"Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek, published by Electronic Arts and released in March 2011. Officially announced on June 1, 2009, the game is the second main installment of the Crysis series, and is the sequel to the 2007 video game Crysis. The story was written by Richard Morgan, while Peter Watts was consulted and wrote a novel adaptation of the game. It was the first game to showcase the CryEngine 3 game engine and the first game using the engine to be released on consoles."
- Wikipedia on Crysis 2.
What do I expect from the game?
This is my first time playing a game from the Crysis series, and I'm not very familiar with the franchise. I know that it is a first person shooter set in a dystopian world with sci-fi/futuristic themes. The "sci-fi FPS" genre is one that I have quite a bit of experience with. Games of this genre were especially prevalent on the previous console generation and around the time that Crysis 2 was released, so I expect Crysis 2 to have a number of similarities with other games of the genre, such as military themes, alien enemies, a linear story and level design that revolves around traversing urban environments, cover shooting and set-pieces.
I expect that the combat will be one of the game's strongest features. I also expect it to feature some high quality environments. I often find that many games of this genre have a lack of depth to their stories, so I am hoping that Crysis 2's story has more to offer. Crysis 2 was the flagship title for the CryEngine on consoles, and it was positively received by critics, so I expect good things.
First Impressions - What do I think of the game in its first few minutes?
The game's front end is very typical of a last-gen sci-fi FPS game, with block capital text and UI elements that are intended to look like a computer system. The main menu offers a number of options including campaign, multiplayer, extras and settings. I explored the front end a little bit, and found that the extras menu consists mostly of different statistics relation to gameplay, collectables and so on. This struck me as a good sign, because offering all these statistics suggests that the developers put effort into adding replay value. Also, the inclusion of collectable suggests that the environments and levels will be well-detailed, and the playable area well-utilised.
I started a new campaign on "Soldier" difficulty (the 2nd-easiest of the 4 available difficulty settings). The game begins with a rather interesting introductory cinematic which consists of a montage of news reports covering an outbreak of an "alien virus" caused by an accident at a CryNet facility, and subsequent civil unrest. The cinematic uses a combination of live-action and in-engine clips. This is no doubt intended to set the scene and introduce the story behind the dystopian setting of the game. It's a rather dramatic sequence that grabbed my attention.
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| A shot from the pre-game cinematic. |
Cut to the year 2023, and a military submarine in the Hudson River, New York. On the submarine, the player gains control of the game's protagonist, "Alcatraz", a Force Recon Marine. The Marine unit is arriving in New York to take on a mission, but is damaged and water begins pouring in. The first bit of gameplay involves the player escaping from the rapidly-flooding submarine, and learning how to move around, crouch and interact in the process. Upon escaping the submarine, the player gets their first view of the apocalyptic New York City from the river, and is then attacked by an alien craft before being saved by a nano-suit wearing soldier (who turns out to be a major character from the first Crysis game). Intro credits then play over a cinematic of a nano-suit soldier fighting enemies in the city. It's a gripping introductory sequence that has helped Crysis 2 to stand out right from the off.
The next level takes place in a factory on a New York harbour. This dimly-lit and run-down industrial environment is full of cages of bodies - victims of the virus - biohazard containers and dead scientists in biohazard suits that suggest it was used as a makeshift hospital during the initial virus crisis. It's a really well-crafted environment that uses such things as lighting, environmental storytelling and particle effects to create atmosphere. It is revealed that the nano-suited soldier from the previous scene sacrificed their life and gave the nano suit to the player-character. I then embarked on a mission to find Doctor Nathan Gould, a former CryNet scientist who has important information on how to combat the alien threat.
What do I like about the game?
As the game continued on, I traversed evacuation zones, city streets, alleyways and subway stations, fighting enemies all the way. I also unlocked the ability to customise my weapons with attachments and upgrade my nano suit, and even got to drive a tank.
Crysis 2 is undeniably a very high quality FPS game. It's biggest strengths include its environments, level design, and unique and imaginative mechanics. As I expected, the story does seem to have more depth and credibility than a lot of other sci-fi shooters - though a lot of it didn't make complete sense to me, as I haven't played the first Crysis game. Crysis 2 makes a lot of effort to set itself apart from its contemporaries, with great success.
The game's environments and level design are probably the feature that resonated most with me. The game art and graphics are of a very high standard for when the game released in 2011, and would probably still hold up pretty well in a game now. The environments are densely populated with interesting props, architecture and vehicles, all of which have high quality 3D models. The levels also feature particle effects and high quality realistic lighting effects. Given the scale and detail of the environments, I was surprised to see that the game ran totally smoothly throughout. The "New York in chaos" setting makes for some very interesting and grand spaces to explore.
The environments also feature plenty of things to interact with and collect. The player is able to pick up and throw many different objects and activate things in the environment, which adds to the immersion in that it allows you to interact with your surroundings - though there doesn't seem to be much of a practical reason to do so. There is also cases of environmental storytelling, one such case being an area being an obvious makeshift dwelling in a subterranean service corridor, complete with a bed and personal effects. The collectable items throughout the levels include dog tags, New York souvenirs and laptops containing emails, all of which add more depth to the both the environments and the lore of the game world.
The level design is also a strong feature in Crysis 2. The level design facilitates various different play styles, from stealthily bypassing dangers to reach your objective, to going in all-guns-blazing. There are numerous different routes that the player can take and lots of verticality to the level layouts which means that traversing the levels is an interesting and challenging task, and the player is able to approach it how they see fit, using the mechanics that they choose.
This brings me to the next good feature - the game's mechanics. Crysis 2 offers a lot of very interesting and useful mechanics, most of which consist of abilities of the nano suit that the player characters wears. The player is able to use a tactical visor and nano visor to get a more informed view of their environment and plan out their approach. In these views, the player can tag enemies and points-of-interest such as ammo, and the player is also presented with suggested tactical approaches. These views add depth to the way that the game is played.
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| The player can customise weapons and view their stats. |
The player can toggle the nano suit's cloak and armour abilities - these directly enable players to make more effective stealth and combat manoeuvres respectively. The player can also customise their weapons and add different special abilities to their nano suit, which again helps give the player tactical choice as to how they want to play the game. This provides a welcome level of choice and depth to the gameplay, and makes it feel more like you, the player, are leading the action, rather than simply being strung along through the game.
Other positive features include the game's voice acting and writing, the wide variety of stats that one can view, and the overall aesthetic of the game's UI and menus.
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| The player can choose a different nano suit upgrade to occupy 4 different slots |
What do I not like?
I have failed to find many things that are objectively wrong with Crysis 2 from a design point of view. The fact remains that it is a very well-made and well-designed game! However, there's a few minor things that were not fully in fitting with my own personal taste or preference. Sci-fi FPS games are, after all, not very high up on my "favourite genre" list.
Firstly, I found that the pacing of the story and progression was a bit slow and drawn out. The game begins with you trying to track down a Doctor Nathan Gould, who is somewhere in New York city, so that he can help you to combat the alien threat. He is communicating with you the whole time, and regularly heckling you for not being quick enough in finding him. After 3 hours of play, and quite a few levels completed, my character had still not tracked Gould down. Of course, I was completing interesting objectives and exploring the city as I went, but finding Gould still felt like a very drawn out process, and I felt myself losing interesting slightly in the action that was unfolding in the story.
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| Dr Gould: Evasive Scientist. |
Secondly, while it is good that there is so many different and compelling mechanics, this inevitably meant that there was quite a lot of different button configurations, controls and menus associated with these mechanics, and the experience felt a little but "cluttered". That said, I think that a cluttered system of mechanics is better than not having the mechanics at all. Also, while the aesthetic of the UI was nice, I couldn't help but feel like the UI was distracting, for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on.
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| Using the visor mechanic is useful - but the UI is a bit distracting. |
Final Thoughts
Overall, I would say that Crysis 2 is objectively amongst the best games that I have played for Spontaneous Sunday, and one of the best sci-fi FPS games that I have played full-stop. I really think that the environment art and graphics are ahead of their time, and the developers clearly put a lot of time and effort into creating levels and mechanics that made for an engaging and varied gameplay experience that gives the player a lot of choice. FPS games often seem to restrict themselves to a certain play style, but this is certainly not the case with Crysis 2 - this game stands out for a number of reasons. While sci-fi FPS is not generally my genre of choice personally, I really enjoyed playing Crysis 2 today.
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