Now, the studio is back, with Crysis 2, the next installment in its first-person shooter, running on the brand new CryEngine 3 technology, which promises to not only achieve even more impressive graphics than the ones that made the first games so popular, but also achieve them on a wide array of PCs, not just on
extremely powerful ones, and on consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
Crytek has been hyping up the game for the past few months, so it's time to see whether Crysis 2 manages to blow the competition out of the beautifully rendered water or remains a niche hit, just like its predecessors.
It's hard to talk about the story of the Crysis franchise as a whole, let alone the one of Crysis 2, as things are pretty much a huge mess. While you were deserted alongside your squad companions on a tropical island in the first two games, in the new one, you're taking on marines, mercenaries and aliens right in New York city.
The game struggles to keep some connection to the first two titles, but it's extremely convoluted and you'll get a headache just trying to follow the different plot threads.
You're playing as Alcatraz, a marine that gets the upgraded nanosuit from Prophet, who briefly appeared both in Crysis 1 and Warhead. The switching of hands, or more like bodies, is extremely fast, and you'll immediately start following orders from a researcher that you were tasked to find.
For the remainder of the game, you'll be going through all of New York, getting orders from all sorts of people and trying to uncover the source of the destruction while staying alive in front of mercenaries and/or new types of aliens called the Ceph.
While at first you may be inclined to start trying to follow the story, it's best just to go with the flow and follow your objectives, not worrying about the different one-dimensional characters and their various connections.
Overall, Crysis 2 is by far the best-looking game of the year, with Crytek managing to truly showcase the power of its CryEngine 3.
Even if the story fails to attract players, the gameplay, especially once you start getting used to the nanosuit's powers, will definitely keep you connected to Crysis 2's campaign, while the multiplayer offers a very different experience than other shooter games, including Call of Duty: Black Ops.
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