Invincible. No frozen wasteland, no tropical island paradise. The aliens have invaded New York. This time it's not about saving the world, it's about surviving long enough to turn back the tide. And there's only one man who can pull that off.
1. Gameplay
The first Crysis game was unique. It really wasn’t designed to be an awesome game. It was more of a benchmark. It set the high mark for gaming graphics and no game has been able to quite match it since. Now Crysis 2 comes along. I didn’t have high expectations for Crysis 2, so I can honestly say that I was not only pleasantly surprised with how well-done the game was, but that Crysis 2 is one of the best first-person shooters I have played in quite some time. Crysis 2 sets the player in the middle of New York during some sort of combined alien invasion and massive deadly plague. I never really 100% understood what was going on, but in the end it didn’t really matter to me. The aliens were invading, I had to kill them. If you’ve ever played a 90’s shooter, you’ll understand that story isn’t always everything. If you go into this game expecting a story like Mass Effect or Baldur’s Gate, you’re going to be disappointed. Fortunately, I wasn’t. Crysis 2’s awesomeness comes in its ability to hide its linearity. In the end, every player is going to be going through the same environments, hitting the same checkpoints, and killing the same enemies. However, Crysis 2’s levels are large enough that each player can approach a given situation in entirely different ways. While I tended to prefer cloaking and sniping enemies from afar, the game allows players to run in guns-blazing, stealthily evade almost all enemies, snipe from a distance, or multiple combinations these options. It masks the fact that the game forces you to complete a set path with the players ability to decide how to decide the set task. For those readers who aren’t hardcore shooter fans, this is a huge deal. Normally players are forced to complete a set task with a set weapon in a set manner. The freedom to choose, even if it’s just to choose how to complete a task, is a big change from the average shooter. This is definitely a welcome addition and sets Crysis 2 apart from almost every single shooter currently on the market. The customization options and suit powers carried over from the previous Crysis games were also pretty awesome, but there wasn’t much new there. Still, this didn’t detract from the overall fun of the game overall. I just hope that this game’s inevitable sequel will include more changes in this department.
The single-player campaign for this game was surprisingly long. I says surprising because most first-person shooters of a similar caliber offer a single player experience that lasts maybe 8 hours. Crysis lasted well longer than that and hardly ever got boring. It was definitely worth the money that I paid. The multiplayer seemed to have some potential but it was lost in the fact that there were so few people playing online. There were barely enough players for an effective Team Deathmatch round, so I had very little desire to continue with the multiplayer. Even though it was a pleasant experience, it wasn’t worth waiting for more people to join in.
For the most part there was nothing frustrating with this game. The only thing that came close was the fact that the vehicle sequences were so confined. It starkly contrasted with the freedom given to players in the rest of the game. But considering this is a very small factor, the frustration rating for this game is very low. 2. Parental Notices
As this is a first-person shooter, violence is common in Crysis 2. Players will use a number of weapons to attack enemies. The enemies will fall into two basic types. There are human enemies that all wear armor and never have any visible features and there are alien creatures that have various amounts of armor plating. Human enemies will bleed slightly when shot, but the most obvious effect is the sparks that shoot off of the armor plating. No matter how hard the player hits the enemy, no matter what weapon the player uses, there will be no gore. The alien enemies are a slightly different story. They are lean, but almost gelatinous in nature. This makes it so that when the player removes the aliens’ armor, the targets will gush alien blood. The size of the aliens and the power of the weapon will change how much “blood” there is exactly, but for the most part it comes out in buckets. This pinkish blood is pretty benign though, and feels almost like shooting pink jello. However, the player can shoot the aliens’ heads clean off with a powerful enough strike to an unarmored head. If the player uses a shotgun and manages to hit the alien’s head at a relatively close range, the player will blow the alien’s head to pieces. The act itself is fairly obvious, but the level of violence is again seriously hampered by the fact that the aliens seem like jellyfish. There is one section where the player throws a particularly annoying enemy through bulletproof glass. The enemy ends up in a pool of blood at the bottom of the two-story drop, but even that’s not particularly gruesome.
Sexuality is not a factor in this game.
Substances are extremely rare in this game. There’s no drinking or smoking of any kind. The only time any substance is ever used is when the player injects a nanobot catalyst into himself using some sort of hypodermic syringe. It’s a very brief sequence and only happens once in the game.
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is an extremely minor factor in this game. In one section the player will have to fight around a church. Occasionally, the player will see graffiti that says "God help us."
Law enforcement has all but broken down. Between the infection and the alien invasion, there’s very little left that could be considered “civil”. As a result, anti-law is not a factor in this game.
What little online community was left for this game was very civil. People would join in and drop out of matches fairly frequently, but aside from some brief friendly conversation there wasn’t anything noteworthy going on.
There are extreme sports in this game, but they’re mild even compared to the previous game. The player’s suit will have the ability to run faster than Usain Bolt and jump higher than a pole vaulter, but I found it much easier to stealthily sneak behind enemies and avoid excessive movement. The amount of time the player spends vaulting high ledges and running at inhuman speeds will depend on the player’s own style. Those who prefer stealth, as I did, will not use the speed and jumping options nearly as frequently as those who prefer open combat. Vehicles are hardly ever used, and when they are players are forced into a very small, linear environment.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Part of the aliens’ assault on humanity is to release some sort of biological plague that causes some seriously disgusting affects. Infected get huge growths and constantly vomit. There doesn’t seem to be any way to save someone once they are infected, and the seemingly infinite death toll results in piles upon piles of dead. Human Disfigurement As mentioned, the infection causes serious growths which can leave some humans barely recognizable. Infected individuals are present in every level of the game, and often the player will have to walk straight through areas where the infected are hiding. Suicide
At the very beginning of the game, one of the characters from the previous games, Prophet, gives the player the Crysis nanosuit. After giving the player the nanosuit, Prophet takes a pistol and shoots himself in the head. Maybe. The game makes the player think that Prophet is dead, and Prophet can even be seen lying dead on the floor afterward, but somehow Prophet manages to survive the event. The game leaves this detail at the end of the game as a cliffhanger for the sequel.
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