To begin with, I'm going to read you the tagline of this "masterpiece", "BE STRONG, BE FAST, BE INVISIBLE, BE THE WEAPON". From this we gather that you play as a strong, speedy, stealthy weapon, and that we are going to be playing at a level above the norm. Going into this game you may expect to feel powerful, invisible and genuinely unstoppable. Then you die in 5 shots after being noticed whilst operating your "invisible" mode and being spotted, thinking about how much of a juxtaposition this is from the impression it tries to make.
Call of Duty currently holds the crown of the "modern realistic FPS" with pride, it is fun, fast, brutal and even comedic at times sporting one of the most popular multiplayer experiences of this generation combined with spectacular set-piece based story campaigns. Because of it's success, there have been quite a few copycats as of late, most specifically, and infamously is EA's Medal of Honor, ripping the series for all it's worth and fruitlessly so as it turned out worse in most peoples eyes. However, the main point here is, Call of duty has a massive influence over what we play today. Now, I never played Crysis 1, but after watching some videos it seems to me like you were this super soldier, that, and the graphics were the selling point of the game. It both looks fun and beautiful. The second game...
You are some fellow who I don't know the name of because I don't care enough to sift through the manual for it, who is in the middle of some war, and the military are trying to save New York from corruption by the other side who happen to be aliens. Then you get a neat suit that keeps you alive from some other guy who has to die, and then surprise surprise, the military is actually evil and shoot girlie's in the face. As you can tell, the story didn't exactly grip me, but I won't deny the possibility of it becoming better later on as I only played an hour or so of the game that I could stand. As far as i could tell however, the entire narrative is a set up purely for you to get your mitts on a super suit, and show off Crytek's latest engine - whoop de doo!
The mechanics are... Well, the controls function, everything does something easy to manipulate, and responsive, It's the standard COD button mapping and provides nothing different per-se. Your super suit has many different modes it can use to help you through New York such as "armor" and "stealth", however, I have gripes with these mechanics in particular, specifically functions such as stealth, sprint etc. When you activate a stealth mode in a super suit that is meant to give you a drastic advantage over the enemy, you expect to be able to walk up to them and flick them in the nose before they realize there is actually someone there, you don't expect to have to crawl around behind things, exactly the same way as you would in another stealth game, to get your stealth kills as you could without some special power! Of course, this is different in Crytek's games because all the AI have the vision of a fucking saint, and can see you wherever you are if you don't have the mode switched on. Whats even worse is that the mode takes away power, and around 10 seconds of movement in this mode will drain all the power you have, leaving you visible usually where you don't want to be. This mechanic doesn't make me feel super or invisible or any kind of inhuman quality, it just makes me feel weak, and that I'd fare better without an 8ft tall super suit on.
To make matters worse, you aren't "strong" either, never mind the sequences where you press X and open some particularly heavy doors. In battle, you're a chump! Pick up something heavy and throw it at an enemy, and you won't see them fly off in a bundle of iron and meat, no, you just see the object bounce off their head like it was a pillow fight. Then you must swiftly run up to them and give them the weakest looking strike with your elbow twice to stop them calling their mates and seeing you through your invisible shield. It's frankly ridiculous how under-powered the character is, and it's not a case of difficulty either! I played a bit on the hardest difficulty, a section on the medium difficulty, and most of my playtime on the easiest difficulty because then the gameplay was slightly bearable. To make matters worse is the fact that you die in the amount of shots you would in a call of duty game, a game where you are an average Joe with something to prove, not a super soldier in super special super duper armor!
Yes, the graphics are pretty, water looks nice, all the effects are cool and the deformed corpses of Alien flu victims are shocking to look at, but at the end of the day, you're still going to be trapped behind a bus like it's Call Of duty just looking for someones head to pop out so you can cap it. The music too, is okay, it's not the best I've ever heard, or the worst, it vaguely suits the mood too, but I certainly wouldn't call it artistic genius like last years Nier.
At the end of the day, this game is not bad. It is just frustrating, what Crytek are trying to sell here is a game where you are the dominant force, you are He-man and the master chief combined, sent into a city to defeat all obstacles with powerful tech at your disposal. Unfortunately what we ended up with was a poor COD clone with an addition of lackluster mechanics. By all means, go out and buy this game if you want, but I certainly regret even renting this.
"Buy Crysis 2 if you fancy another Call of Duty before MW3 comes out this November, Don't buy it if you want to be a super soldier and kick ass without taking names, it will simply dissapoint and offer no fun factor."
Score:
Narrative: 5/25 - Simply a framing device
Gameplay: 6/25 - Standard COD clone which doesn't net it any points, with some very flawed mechanics offers a frustrating experience
Graphics: 24/25 - they're brilliant, but it's a shame they're wasted on this game.
Sound: 5/25 - I was simply unimpressed, but the guns do sound like guns etc.
Total: 40/100
Narrative: 5/25 - Simply a framing device
Gameplay: 6/25 - Standard COD clone which doesn't net it any points, with some very flawed mechanics offers a frustrating experience
Graphics: 24/25 - they're brilliant, but it's a shame they're wasted on this game.
Sound: 5/25 - I was simply unimpressed, but the guns do sound like guns etc.
Total: 40/100
~Serde
