Okay Geek Farm
First Impressions - Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo
Alex Tretrop
Crysis made a name for itself when it debuted as a PC title with jaw-dropping visuals back in 2007. Ever since then, console owners have been waiting desperately for their shot to get in on the franchise’s awe-inspiring scenery. Well, the wait is all lot easier now that Crysis 2’s multiplayer demo has hit the Xbox 360 (exclusively on Xbox Live at the moment.)
The demo, which comes equipped with one fairly small map called Skyline and two game modes Team Instant Action and Crash Site, turned out to actually be pretty fun but had a few major faults that could keep it back from being something players will continue to play long term. The gameplay, which feels extremely similar to Call of Duty, is diversified by the addition of the nanosuit which, like the first game, allows you to augment certain parts of your suit for a given situation.
Nanosuit Abilities
Diverting power to your armor, cloaking, speed or jump makes you think about each encounter much more tactically as the energy to your suit is limited. You can divert to multiple sections but this just chews through energy and really doesn’t help you in the long run. It’s an interesting idea, that works fairly well in practice. Spamming of abilities is possible but discouraged because of little disadvantages for each mode on your suit. Diverting power to armor for example, slows your movement speed dramatically and makes the majority of players only activate it when they’re in combat situations.
Killstreaks
Other than that though, it really feels like a weaker man’s Call of Duty knockoff. Seriously, there are killstreaks, and they are pretty much identical to the system seen in COD; Three kills gets you a radar, five - an air strike, and 7 is… you guessed it: a helicopter gunship! Alongside that there are custom classes, perks and customizable weapons but none of them really feel as polished as a Call of Duty or Battlefield title. And still speaking about the negatives, in particular the thing that stood out to me was the sound design, because it’s awful! The guns sound like absolute garbage, the announcers are loud and obnoxious, and many times I found the game having two of these “announcements” at once. My god, might as well just play Crysis 2 on mute.
But let’s end this on a something that Crysis really gets right. That’s to say the game modes. While Instant Action is your standard deathmatch that we’ve all seen before, Crash Site is what’s truly got me coming back again and again to this demo. Simply described as a variant of King of the Hill where the hill is constantly moving, the two teams have to battle for control of alien pods that have crash landed on the map. But, here’s where it gets interesting — the pods themselves literally crash into the map, meaning that an alien drop ship will actually fly above the battlefield and drop the pod, which allows you to guess the location of the next hill. It’s a simple variant, but man, does it ever spice up the King of the Hill gametype. It’s actually fun to play right now! Oh, and the pods explode just before another pod comes in, which is extremely entertaining to watch, especially when there are people still in its vicinity.
Overall
I’m kind of surprised that the game has a fairly competent multiplayer considering the game’s original wasn’t built for it. However, Crysis 2’s success in the online community will all depend on its variety of modes and how well the game plays in other maps. What’s fairly surprising is that there are some major texture pop in and framerate issues, but I’m hoping this was just part of the unfinished beta experience. How this all ends up translating into the full game is anyone’s guess, but I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see when it releases in March on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.
