Cysis 2 Review

Crysis 2 brings some new things to the table for the first person shooter genre of video gaming. While keeping all the good ideas and methods that have come before it the game employs two never before seen abilities for a f.p.s. The first being an armor mode, and the second being an invisibility mode. 

The armor mode, which is used most often in the game, protects the player from gunfire for a short period of time, and the invisibility does what the name suggests. Blends you in and makes the player disappear. Both are new and highly innovative into this system.

The story is simple, you must take back earth with your man: Alcatraz. You, the player, are given a nano suit and told to, essentially, go fight the good fight and figure out the cryptic message that Prophet gave to you from the get go. Seems like a good starting off point. 

The game does well in the mechanics of shooting and working with your armor boost and invisibility but it lacks many things after a while of playing. The AI seems to have some glitches here and there, as in sometimes NPC’s will run into each other, stare at you while you’re gunning them down, or even hang around with the aliens who are supposed to be the enemies of the game. Also, the story begins to drag around half way through, the game feels monotonous with constantly offing aliens and hardening your armor the entire time. Rarely, it seems, will you use the invisibility feature other than to maybe hide when you’ve taken too much damage. 

Honestly, I was expecting a lot more from this game. Most of it I think came from the story. Around half way I got the feeling of: "Why do I really care what happens to these people?" It didn’t suck me in and it certainly didn’t make me feel like I accomplished much when I beat the game. Which, when I did, I was glad to return it just to be rid of the game. 

But the ideas and concept is what makes the game. The areas that are fought in are well detailed and are very well constructed. The surroundings look like how a destroyed city being invaded by aliens would look. Very impressive on that mark. The cinematics were well put together and beautifully rendered. 

Yet for all this, it isn’t a game I would gladly play again nor would I recommend it to anyone. I’m a fan of first person shooters, I like them just as much as the next person. But when the story gets stale, and the game play is the same over and over, it gets taxing to play any game. Especially a first person shooter where the challenge is: What else can we do in this game besides shoot bad guys? 

I give this game a 3 out of 5.