Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Overrated"

When I first read some reviews about how different Crysis 2 is going to be compared to the first one, I thought "well, if it's different, then it has to be better; there's no way they can make it worse than the first one".

Well...no.

Graphic wise it's bad. I mean, the scenes of NY are beautiful, the sky is nice and the sun looks amazing. But it's not even close to the effect that the graphics of the first Crysis had on people (and their hardware). It looks too colorful, almost cartoonish, the models are way too repetitive (they used Mercedes S-class model for the yellow cabs!?) and the level of detail is what we had 5 years ago, just awful.

Music is great though, especially the main theme on the menu. Such a waste...

Story wise - pretty boring and generic. And not related to the story of the first Crysis in any way (which kinda goes well with the fact that the game does not have a lot in common with the first Crysis on many other levels). I stopped caring about the story somewhere in the middle of the game. Too bad cut scenes cannot be skipped. The playtime is pretty good though. With about 10-12 hours of play, I cannot believe I see people sniveling on GS that the campaign is too short.

In terms of gameplay - the game screams in your face "I was meant for consoles" all the time. I'm fine with autosaves - they bring some necessary challenge, which wouldn't be there if you were able to manually save on every step. Even the ridiculous "new music unlocked" messages at the end of each level are bearable. But the game is so linear! I was reading reviews about how big the world is...You're kidding me? Have you ever played S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Even the first Crysis was huge, compared to this. Yes, you're in New York, but have you seen New York from the eyes of the protagonist in Prototype? You're basically always limited to a block or two in all directions and there's usually no point in exploring these streets, because they are empty - no enemies, nothing. Maybe the useless console-meant collectible stuff that no one in the PC world cares about. Good thing is that you can jump/climb on almost everything and use it to your advantage, but that's about it when it comes to freedom.

Battles are pretty fun with the amount of enemies you usually have to deal with. And stealth is a pretty viable option, but on the downside - you could literally cloak-crouch through the entire game without ever being shot at. Another funny thing is that when with automatic gun, you need to empty an entire clip on alien enemies to bring them down, while with the shotgun - two shots are enough. Not very reallistic, but anyway...

What else...Ah, the powers are now just two - strenght and cloak. They're much easier to use than in the first game, but then again you cannot go too deep experimenting tactics in battle with just two powers. You either hide or absorb bullets and that's it. Maybe that's why they introduced the suit upgrades, which are mostly useless IMHO. The game is easy enough to beat on Normal without any upgrades, so I basically quit collecting upgrade points early on. Actually one of the reasons was that on two occasions I miraculosly lost all my collected points before using them, which was pretty frustrating.

Overall, that's a pretty marketing-driven game that's build only for the console-masses. It could not even reach the level of the first Crysis, which was not too high to start with...

There is some fun to play and even beat it, it could have been even called a "good game" if it wasn't all the hype, but with all the expectations - it's pretty average...