, but I just wanted a chance to talk about how much I’m enjoying it. And although I am not doing a multiplayer impressions, as a quick aside, I think multiplayer is pretty fun too.
yeah i’ll get a review out next Tuesday. wanted to get a little more time with the multiplayer before writing the whole thing up!