Crysis 2
Shoots onto consoles
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Review Where Crysis shifted the paradigm of photorealism for a lucky monster-rig owning few – while power slamming the nail into the coffin of my creaking 9800 Pro – Crysis 2 is a far more forgiving beast.
Rocket salad
The near-identical performance of the PC and console versions might not please PC gamers, but the shift to multiplatform befits a series deserving of a larger audience. And even though Crysis 2 consequently falls short of the original's technological leap, it still ranks as one of this generation's most beautiful games.
Facial animations and character models don't quite match the fidelity of Black Ops and Killzone 3, but Crysis 2's locales are in a league of their own. The understated palette lends an authenticity to New York that, even in the aftermath of a devastating alien bombardment, feels instantly familiar. Seen in the half-light through dust kicked up from collapsing buildings, and smouldering and desolate, it's a New York eerily reminiscent of 9-11.
Open fire place
With collapsing freeways, alien craft smashing into skyscrapers and even a tsunami, it's also Roland Emmerich's New York. But despite a near-constant bombardment of grandstanding pyrotechnics, it's the intimacy of disaster that resonates most. Thrust into the Nanosuit 2 by chance, your character, US Marine Alcatraz, is unwittingly caught up in the chaos, battling an alien invasion on one side, and on the other, a private military company hell-bent on exploiting the alien technology for its own gain.
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COMMENTS
This week's epic comment fail
CLEARLY Killzone 3 is better.
Obviously.
In your own mind.
Some people still struggling with the concept of opinions, apparently. Still, I'm sure that massive company Sony are glad you're sticking up for them and their mass produced products against those mean reviewers.
Try to understand that while you like Killzone 3, someone else may not be as enamoured. Or, like a simpleton, you could continue to argue with anyone who doesn't give [latest AAA game] a score you think it deserves, as though that somehow impacts upon your enjoyment.
A huge let-down
The joy of Far-Cry (and to a lesser degree Crysis) was the large-scale maps and relative freedom in tackling them - you really could play some levels several times and have a very different experience each time. I pre-bought Crysis 2 because I was hoping for, nay expecting, a similar level of freedom only this time in an urban setting. It's 2011 after all, it seemed reasonable to expect to be able to smash into any building, go onto roof-tops when I felt like it and generally make my own path to the required point on the map - you ARE playing a bloke in a powered armour suit after all.
What I got was a remake of the City17 bits of Half-life 2 with nicer textures, inferior story-telling and the oh-for-pity's-sake-this-isn't-a-game-it's-a-barely-interactive-movie quality of COD4. I've also encountered an apparent scripting issue in the game where, after defending a location against a horde of nasties, nothing else happened and the friendly NPCs wandered around the battlezone for several minutes until I gave up and quit.
Oh well. Serves me right for pre-ordering, I won't do that again.
blatant sony staff
Are Sony still paying people to come on forums and slate everything that isnt Sony related? I thought THAT fad died out in 2007...
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