Features Ten Years On: Crysis 2

Oh man this is one of my all time most frustrating games ever made. Not because the game in of itself was 'bad' but because it's so unfulfilling a follow up to Crysis.

New York looked pretty good, but it didn't look that good. The shooting mechanics are much refined over Crysis, but the enemy set was so much worse. Humans had worse AI, vehicles are a rarity and the aliens stomp menacingly toward your last known position, then nothing. Entire sections of the game can be effectively skipped once you've got the extended cloak upgrade, just turn invisible, walk behind a wall, recharge, turn invisible again.

The level design infuriated me too. The one section when the game opens out is glorious. Fighting your way down a city block in chaos, climbing in and out of wrecked buildings to take cover or gain vantage points, getting to that multistorie car park, then fighting your way back before the sky scraper drops. It's glorious, a match for the best moments in it's predecessor. Too bad it's surrounded by hours of single lane corridor shooting. The final level in the elevated Central Park was especially bad, just a series of tiny arenas, followed by one last tiny arena with four 'ultra tough' enemies, that you can calmly walk up behind and kill in a single strike.

The redesign of the Ceph was bad too. The originals owed a lot to The Matrix, but the grey angular cyborgs in 2 could be from half a dozen Michael Bay movies. Or they could be the stand in Alien Bad Guys from any comic book movie of the last 20 years. I know they did it to make pathfinding and animation easier, but that's all the more frustrating. They made the aliens so much less alien.

Last but not least the plot hurt the game too. It's good enough in isolation, but it never offered any closure on Crysis. I know Psycho would re-appear in 3 but 2 may as well have been a reboot. The characters, events, location and cliff hanger ending are never once addressed. No doubt there's a shite tie in 'multimedia experience' that bridges the gap somewhere. EA were very fond of these around 2010 (Mass Effect, Dead Space, Dragon Age etc).

I played 2 end to end 3 times, each time it left me with the feeling that it was a step back from Crysis in almost every way. If had to sum it up in a word it would be unambitious. In fact it's so unambitious that Crysis feels like the sequel, the AI is smarter, there's more characters, more spectacle, more scale, even the Marines in Crysis 1 are better equipped than Crysis 2. Crysis remains the best selling game Crytek ever made by a huge margin, so I guess lots of other people were just as disappointed with 2 as I was.

 

great article...i agree

 

Reading the article and comments, I think I'm going to give 2 a go first and then use 1 as a prequel.

 

I really need to play through these again at some point.

Graphically they still hold up in terms of Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 compared to newer games, I mean looking at Outriders etc they don't look any better to me than Crysis 2.

I may have to reinstall them at some point and have some fun in them again.

 

i always thought they only made 2 and 3 so they get could sell the game engine to devs who may be looking for alternatives to uni-engine and unreal engine.

 

I enjoyed Crysis 2, but never really saw it as a sequel of Crysis... to me there are three distinct groups of games that overlap in name, Far Cry and Crysis, Crysis 2 & 3, Far Cry 2+.

Far Cry and Crysis are by far the best of the bunch, i'd probably pic Far Cry as my favourite.
Crysis 2 is fun, but as above, not really linked to Crysis.
Crysis 3, yeah, the least said about that the better...
Far Cry 2+ have never got on with/into any of the later games; last i tried was 3 or 4 i think; and i just didnt enjoy it/geto grips with it.

 

Crysis was revolutionary and still unequalled in most ways. It would run on a wide range of machines; the "melt your PC" meme was nonsense and hurt Crytek badly.

Crysis 2 and 3 were worthy follow-ups, and each is excellent in its own way. Crytek no longer wanted to rely on the thankless PC market and redesigned their engine for consoles. Within that limitation these games are spectacular, and thank god they at least released them for the PC.

Ubisoft's miserable Far Cry 2 and its successors don't even deserve to be mentioned on the same page.