Crysis 2 PC Review

During the campaign of Crysis 2, you assume control of a ‘Force Recon Marine’ named Alcatraz, who is sent to a near post-apocalyptic New York City caused by an alien infestation to rescue a former Crynet employee, Dr Nathan Gould. However this is no easy task as different people, and even different beings have other ideas..

Upon arriving to NYC it’s not long before you’re partnered up with the Nanosuit 2.0, which has very similar features to the original, however utilised in a different way.

There’s a new system in place that allows you to collect elements of Nano Catalysts from defeated Ceph enemies, these allow you to upgrade your suits modules as you feel necessary – maybe increasing your armours ability to protect you, dealing damage or reducing the time it takes you to fade in and out of stealth.

Crysis 2 also bought back the unique weapon customisation tool that was used in Crysis allowing you to re-scope your weapons as you choose fit and to decide if you were more of a stealthy player attaching a Silencer, or an all guns blazing nutcase that prefers to attach a mini-shotgun or Grenade launcher!

For those of you who prefer the all guns blazing scenario, there’s a decent choice of weapons to be had from killing enemies, finding weapon caches etc. Now dependant on your play style, you may like Assault rifles for that Medium Range advantage, or a Shotgun for that close quarter KA-BOOM to watch the Rag-dolled corpses fly backwards.

I personally quite enjoyed the more Stealthy option while playing and taking an opponent down with the Combat knife, or more often than not just for the hilarity factor, punching people in the face…

In many ways, Crysis 2 differs from Crysis in it’s game play, no longer may you roam aimless around a (near) open world Jungle, instead you’re finding yourself squeezing through tight alleyways, broken windows and desolate buildings of the Urban Jungle that is NYC. Though this by no means puts you on a single track to end-game, the environment is setup in a way that you can make your own tactical decisions as to how you’d wish to continue, all dependant on how you’re currently playing though the game – you may wish to snipe from a high rooftop in the distance or prefer the silent knife option to progress. The choice is yours.

Throughout the campaign, you’re in a constant struggle for life, whether you’re pitting up against the C.E.L.L Forces or the Ceph alien infestation, action is always just around the corner. Don’t worry though, if the Ceph and C.E.L.L ever come in to contact, sometimes it may be best to just sneak on by with that handy little feature ‘Cloak’!

Jumping straight in to the action isn’t always the best of options, as the Ceph now come with a nice shiny armour fitment, that makes them look semi-human, when I first saw one I figured it was just some sort of grunt in a Nanosuit.. to a point I was right, killing these typical spawn is not much of a challenge, however if they’re in numbers it can be fairly annoying.

There’s a decent variety of enemies to encounter while running through the single player, ranging from the average Ceph ‘Tick’ which poses little threat, up to the Ceph ‘Guardian’ which you may try and hide from as face-face can pose a rather large problem in numbers, however the one to look out for here is the Pinger…

Secondly there’s the C.E.L.L (Crynet Enforcement & Local Logistics), these are pretty much a privately hired military company under the control of Crynet Systems. While there’s not really any major differences in how the C.E.L.L appear, they do wield a large variety of weaponry.

As in Crysis, there are different types of vehicles that you’ll spot throughout the campaign, ranging from light tactical vehicles to VTOL’s. Not every vehicle can be accessed by Alcatraz. Shame, but then I always find air vehicles hard to control – I’m just plain bad at it.

This brings me on to the controls, which to be fair are pretty average for any FPS game these days. You have your typical movement keys of WASD, space to jump, shift to sprint… surely everybody is used to those keys by now? The only quibble some players had over the controls was the weapon switching, a lot of people are now used to a style of game play where you need to press 2,3,4 to select different styles of weapons. Pressing 2 in Crysis 2 switched the fire mode of your currently equipped weapon. You soon get used to it though and as with any PC game, controls can be changed to meet your needs anyway. So can’t really criticise!