Crysis 2 Review

Crysis 2 (PC, 2011)

Some years after the events of the first Crysis, we're reunited with a super soldier code named "Prophet". After dragging the main character out of a failed unit insertion on the coast of New York City, we're given his suit and instructions to carry on his mission.

Fighting through the streets of a ruined New York, fraught with alien invaders and mercenaries trying to catch you, you eventually make your way to people you and trust, who arm you with the things that you need to destroy the alien scum.

There a few surprises along the way, but unfortunately nothing groundbreaking. I much prefer the story line of the first Crysis, where aliens didn't overtly become involved until later, and where the initial plot was a covert mission against a North Korean regime. Disclaimer: I don't know what it is about FPS, but very few since Half Life 2 have really excited me.

On that note though, I was immediately blown away by the sweet graphics engine. The smooth movements of a lot of the shipmates, the fire in the submarine, and all the cool water effects. You can also see some attention to detail, but how the HUD readouts sort of bend in a faux-helmet-pov kind of way. But then, I grew accustomed to it, and that was that.

The game engine, on the other hand, was less impressive by far. The guns don't really get that much better throughout the game, and most of them are pretty unoriginal. The alien evaporator gun was strong, but didn't feel that way visually, which really dampened my enjoyment of it. Power kicking things is kinda cool, but largely not useful. Power choking things also, but drained your energy way too quickly. The environments, although pretty realistically detailed, felt "small". Like, I was just confined in a really small space with a few routes to the next area.


They reworked the Crysis suit special functions to be easier to use by merging some of them and setting the suit to use a default mode, but I think it's a downgrade from the first game; it's a little dumbed down for a game already lacking in complexity. The mission / engagement system is slightly better than the first - in theory.

You get prompted to pull up your binoculars, and scan around looking at options (same as the first), but this one enumerates them for you, like 'stealth', 'flank', 'snipe', and etc. You can then mark enemy locations, supplies, etc. If you alert even one guard, then they call for backups. In reality, but more often than not, I got spotted for just peaking my head over a perch - resulting in my constant marches downstream wielding my machine guns on armored suit mode, just plowing through hordes of enemies.

Completion Time: 8.5 Hours on Hard Difficulty.
Kenholic Rating: 6.0 out of 10.0

Final Words: It's a great looking game, and when all the extra mechanics succeeded, I found myself having a lot of fun. But those moments were few and far between; most of the time, I just found myself strafing around like any other FPS.