‘It’s not the suit that makes the man, but the man that makes the suit’
Before I get into this I just want to make one thing quite clear. I’ve never played Crysis before. I know I should have, but I didn’t. I understood the premise, another FPS with Alien invasion as its selling point – I thought it was just another Resistance, another Gears, another Halflife – but I was completely wrong on this, Crysis shares a lot with a vast plethora of other FPS’s but in some cases has improved on them to such an extent that in some circumstances put it head and shoulders above its competition.
It’s a FPS – that much is clear. It begins in typical flair too, a group of marines being sent into battle an unknown enemy in an obliterated New York in the Year 2023. News bulletins give you an overview – there’s a virus, there’s civil unrest…there’s a hell of a lot of rubble.
You play as ‘Alcatraz’ – lets assume this is a codename. Alcatraz is one of a small group of marines sent in by submarine to New York to rescue a scientist, Doctor Nathan Gould. The insertion goes lady lumps up very quickly as an alien warship tears the sub apart and all but decimates you and the rest of the unit. Your vision is fading, your breathing is shallowing…there a slight loss of appetite…Alcatraz is off to the big barracks in the sky. Then a suited figure emerges from the smoke and, minigun in hand, blows the ship out of the sky and drags you to safety…what a nice man. Your vision fades to his very accurate words – ‘destiny is a bitch son’.
When Alcatraz wakes up he’s in a deserted building, theres a body on the floor and you’re now wearing the suit that saved you. Now things get interesting.
Your new apparel is referred to as the Nanosuit 2.0 and the body on the floor belongs to its previous owner, Laurence Barnes, Codenamed ‘Prophet’, the returning character from the first game. This suit gives you a slightly steroidy, metal look but looking dapper isn’t its only power. With a quick flick of a shoulder button it can become much more dense – giving the wearer added protection from gun fire, or can turn invisible – allowing you to sneak past enemies undetected. It also gives the option for a heightened level of speed and a ‘nanovision’ optical setting (think the predator’s heat vision). Now all of these options are cool, but would make getting through Crysis 2 a doddle if they were a permanent fixture. Luckily these features are limited by your energy bar which depreciates to a lesser or greater extent dependant on which power you have activated and what you happen to be doing with it. For example, if Alcatraz is cloaked but remains still then it depletes quite slowly, on the other hand if he is cloaked and speed running it belts down and when it runs out you can find yourself suddenly visible in the middle of a large group of enemies who would just love to get you out of your formal wear…and not in a good way.
The enemies you fight are two fold, the first is a human military presence called CELL, who range from standard grunts to tanks and the second is the alien race called the Ceph, who again range from grunts to devastators (walking goliaths with a passion for miniguns), both want you dead – but in respect to CELL, to begin with it is a case of mistaken identity…they think you’re Prophet, and Prophet has been killing their mates…unfortunately they don’t give you the option to sit down and talk about it so its blasty killing all the way.
Controlling Alcatraz will be familiar to anyone who has played a shooter before, upper shoulder buttons are iron sights and fire, lower left is armour, lower right is stealth, analogue sticks control movement and vision as well as your speed run and melee, face buttons are jump, reload, swap weapon and crouch. The D-pad allows you to swap to heavy weapons, explosives and your nano vision as well as bringing up your visor (I’ll touch on this shortly)…theres nothing new here, but its quite well mapped and the controls are responsive without being too twitchy.
One of the first things that will grab you by the Nano groin is just how pretty Crysis 2 is – every aspect of the locale oozes detail. You can be taking on CELL agents on a rooftop as helicopters and Ceph Gunships thunder overhead, their shadows briefly blotting out the sun. Burning buildings topple like dominoes in the distance and throw huge house size lumps of rubble into the sky. Architecture and trees crack, split and fall as bullets and laser fire rip through the roof gardens – it really is all that and more. And even more so, it sounds incredible. Not so much the weapons, (though they are quite barky in their own rights) but the surroundings, the enemies and the suit are fantastic, and above all is one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard. For the first time ever I didn’t want a load screen to end just because I was enjoying the score that much.
One of the biggest advantages to Crysis 2 that I’ve found over other first person shooters is the option of a tactical approach to any scenario. You can go run and gun into an area if you wish, but in most cases you won’t last very long, or if you do it’ll be down to a degree of luck. The best option is to be patient, as I mentioned above you have the option to bring down your visor at any time that lists your objectives and any ammo caches dotted around the area you’re in, but more than that it allows you to zoom in and watch your enemies as well as giving you pointers on how best to take them down. Do you flank them? Do you evade them? Do you snipe them from afar? Each option is possible, and it gives you the best place to start, which adds an extra level of thought to an otherwise narrow minded genre.
So, this is a game that includes guns and factions…so I’d call you a dirty, stinking liar if you said you weren’t at all interested in the multiplayer aspect and, though I’ve had quite minimal experience with it so far, I haven’t been disappointed. I’ve so far suffered no connection issues, no serious lag and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.
A lot of it is very familiar – you have classes, XP, ranks etc, and the usual platter of game types – Team Death Match and Free for all, Capture the flag and Headquarters to name a few. The addition of the nanosuit to a multiplayer setting is great and a quick flick of the shoulder buttons either gives you that extra dollop of armour or makes the task of sneaking up on your enemies slightly easier than if you were solid. Obviously the cloak can be seen and the added armour is only slight, be it may give you just enough to survive in a one on one fire fight if your opponent isn’t quick enough with theirs.
Where the multiplayer differs from the norm is two fold – firstly, killstreaks aren’t personal. When I say that, I don’t mean that they didn’t mean it directly at you, I mean everyone has access to them – they are set subject to the map that you’re playing and don’t have the same weight as the, for example, call of duty kill streaks. Radars, Jammers and Nano suit over charges aren’t quite game ending nukes, but they can tip the balance in your favour if there’s only a few kills in it. There are larger killstreaks such as laser strikes and Ceph gun ship support, but these are kept to levels were it adds to the experience rather than destroying it.
The second major difference is the inclusion of dog tags. Each time you make a kill your enemy will drop their tags, you get the XP automatically but killstreaks are only awarded upon the collection of these dog tags. What this means is that the usual camping and sniping, that is part and partial of all FPS, will get you XP just fine, but the only way you can assist your team with gun ships and radars is to give up your position and go and collect them. I personally think this is a brilliant idea as nothing infuriates me more than people camping and though it doesn’t stop them, you can die over and over and over again happy in the knowledge they at least aren’t getting massive kill streaks to add to the insult.
So in conclusion, it’s very refreshing to play a FPS that bring some new dishes to the table – that’s not to say that Crysis 2 is without fault. Though the enemies may look and sound incredible, they really aren’t that bright and I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve caught one either looping around the same circuit or walking zombie like into a wall. For a product with this much polish you would have thought that would have been the first thing to be addressed. And, like I mentioned, there are some unmistakable comparisons that can be made with other big players in this genre which, though they aren’t a bad thing, do remove some of the wow factor.
These are quite minor concerns though in one of the best games I’ve played of 2011 so far. Its epic, its intense and its all kinds of fun. If you’re looking for a new Shooter to hold you off until the next inevitable Call of Duty punt – or maybe Homefront just didn’t push the right buttons for you – you could do a hell of a lot worse than Crysis 2. This most certainly isn’t a well polished turd, but is a slightly flawed diamond in a spectacularly smart suit.
