Known Unknowns: Crysis 2 (360)

At the point Central Park is held aloft in huge earthly chunks settled atop writhing masses of metal tentacles, Crysis 2 turns to the player and shrugs in exhaustion: “That’s all I got, kid”.

A multiplatform follow-up to the PC-killing original, Crysis 2 makes significant trades in gameplay and environments in order to excel visually on consoles. However, even when using a walled garden approach where most maps are open expanses designed for multiple avenues of attack, Crysis 2 is a metric crap-ton more fun to play than any COD clone, including COD:BLOPS.

Unlike the original Crysis, where the player was dropped onto an island with a full suite of nano-suit abilities that allowed for increases in strength, speed, armor or cloaking and given leave to play in a giant sandbox, the sequel parcels out abilities over the first half of the game. Speed and strength are no longer selectable and are enabled by default. Using the energy remains of deceased enemy Ceph allows the player to upgrade the suit abilities throughout.

Like the first game, the story is an incomprehensible mess only set in Manhattan rather than a North Korean island. Flora and fauna are replaced by concrete and vehicles, creating impenetrable mazes of steel and glass, rather than flowing expanses of green. Playing as Alcatraz, a voiceless, personality free cipher of a marine, the player wakes from black (the first of a half-dozen overused transitions), embedded in the suit. Immediately mistaken for the suit’s original owner and apparently incapable of independent thought, Alcatraz begins a series of guided journeys, each lead by a different voice transmission.

The alien Ceph of the first game are succeeding in destroying New York City and only the nanosuit has the ability to stop them. Led through a series of switchbacks and double-crosses, Alcatraz blindly follows orders, leaving one to wonder if he had played too much Bioshock when not at work as a marine.

Epic and troubling imagery leverage the lingering memories of 9-11, as the city collapses during the journey beneath above and beyond, leaving the player slack-jawed. Unlike the seemingly endless vistas of the first game, Crysis 2 is also beautiful but limited. Particle effects and motion blur are used liberally to mask the limits placed on the engine and while the framerate does waver, it does so rarely.

Using the suit powers allows and even requires the player to use some strategy when engaging groups of enemies, especially early on as the enemies become more varied and more difficult, but never smarter. Unfortunately, common glitches manifest where a death-and-reload will cause scripted enemies to become frozen in place, robbing the game of challenge. Diligent hoarders of Ceph energy will also soon find themselves able to nearly max out the suit upgrades, leading to late game moments where a cloaked sprint can avoid engaging the enemy altogether.

Crysis 2 lacks the open world of its predecessor or Far Cry 2, causing it to fall into a nebulous middle where it is influenced heavily by Call of Duty but not yet as horribly linear, leaving it a refreshing change from claustrophobic corridor shooting.

Shame about the story.