A graphically great sequel featuring a fun, tactical campaign and great music. It's far better than the average FPS.
Crysis 2 stars Alcatraz instead of Nomad from Crysis. Alcatraz is a marine who is given the powerful nanosuit from Prophet, a major character from Crysis. The nanosuit makes Alcatraz seem like a futuristic soldier. The beginning of the game is quite slow paced and less interesting than the middle and end of the game. The scripted moments are good enough to draw your attention, especially when you see collapsing buildings as a result of the alien infestation of New York City. The game does an outstanding job of portraying a city under siege by aliens known as Cephs. At the beginning of the plot you mainly encounter human enemies known as C.E.LL. Operators and they are trying to bring down the Cephs.
The C.E.L.L. Operators exhibit very good A.I. as they work collaboratively when they engage in a shootout with you. They can lob grenades to flush you out or they can take cover. The alien Cephs are also quite smart and work collaboratively, although on occasion they can inexplicably get stuck in places. The A.I. is good enough to force you to be tactical in your approach to defeating groups of enemies, human or alien. The game gives to a few options to deal with enemies, including the use of stealth to either kill them silently or just pass by undetected.
The game's plot really picks up when you begin to fight Cephs on a regular basis. You will visit Central Park, a park that has plenty of rubble and other major damage. The park looks like it's been devastated since you see land that's uneven with many cracks and abandoned taxi cabs. The shootouts feature many enemies that are exciting and will force you take advantage of your nanosuit's powerful characteristics. The nanosuit two most important characteristics are cloak and armor mode. Cloak is probably the single most important strategy to be used wherever there are groups of enemies to deal with. The Cephs have units rank from most powerful to least powerful and must be dealt with the appropriate weapons according to their sizes. The smaller Cephs can be killed using conventional weapons such as shotguns and machine guns. The larger Cephs force you to consider heavy weapons such as rocket launchers, and C4 explosives. Armor mode becomes important when being shot at in order to survive. You can make the nanosuit even more powerful by buying modules using nanocatalysts dropped by Cephs. Eventually, the nanosuit can deflect bullets from enemies, an important ability for the latter parts of the game against more powerful Cephs. The weapons are varied enough that you can use short range and long range weapons according to how you want to approach the enemies. Eventually you will run into more diverse aliens, including those that can cloak and you will have to determine their location very quickly to survive.
It's plenty of fun engaging in firefights against the aliens with fellow marines. The marines provide help in a few chapters of the game. They give commands like real life marines would give. You can help prevent the aliens from killing the marines who would otherwise be overmatched. They truly make you feel like you are at war and they are your comrades.
The graphics are so detailed you will enjoy viewing the flying birds, the alien dropships that drop off the Cephs, and fires burning in the tall buildings, whether in the day or night. The graphics leave a lasting impression when you travel to Roosevelt Island as you can watch the tall buildings from across the river and you can appreciate the look of the water in the river. Grand Central Station looks stunning while a large robotic alien called the Pinger invades the building along with other aliens. A scripted event then occurs in which a nearby building is collapsing while two people trapped in the rubble are desperately seeking your help and the marines are escorting you from the inevitable disaster. Another technical treat is the game's soundtrack. It is diverse and will immerse you into the various environments. The music features creepy sounds and violins. Other times you will hear high and low electronic vibrations.
One aspect of the game that may annoy people is the game's checkpoints. The game saves at pre-determined locations in every chapter. It can take a long time to reach the next checkpoint and it is possible to get killed before reaching that checkpoint. This would force you to reload from the last checkpoint and go through the part of the chapter where you died all over again. The next checkpoint can feel like a long way from where you are, especially when dealing with difficult challenges. The checkpoint system is only a minor gripe and does not detract from the overall fun of the game.
Crysis 2 is an outstanding game for PC gamers because of the superb graphics and fun shootouts against diverse groups of enemies using diverse weapons. It is hard to find a first-person shooter possessing so many outstanding qualities. I highly recommend this sequel.