craig5320

Crysis 2 (PC) Review

Set in 2023, some 3 years after the events of the original Crysis, Crysis 2 moves the action from the remote setting of the Lingshan Islands to New York City with the single player story written by author Richard Morgan. The game then takes us across New York as we attempt to save the city from an alien invasion force while trying to avoid or fight C.E.L.L forces who are a private military company run by the Crynet Corporation.

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Jac

I agree with your review for the most part. The production is excellent, ,music score is great and the graphics are amazing. It's probably one of the best looking games released in ages.

However you will at times come across really shoddy looking textures that momentarily kick you out of the immersive feeling you get when playing. AI will often act monumentally stupid, not reacting to the player at all. Or they will be able to see/hear you when you are in a tunnel or the nanosecond you leave cloak. Some sounds are bugged with Soldiers repeating phrases over and over and the audio jumping all around the soundspace. Nanocatalyst which is an important part of the SP campaign and used to level up your Nanosuit disappears if you turn off the game to take a break. Upgrades to your suit disappear after resuming. The multiplayer is probably the best fun I've had online since 2142 but that experience is being ruined by the hundreds of hackers that are infesting the game - why, because seemingly the game has no anti-cheat whatsoever. All stats are client side and you can edit them with Notepad. I've never experienced such blatant and rampant cheating in a game.

Crytek announced a patch would be released last week to address these issues - this hasn't happened. Crytek stated there would be an announcement concerning the status of DX11 in the game around release - that didn't happen. The silence from Crytek regarding the many issues the game has is deafening.

The game was a flagship PC title so understandably many PC players are disappointed with the apparent console focus this game has had. Adjust you TV. press enter to start. No support for DX11 or even DX10. In relation to Crysis it's like one step forward, two steps back.

I believe the game was released in an unfinished state and it's a shame for a great game to be tarnished with these numerous problems. Unless these issues are sorted out quickly, ie the next few days, I think many people will give up on what could have been an awesome game.

Veridian3

Interesting thoughts. I guess everyones experience will differ... I for example havent seen (or heard) any significant bugs in my time using the game (just like the reviewer) but then today, randomly when testing for a GFX review, I saw some bizarre AI decision making... hadnt seen that before. It wasn't necessarily wrong... just different to what I would have expected.

darkunknown88

Is Crysis 2 as resource intensive as Crysis Warhead? I am not whether to buy this game or not. Also I noticed in the reviews that ATI cards have problems running this game. Here are my laptop specs:
Core 2 duo 2.26 ghz
2gb RAM
2x ATI 4850
7200 rpm HDD
Are these specs enough to run the game consistently at a low res. of 1440x900? Please advise.

blibbax

If the MP demo is anything to go by, yes. I ran it at that res with a similar system (minus the dual GPUs).

You might have to wait for ATI driver optimisations, but I'm sure they will come.

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Dyre Straits

The aforementioned patch was finally released and does fix a few of the more blatant bugs and issues. Among them, the one that was really turning me off: Losing Melee when dying and restarting from the last saved checkpoint.

Had I known that the game was...apparently...never going to get a DX 11 release, I'd have bought the console [360] version. Crytek made a huge mistake, IMHO, by releasing this limited to DX 9.

I think we need to recall that Crytek did state that they were not going to be releasing PC-exclusive titles after Crysis was released. Anyone else recall that? It's a shame that they've gone the route of simply porting a console version to the PC.

All of that said, I've almost completed the SP part of the game even with the frustration of losing Melee and having to completely exit the game and restart. Then, losing all the nano-catalyst points to boot.

As a prior commercial gaming Beta Tester [for Atari and Infogrames], this felt all too much like doing Beta testing during the game and reporting bugs to the devs.

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StuartK

I think it's fair to say that Crytek have been more focused on the console side of this release than the PC side, which is of course disappointing giving its flagship status in the PC community.

Let's hope Crytek made good on their promises and deliver the patches and upgrades to support DX10 & DX11.

Dyre Straits

From what I'm reading around the WEB and on the MyCrysis Forum, Crytek is coming off as saying they never "officially" promised a patch for DX 10-11. They seem to be passing the buck and saying the "misinformation" was published due to a misunderstanding of a Tweet by one of their engineers....

PC gamers won't soon forget this debacle.

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Jac

Since the 1.2 patch things have improved markedly. There are still hackers in MP but not at the ridiculous levels there were. Hackers are a fact of online multiplayer and until a foolproof system that can identify and maim cheats we'll just have to put up with it.

SP bugs are 'mostly' dealt with to the point where I can now finish the campaign. Probably Sunday as tomorrow looks like another glorious day in England.

Now for the cream, DX11 patch has been officially announced. No news on when or what.

thokon

one of the best looking game ever played