Crysis 2 - Part 2

After a break, I have returned to complete my review of Crysis 2. Let's start out with the visuals.

Crysis 2 has pretty visuals. There. I mean, that's kind of what we've come to expect from CryTek isn't it? At one point, I thought I was watching a pre-rendered cutscene. I thought my character must be pretty stupid to just stand there. Then I noticed that it was in real time, and I had full control. So yes, the visuals are quite good.

Gameplay-wise, this game feels a little different from the original Crysis. The original Crysis seemed to interact in a way to show how awesome the nanosuit was. In Crysis 2, everybody spends at least five minutes talking about how awesome it is, but it doesn't feel the same. Since the feeling that the suit you're in is awesome has already been conveyed in the first game, the second game makes it feel more like you're actually in the suit.

I like the addition of a visor to replace the binoculars and use for tactical analysis. It's one of those things that makes the suit seem more like a battlefield companion. It's kind of like the new ability to kick cars into the air. They're both things I should have been able to do in the first game. I was always thinking to myself "If I can pick this dude up and throw him through a house hard enough to knock it over, why can't I throw some of these cars around?" That, and throwing cars adds to the awesome macho dude feeling.

Another change to the suit is in power and energy management. You can now use two superpowers at a time, since your suit automatically uses strength to strike and for super-jumps. Of course, using multiple powers will drain energy faster, but it's still a very useful tactical option. Armor mode now drains energy when in use whether or not you're taking damage. If you upgrade that feature of the suit though, it will drain very slowly unless you're taking damage or using a different superpower.

I have to admit that the enemies seem a bit repetitive. I'm not violent to humans IRL, so I was avoiding killing people at all costs(and to see just how open-ended the game really was.) Throughout the game, only 1 person has to be killed by your character. I was enjoying blasting my way through swarms of aliens, but I got sick of it fast enough that I just started cloaking myself to sneak past them all. There are too few enemy types spread out over too much world-space is what I think.

Let's talk about QTE's, or for those of you new to this, quick time events. It's that thing where games play a cutscene and tell you which buttons to push and when to make your character do certain things(usually avoiding death.) Crysis 2 had QTE's, and they're just as bad as ever. Worse is the fact that they seem tacked on like the designers were going through a check-list of features. They seemed out of place in an otherwise glittering work.

While there's only a few interesting weapons, which still fail to be extremely unique, the game does the best cover based shooting I've seen anywhere. That's right, coming from someone who has played whole games dedicated to cover shooting like Mass Effect 2. The problem with ME2 is that cover shooting was all it had going for it. Crysis 2 has a cover system that seamlessly integrates with the FPS-circle-strafing-stealth-ambushing elements of the game.

Rather than gluing yourself to random objects the level designers chose as "cover," Crysis 2 takes a different approach. Simply get real close to almost anything, and you can hold down the right mouse button and move it around to lean. You can lean up, down, left, right, etc. It doesn't matter if you're crouched, or on your feet. It mixes so very well with the other elements, requiring a mix of cover based defence skills, raw speedy action skills, strategic skills, and stealth skills to do your best at the game.

One last thing to mention about Crysis 2 is something that I also found to also exist in the original Crysis. I'm not sure if it's good, bad, accidental, intentional, black, white or anything. I just know it exists. Basically, all enemies take from about 1-5 seconds to recover after receiving an attack. This can lead to scenarios like the end, where I beat the boss enemies to death one at a time with the blunt end of my machine gun. See, you're speedy enough to do a melee in about 0.75 seconds. This gives you the speed advantage you need. Just run up to them and start smacking. This also made several parts of Crysis 1 a lot easier than I thought they were supposed to be. There's a super-climatic part of the game where you have to blast some semi-boss dudes, but it seemed easier than it was supposed to be for this same reason. Just line the four of them up and go down the line shooting them one at a time and they'll all drop without getting in a shot.

So, that's Crysis 2. It's a game with good writing, pretty pictures, and fun gameplay. The hard part here is deciding whether or not it gets my award for being one of the rare sequels which is better than the original. System Shock 2 is the ONLY work on this list to date, game or other medium. Comparing these two is hard. See, Crysis 2 has a better story. However, Crysis 1 feels more free and open, not just from a sandbox point of view. You could even holster all your weapons and break things up Chuck Norris style if you felt like it. Crysis 1 also had some pretty sweet moments that Crysis 2 didn't really match. Then on the other hand, Crysis 2 feels more complete and polished.

All in all, I think Crysis 2 failed to capture the feeling of the original and do something new with it. I'm not saying Crysis 2 is worse than the original, or bad by any stretch of the imagination. You should play both. I'm just saying that Crysis 2 doesn't really seem better than the first to me.

Final Score: 7.5
Why this score?


        --LazerBlade

Crysis 2 Part 1

I recently finished Crysis 2. Since I had finished the first Crysis less than two months ago, I had very high expectations for it's sequel, especially after having heard so much about how it was great. I started Crysis in doubt, with my nitpicking and cynical eye. I left feeling awesome, and wanting more. This caused the decision to start Crysis 2 with high expectations, thus making sure I wasn't letting it by just because is was better than I thought it would be. That didn't work though, because it was STILL better than I thought it would be.

Crysis 2 touts good gameplay, spiffy visuals, and clever story. I'm going to start with the story since the point of a game is (supposed to be) to tell a story via player experience.

You start the game on board a submarine full of dudes sent to New York to back up Prophet, the nanosuit team commander from the first game. Things go wrong and the sub ends up sinking due to alien invasion(which is apparently why you were sent to New York). You wash up on shore where Prophet drags your semi-living body into some park and sticks the suit on you. He tells you to finish what he started, that you're the "last hope," and to find some dude named Nathan Guold. Apparently there is some kind of alien epidemic spreading through the city as well, so the city is in ruins for more than one reason. You don't find out that the entire military is after you until you run into it, at which point the game starts.

The story in Crysis 2 is actually a lot better than what we've come to expect from video games these days. I kept mis-predicting the plot based on the usual method of assuming poor pacing and cliche' characters/plot twists. Almost everything was clever and original, as well as being well told and presented. I'm having to really try in order avoid spoilers, but that's a price worth paying.

The game even managed to pull a fast one on me and use an un-original plot twist, but in such a way that I didn't see it coming. I've seen that plot twist at least twice in other stories, and both times I saw it coming. This time, I didn't. The writers of Crysis 2 were a good deal better than the writers that somehow get hired for most games.

Let's talk about the characters a bit. I'm going to name one of them. Tara Strickland. This character, and her contribution to the plot are where the weak spots of the story show through. She was cliche', predictable, boring, and just plain stupid. It was hard for me to observe this character with a straight face. Seeing such a hollow and flat character floating in a sea of deep and interesting characters makes me think the writers did it on purpose for laughs.

The main reason this character borked me was because I knew they could have done better. I saw Tara as an opportunity for an awesome character when she was introduced. It came as a let down when I learned that these writers just threw her in there to meet the minimum requirement for one sassy chick who knows better per game. I have nothing against sassy female characters, even ones who know better than everybody else. It's when that's ALL they are that I roll my eyes.

Whew. Got that rant out of my system. I'd normally go on to gameplay and visuals now, but this post is starting to stretch out. Better make it a two-parter. Stay tuned...

    --LazerBlade

Crysis

Odd as it may seem, I've only recently picked up Crysis. I won't bother making excuses, but I will give you a review. Note that I've spent probably only around ten hours on this thing so far. A plus here is that there are less spoilers I could reveal even if I wanted to. So let us begin...

Crysis is a sci-fi FPS adventure game developed by CryTek and released in 2007. The official "trial by fire" for gaming rigs, Crysis has made a significant name for itself. Unusual for a game 4 years old, it still pushes the limits of modern PC's at the highest detail. Naturally, it was still no match for my uber-rig, but it did put up a fight.

Touted elements include story, open-ended objectives, interesting mechanics, spiffy environments, and pretty pictures. Don't bork me for spending the rest of this review explaining how it kind of does these things, but halfheartedly.

Crysis at it's core is a cliche action FPS with the usual re-charging health and hiding behind things. I'm thankful that it's not the usual cover-based fare, but you had better hide behind things yourself if you expect to survive. It feels like they started out with a shooter where the player could use superpowers, and then decided to strap a bunch of other things on.

Story goes that some random island which archaeologists are excavating is taken over by Koreans. The transmissions from the island go silent, so you and a bunch of other dudes wearing funky "nanosuits"  drop onto the island in the middle of the night. These nanosuits bestow superpowers on whomever happens to be wearing them at the time. You get separated during the drop, and get pretty quickly picked off until there's only half of you left. The story is actually interesting and convincing, but doesn't really make up a big part of the game. In places you can feel that it's just an excuse for you to do more shooting.

The gameplay itself is pretty solid. There were some awesome moments. Allow me to transcribe my thoughts during one:

"The signal says the hostage is in this building. Better switch to strength mode and jump up on top of it. Hack! The dude on top of the building is firing a machine gun at me! Armor mode to absorb the bullets. Speed mode as soon as I hit the ground so that I can run behind a corner. I know, I can switch to cloak mode and sneak up behind him. Then I can smack him in the face with the chicken I've been carrying around."

Unfortunately, these are spread out around "Go kill 400 dudes, it's going to be impossible if you want to sneak by, because that wasn't the way the game designers meant it" moments. It does go between a shooter and a stealth game pretty smoothly, although I would have preferred more choice in when you use stealth and when you don't.

I'm glad that the cutscenes are in first person. It kind of reminds me of Half Life. A lot of things about the game remind me of Half Life I guess. It's still its own thing though, which I also like.

The island setting is interesting, and I haven't got bored of it yet because the day/night cycle keeps changing the aesthetic. I'm sure the setting eventually changes, and it had better. I think this island setting will get boring sooner or later.

While this game has creative elements in many places, the weapons are all cliche. You get usual mixes of sniper rifles, machine guns, shotguns, grenades, and rocket launchers. Not to mention that the game still does that thing I hate where you can only carry a few weapons with you. I know the argument here is that it's more realistic, but if I wanted a realistic experience I would just stay in real life.


I'd love to write more about this game at some point, but I hope this review can give you a good peak. The verdict for me is that it's a game with many good elements, but a lack of depth and lack of concentration on any of the good elements takes away from the experience. I guess that the main problem here is that there really isn't that much to the game apart from it's cliche first person shooting.


Final Score: 7.5
(why this score?)

       --LazerBlade