Crysis 2 Review

Clever AI and grandiose open levels allow you to play at your own pace. The outstanding experience is marred by AI bugs and poorer scripted levels.

Posted by Ben Thomas on April 4, 2011 - 6:01am EST

More bugs continued to take me out of the enjoyable experience. Melee sometimes stopped working which is only noticeable when you are standing behind an enemy. The nano catalyst material, used for upgrades, failed to register after collecting it from Alien corpses. There was even one point where I was drowning in three inches of water unable to get out. Restarting the game seemed to fix many issues but there is no excuse to have them in the first place. A few more months of development would have done wonders. The game looks great but is not as crisp as the original.

There’s an iconic statue in this picture if you can find it!

Crysis 2 creates a visually impressive view of New York being torn apart. The cityscape looks fantastic and moving across rooftops with trees and birds is brilliant. Embers and Alien spores float through the air in a wonderful tangible mist. Buildings collapse in the distance and dropships and choppers move above through the beams of light. The fractured urban locales create interesting areas to move about in. Interactive destruction has been reduced greatly with only some walls crumbling when shot.

The cinematic quality and the indoor areas are several steps above similar locales in the first game. However I found the game very blurry with overused HDR effects and ghosting from the AA technology. User tweaks are a great way of reducing these issues but they do not work in multiplayer. Blur techniques washed away a lot of the visual detail and helped hide many low resolution textures. The game still looks great with a different flavour to the original but is not superior.

On PC there is an array of visual options completely missing from the main menu, with only three visual presets available. Keys have been repurposed with Q and E now used for suit powers. Lean is mouse zoom around corners which actually works surprisingly well unless you have the zoom on toggle. Sadly the Sandbox level editor is missing which will reduce the prevalence of custom levels. Perhaps it is no surprise but the specific care for the PC version is missing in comparison to the PC exclusive predecessor. Multiplayer is an enjoyable experience, maintaining a high speed and relying on careful energy management.

Ticket Please! *insert angry alien clicking sounds*

The translation from campaign to multiplayer is just as seamless as using any of your suit powers. The multiplayer feels more like Call of Duty in contrast to the Battlefield feel of the original. Maps are smaller and the action is dedicated to player vs player with the Nanosuit playing a bigger role. The maps are well designed with some similar to the campaign. Levels are multi-tiered with places to hide below and areas to snipe from above.

The gameplay is rather satisfying because it allows you to use Stealth, Armor and pull off some impressive skill kills. It is quite customisable too with unlockable weapons and additional upgrades for your suit. Special assistance can be called in after killing a quota of enemy soldiers but the catch is you must collect their dog tags. Assistance might be radar scan, orbital strike or a Ceph gunship. These rewards rarely take the focus away from the player vs player action due to their relative rarity.