Despite being a competent shooter, Crysis 2 proves the series should have remained PC exclusive
Fantastic weapon customization – cool powers - mostly great visual presentation – suit upgrades add variety – multiplayer offers a good amount of unlocks – sharp controls
THE BAD
Glitchy AI – noticeable object and texture pop up - assorted bugs and glitches – way too linear – tedious, repetitive boss battles – multiplayer is laggy and underpopulated – uninteresting story and characters
THE UGLY
Invisibility makes the game so easy it basically plays itself
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Dear reader, I'll confess a terrible sin: I've never played any Crysis game before this one, since not even my most powerful computer has ever been able to properly run it, so I can't really judge how Crysis 2 compares to its prequels [2012 EDIT: now I've played Crysis and it's a much better game than its sequel in all areas]. What I know, however, is that Crysis has always been an incredibly open ended game, with a huge island you could freely roam and destructible environments and vegetation to play around with. All this is tragically missing in Crysis 2, which raises the question if this game should in fact have remained PC exclusive, in order to retain its most unique elements.
Crysis 2 tells the story of ill-named marine Alcatraz, which is deployed in a combat zone in order to respond to an emergency. Deployed is a generous word, since, following the most standard cliché in FPS, his helicopter crashes just minutes in the game. Retrieved by the guy from the first Crysis, he is bestowed his power suit and sent on yet another quest. What follows is basically ten hours of uninteresting people talking in your headset, ordering you left and right. It's as basic as FPS stories get, especially after the game throws Halo-like aliens at you for good measure.
I can see many Crysis fans getting disappointed with this sequel: instead of a lush jungle island to roam with virtually no boundaries we get a ruined New York city where you can't deviate from a fixed path leading from point A to B. Wrecked cars or a pile of rubble will block access to roads and alleys and barbed wire will prevent you from jumping on rooftops you're not supposed to reach. In some areas the game teases you with the illusion of choice by presenting various options to approach a given situation, although this is spoiled by the fact these options are always marked as wayponts on your HUD, reducing the feature to simply choosing which waypoint to go after.
Weapons are fairly varied and pack a decent punch, but what's best about them is you can customize them at any time by adding attachments you scavenge from fallen enemies. It's nothing short of what Metal Gear Solid 4 offers and it allows you to really tailor your arsenal to your preference: looking for a stealthy approach? You can silence pretty much everything, including sniper rifles and shotguns. Would you rather blow everything up? Underbarrel launchers and shotguns should do the trick.
All that is rendered useless by your suit powers, though. While jumping really high and powersliding is a lot of fun and armor boost is well balanced and does not make you invincible, invisibility will make you completely undetectable by enemies, even at extremely close range, meaning you can easily sneak past most enemies in the game without even having to fight. Furthermore, when you upgrade invisibility to the max by collecting alien cells you will literally be able to run past entire platoons of foes you were meant to fight before your energy runs out and you're forced to wait a couple seconds for it to recharge and repeat the process. Upgrades carry over between paythroughs and there's no way to undo them, so I beat the game on the hardest difficulty without any sort of effort, just walking past enemies. The game basically plays itself after you acquire enough powerups. In more than one occasion you have to reach an objective guarded by dozens of enemies, but all you have to do is cloak and ignore them, reach the objective, press a button and end the level.
Technically speaking, the game looks amazing... except the downscaling for the console versions really shows: object and texture pop-up is extremely evident, it's common to see a hedge or even a car pop out of nowhere as you get close and textures change abruptly, greatly breaking your immersion.
Bugs and glitches are fairly frequent: you'll notice enemies running in place or taking cover on thin air, sometimes they won't see you coming even if you're uncloaked, while at times they'll see you even if you're invisible. There's an area where your character starts the mission without a rifle in his hands, you can see the hand as if he's holding it and you can aim and shoot and kill enemies, but the rifle just isn't there until you switch weapons.
You will be tasked to take out a few bosses here and there, which are always the same AT-ST ripoff straight out of Star Wars. The problem is these fights are clustered in the central part of the game, and you'll be asked to repeat these ten minutes battles at least three times within a couple hours. They're standard 'flank the boss and shoot the red ball on its back' boss fights and they get tedious really fast. They're glitchy too: just when you think you managed to sneak around the robot, it'll fire off an EMP that will drain your energy, making you visible and causing the boss to instantly turn around and shoot you. Sometimes it will start a loop where it keeps firing the EMP over and over.
Controls are straight out of Call of Duty, which is a good thing, meaning they're comfortable and precise. Nothing to complain about here, more games should control like this.
Multiplayer sets off to be really promising, but falls short under several points of view. First off, matchmaking takes too long to find a game and there seems to be very little people playing online. Matches are fairly laggy and always feels like the player with the better ping has a huge advantage. Also, invisible campers are a big problem. There's a ton of unlocks, once again straight out of Call of Duty perks, but I don't see many people suffering through multiplayer to get them.
In conclusion, Crysis 2 is a decent shooter that can offer some sporadic fun playing around with weapon customization and suit powers, but falls massively short resulting generic and derivative, losing all the open ended nature of its prequels and offering a flawed visual presentation that ruins the ensemble. Maybe such an ambitious project was too much to handle for consoles, if that's the case then Crysis 2 proves the series should have remained PC exclusive.
It's definitely not a bad game and hardcore FPS fans will get a kick playing through it once, but there are much better shooters around that will offer a better story, less glitches, better challenge and better lasting appeal. A waste of the series huge potential.