Crysis 2 Review

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Ironhide
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Crysis 2 Review

Post by Ironhide »

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Everyone does still remember the incredible graphics and atmosphere from Crytek's 2007 released game Crysis and its successor Crysis Warhead - of course only those gamers remember who spent a lot of money into a new gaming rig. Unfortunetely most players do also remember the story on the contrary was simple, easy and even boring. Also the multiplayer part , Crysis Wars, was criticized a lot. All these things were promised to change for Crysis 2, the new CryEngine 3 should perform way better and be able to give us an awesome atmosphere even with low and medium hardware.

The entire gaming world was looking forward to Crysis 2, and since Crytek is known for successful games, such as FarCry and of course Crysis, everyone did also expect a better game this time. On the other hand, the announcement that Crysis 2 will also be developed for Xbox360 and Playstation 3 was disillusioning for most PC gamers - questions such as 'will Crytek still care to show the full potential of the CryEngine 3 or will the PC game will be a simple clone of the console games including low graphic settings?' came up.

Same days after the release, and full 4 weeks after the PC multiplayer demo came out, these questions are answered! Answered by Crytek, answered by those who bought the game, and answered by us - the TeamXtreme news staff!

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Story: Attention: Spoiler! Skip this part if you do not want to know anything about the story yet!
Welcome to New York. Welcome, to the war!
In Cryisis 2 you are going to play the character called Alcatraz in the destroyed New York City. Even though the 'urban jungle' has nothing to do with the small island from the orignal Cryis, the jungle feeling will not be missed! You are able to walk through most parts of the city, fight your path through several possible ways and use the tactical possiblities of the nanosuit just as you want. You can either chose the direct fight against your enemies, which will not only be the alien invaders (Ceph) and the virus they are bringing to earth but also a non-military armee C.E.L.L under the lead of Commander Lockhart and Tara Strickland, and as you might guess right now, Tara Strickland is actually the daughter of Major Strickland who fought together with Nomad and Psycho in Crysis and Crysis Warhead. It seems like his daughter is fighting for the other side, but maybe it really only seems so?
Story trailer:
Graphics and performance:

The CryEngine 3 is surely having an awesome potential, and with the right gaming rig definitely one of the best graphics currently. But that was actually known before, no one could seriously expect Crysis 2 to have worse graphics than recent games. One of the more important question was if Crysis 2 will also run on not up to date systems, and it actually does. Of course not on the highest settings and performance, everyone should at least be able to play this game in HD settings - even if it is on medium or low details. However there are also things to be criticized, for example the in-motion unsharpness which does not only appear in motion but the entire time, that is giving the impression of missing anti-aliasing, the edges of far away as well as close objects appear a bit blurred and are often followed by ghostings. Anyway without any doubt the graphics are simplay amazing, as you can see on the following screenshots (on the first screen you can see a very good example for the mentioned 'ghostings' at the cube right in the middle).
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Anyway there is one main issue with the graphics that is surely disappointing: Crysis 2 will not support DX10 or DX11 at first. Even though Crytek promised to release a patch for them, I expected a full DX11 support since they were working on this game for 3 entire years. Unfortunately there is another issue with the settings: There are only 3. In the original Crysis games you were able to chose between tons of settings and could change every detail just as you want. But in this case I prefer showing you 2 screenshots instead of writing something:
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Sound:

The sound experience in Crysis is simply overwhelming good! The voices are clear and do not sound dull at all, rather the opposite. The atmosphere we are getting in to in New York City is mainly created by music of the award winning German composer Hans Zimmer who has once again done a brilliant job with the music in Crytek's latest work. As I mentioned above not only the music is very well done, also the entire sound effects like gun noises, voices, screams, weather effects and radio noise sound are mind-blowing!


Gameplay:

Just as almost the entire game, the gameplay is incredible awesome! While you walk through the destroyed city of New York and fight against enemy forces, the environment is fully involved into the game and it is always a challenge to chose the best tactic for the curent location. You have to get used to all the nanosuit features and different kind of weapons, but once that has happened, I can promise you will fully enjoy the game. Once you you have been sneaking behind an enemy, being cloaked with the nanosuit, and suddenly uncloaked to kill the enemoy silently with a knife - you will know what I am talking about. But on the other hand it is a challenge not to move to fast or crude, otherwise you might be detected. It is also very important to look after your energy not to run out of power right in front of your enemy - that would be going to hurt! The numbers of weapons and how you can adjust them to your liking is truely making you the weapon.


Multiplayer:

Eventhough Crysis 2 is a mainly singleplayer focused game, Crytek wanted to release a better multiplayer this time as in 2007. In order to make this idea come true, the multiplayer was not developed by the main Crytek studio but by Crytek UK (the video game developer that was working on TimeSplitters and is rumored to be involved into Star Wars Battlefront III). The multiplayer is based on a ranking system and XP, you will get XP for killing enemies, earning achievements and the peforming of the game mode objective - like holding the pod in the game mode Crash Site.

Multiplayer gameplay:
Additional Crysis 2 supports an ingame friendlist to which you can add your friends, join their servers or invite them into your team. And eventhough teams are chosen randomly on public servers, you can create an own squad with your friends and always play together with them. The great statistic features and number of achievements underlign the aim of Crytek and Crytek UK to release a serious multiplayer part beside the singleplayer.
Screenshots:
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The nanosuit:

The new nanosuit in Crysis 2 is bringing new features as well as the old possibilites of the first nanosuit, some of them are changed though. The power and speed mode are now combined into one mode, which will be your default nanosuit option. In Crysis and Crysis Warhead this was the armor mode, which is still available in Crysis 2 - just as the stealth mode of course. The additional thermal view is making it easier to spot cloaked and of course also uncloaked enemies, but it takes a lot of energy and it is not always easy to differentiate between mate and enemy - oops!
Nanosuit trailer:

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Conclusion

Story: The story of Crysis 2 is definitely way better and thrilling than the story of the previous Crysis games. This is surely gained by Richard Morgan (famous science fiction author known for 'Market Forces' and 'Black Man' ) who was also involved into sveral Marvel Comics projects. In Crysis 2, he was responsable for the story telling. Crytek was really listening to the gaming community and was working on that part a lot, they have definitely done their homework.
Rating: 8.5/10


Graphics: Stunning graphics during the first moments but the disappointment is comming fast with missing graphic settings and no support of DX10 or DX11 with all the features they have. Also the in-motion unsharpness is not perfectly worked out, hopefully this is going to improve.
Big thanks to the consoles that definitely screwed up Crysis 2 in these points... Although the PC version does have a better graphics, this is only achieved by the higher resolution and some details, but the CryEngine 3 is for sure not using its potential yet!

The modding community of Crysis 2 has already been active and was working out a tool to change the graphics settings of the PC version with more details, sad that Crytek did not bother about these really important points - a big minus!
Download the mod here: ftp://www.tx-server.net/Crysis2Advanced ... ons1_3.zip
Rating with DX9 and without the mod: 8/10

Rating with the mod and (only guessed from experience of the DX11 possibilites) DX11 support: 10/10


Sound: The overwhelming sound effects as well as the very well done music are taking a major role in creating the unique and awesome atmosphere in Crysis 2.
Rating: 10/10


Gameplay: Unique - awesome - a true challenge. Everything matches to the gameplay of Crysis 2, the variability of weapons, possibilites and environment is making you a part of New York, a part of the war.
The physics are very impressive, the atmosphere is great - so is the gameplay, nothing more to add.
Rating: 9.5/10


Multiplayer: Additional to the awesome singleplayer Crysis 2 also includes a very well done multiplayer this time. Several detailed and very different maps as well as 6 different game modes and almost 30 weapons are promising a long-time entertaning online experience with this game. At the beginning it might be confusing and hard to spot enemies, especially cloaked ones, but if you play it more regulary this will be forgotten very fast and you will have much fun fighting C.E.L.L or US Marines! The possibilites of editing your weapon to your wishes, being promoted by earning XP, gaining achievements and creating own classes is making the Crysis 2 multiplayer part one of the best of the recently released games. Short: A unique, incredible and very fast multiplayer!
Rating: 9/10


Nanosuit: Is there anything similiar in the gaming world to the nanosuit? I do not doubt that there are copies, but none of them can actually reach the characteristic of the original Crynet (ficitional developer of the suit) nanosuit - that's why it deserves an own category in this review ratings. The entire gameplay is changed and stamped by the nanosuit-features. There are so many possiblites how you reach your goal and fight the enemies, it is simply amazing. The new suit is even better than the Crysis suit.
Be strong. Be fast. Be invisible . Be the weapon!
Rating: 10/10


Overall conclusion: Crysis 2 is probably going to be the game 2011, except the upcoming Battlefield 3 I do not see any announced game that could hold the level of Crysis 2. While Crysis and Crysis Warhead also had a breathtaking singleplayer gameplay and graphics, Crytek also included a staggering and challenging multiplayer this time, a better story that is leading us through the heart of the destroyed New York City together with an improved and more powerful nanosuit.

The only disappointment I had to deal with were the graphics -never expected me to say this. Even though the game looks awesome, there are some small issues. Those can be fixed with a mod though or with the promised patch by Crytek, it is still sad that they did not include it from the beginning. Whatever, this is definitely one of the best games I have ever played and I can only give the advice to buy this game!
Rating: 9.5/10



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I hope you enjoyed the review and that it was helpful and entertaining!
~Ironhide
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by S.T.O.R.M. »

Nice review!
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by Freshy »

Nice review. :up:
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by Screy »

wow nice review!
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by Resh »

Gj iron.Nice review. :wink:
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by Revenge »

Nice work!
But I would like to know something about the weapons and the different perks :>
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by Madara »

Well done and nice review!
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by Ridley »

The best attemt of an actual journalistic review I've seen here for a long time, although not entirely perfect.
Aside from some language errors (especially adverbs), you seem to give the game almost too much praise. Appart from the motion blur you mentioned pretty much no negative aspects. I admit, I didn't play the full game yet, but I bet there are at least some.
Also the Nanosuit is a big part of the gameplay, but giving it an own section and an own rating is a bit far fetched :wink:
Also, in my opinion, the multiplayer is unique, sure, but in large parts very very similar to the CoD franchise (XP, Perks, Classes, general gameplay style appart from the nanosuit) and I think a 9 in MP and 9.5 in gameplay is not fully deserved. I did this error a lot of times aswell. You have to remember that 10 represents the perfect game, and so you have to be a bit more careful and maybe not as generous with your ratings.

But overall a very nice try, especially considering that you've never really done a lot of reviews before. Keep practicing :wink:
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by Skcorn »

WOW, this was very nice to read and should make people more interested in this game.
Yes, of course the graphics are awesome and I did buy new hardware only for this game.
I think they did a great job on this one, even the sound your armor makes when you are running is absolutely killer.
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Re: Crysis 2 Review

Post by Ironhide »

Uploaded another ingame video of Crysis 2. It is a singleplayer mission at the beginning called "Sudden Impact". Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF8BUjvIV5o
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