14 DAY TRIAL // 
When it comes to beautiful looking games, few developers can come close to the pedigree of German company Crytek, which is responsible for titles like the original Far Cry, Crysis or Crysis: Warhead.
Now, the studio is back, with Crysis 2, the next installment in its first-person shooter, running on the brand new CryEngine 3 technology, which promises to not only achieve even more impressive graphics than the ones that made the first games so popular, but also achieve them on a wide array of PCs, not just on extremely powerful ones, and on consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
Crytek has been hyping up the game for the past few months, so it's time to see whether Crysis 2 manages to blow the competition out of the beautifully rendered water or remains a niche hit, just like its predecessors.
Story It's hard to talk about the story of the Crysis franchise as a whole, let alone the one of Crysis 2, as things are pretty much a huge mess. While you were deserted alongside your squad companions on a tropical island in the first two games, in the new one, you're taking on marines, mercenaries and aliens right in New York city.
The game struggles to keep some connection to the first two titles, but it's extremely convoluted and you'll get a headache just trying to follow the different plot threads.
You're playing as Alcatraz, a marine that gets the upgraded nanosuit from Prophet, who briefly appeared both in Crysis 1 and Warhead. The switching of hands, or more like bodies, is extremely fast, and you'll immediately start following orders from a researcher that you were tasked to find.
For the remainder of the game, you'll be going through all of New York, getting orders from all sorts of people and trying to uncover the source of the destruction while staying alive in front of mercenaries and/or new types of aliens called the Ceph.
While at first you may be inclined to start trying to follow the story, it's best just to go with the flow and follow your objectives, not worrying about the different one-dimensional characters and their various connections.
Gameplay While the story does a poor job of trying to keep you interested in the single-player campaign, the flawless gameplay will certainly make up for that, as Crysis 2 has pretty much perfected the already quite impressive recipe of its predecessors.
The biggest changes were made to the nanosuit, which is now more streamlined, in order to complement the fast action in the new game. While in the original titles you had multiple modes to choose from, ranging from stealth to armor, speed or strength, in the new one, you have just two, stealth and strength, while the rest are just bonus powers, allowing you to sprint or achieve massive jumps.
This is all for the better, as Crysis 2 feels much more responsive and dynamic, motivating the player to improvise tactics in its firefights. You can start with a stealth approach, sniping enemies from a distance, then run up to a ledge above their location, jump on top of them and then use the armor mode to thrash the poor guys around.
The developer even threw in a customization mechanic, which, after collecting enough tissue from the aliens you take down, will allow you to upgrade your abilities, from obtaining a better suit energy regeneration rate to unlocking more powerful jumps or slams.
The game is still a first-person shooter, and the mechanics are very impressive, with Crytek managing to make weapons feel great. While there are quite a few guns in the game, you won't be using all of them, as you'll almost always fall back to the Scar and the sniper rifle. The special weapon customization mechanic carries over from the first two games, as you'll be able to choose different attachments, like silencers or scopes, on the fly, depending on what sort of situation is ahead of you.
Strategy plays a big role in tackling the objectives in the single-player campaign, as the title recommends you to use special binoculars that highlight different strategies for the upcoming location. You can swipe a mounted machine gun and wreak havoc or you can climb a ledge, infiltrate with the stealth mode a sniper position and take the enemies down.
The AI is quite impressive, with enemies managing to pull off squad maneuvers and really giving you a run for your money. While you may think that the nanosuit takes you to god status, the enemies will certainly dial down your ambitions by providing ample resistance against your efforts.
The relatively tough enemies, together with the pretty rare checkpoint save system is a bad combo, however, as you can progress through the entirety of a complicated firefight without getting hit and find yourself taken back to square one after being hit by a stray bullet or an explosive barrel.
There is a short vehicle section, but even that can be skipped completely if you prefer just super sprinting through the stages. You'll be forced to use different strategies in other areas, however, as Crytek, always keen on showing off its CryEngine technology, cuts the power and leaves you in complete darkness from time to time, forcing players to equip the special heat-sensitive Nanovision power.
Speaking of the CryEngine 3 technology, this allows its developer to really go to town on the things you can do in the game, from interacting with a wide array of objects, especially doors, to just allowing players to mess around with the game world, similar to how you would do in an open-world sandbox game. Basically, after completing Crysis 2, it's going to be a bit hard to go back to shooters that only let you interact with a few items and go through extremely linear paths.
Multiplayer Crysis 2's multiplayer mode may seem a bit chaotic, at first, but it will no doubt impress those who are eager to try something new after shooters like Call of Duty or the more recent Homefront.
While it has multiple modes that are variations of popular experiences, including Team Deathmatch or King of the Hill, what really makes Crysis 2's online mode that special is the sheer unpredictability from its players.
The matches will certainly amp up your paranoia factor, as gamers can use all of the nanosuit powers, from stealth to armor, nanovision or super jumps, in order to get the advantage over their opponents. As such, you always need to move carefully through its levels, because you never know who might be hiding in a corner with stealth on or who'll jump on top of you as soon as you exit a building.
While this sounds a bit fun, it can get frustrating at times, especially considering the fact that a lot of cheaters are still plaguing the online matches. Thankfully, Crytek is taking care of them by issuing multiple updates, so things are going to get better and better.
Graphics and Sound Simply put, there aren't a lot of games that can even try to steal the thunder from Crysis 2 in terms of graphics and visual quality.
The game is, in lack of any other word, stunning, amazing players with detailed textures, small and subtle effects that complete the environments and very big levels, both in the single and the multiplayer modes.
What's even better is that this fidelity is kept on a pretty big range of PCs, not just extremely powerful and expensive ones, as well as on the consoles, with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 getting a very beautiful experience, despite not being the newest of machines.
After seeing what Crytek did with the new CryEngine 3 technology, we should definitely be on the lookout for any other titles that will be licensing it in the future.
We need to mention that Crysis 2 doesn't support DirectX 11 at the moment, but, at least judging from our playthrough on the PC, with everything set to extremely high, this isn't exactly a dealbreaker. Crytek, sadly, hasn't mentioned anything concerning support for DirectX 11, so gamers that want absolute performance and the best visuals possible need to look elsewhere until the studio decides to implement it in Crysis 2.
In terms of audio, the soundtrack is great, with massive orchestral scores playing during intense firefights, while slower tunes highlight the normal moments. You can see that famous composer Hans Zimmer collaborated with Crytek, as you wouldn't be surprised to hear these tracks in the next blockbuster Hollywood movies.
The main character, Alcatraz, remains silent throughout the game, which can get a bit annoying, especially because he is witnessing some shocking events unfold before his eyes, all of which not managing to get any sort of reaction from him.
Conclusion Overall, Crysis 2 is by far the best-looking game of the year, with Crytek managing to truly showcase the power of its CryEngine 3.
Even if the story fails to attract players, the gameplay, especially once you start getting used to the nanosuit's powers, will definitely keep you connected to Crysis 2's campaign, while the multiplayer offers a very different experience than other shooter games, including Call of Duty: Black Ops.
