Crysis Genre: First Person Shooter/ Sci Fi Console: Xbox 360/ Ps3/ PC Players: 1 player/ multiplayer Developer: Crytek/ Crytek UK Release Date: March 24th 2011

the first crysis was a first person shooter which was well known throughout the world for being virtually unplayable thanks to it's realistic graphics which still haven't been beat. Of course a sequel was pretty much guaranteed from the start and thanks to piracy and the ever growing console generation crytek made the choice that they should develop the sequel for consoles as well as the good old pc. Now that it's here, it's time to see if this game is worthy competitor for all the other big time shooters out there or if it's just another wanna be who is desperately trying to impress us all.

Plot: The plot of crysis is pretty simple and mundane at first. You play as a marine called Alcatraz who is given a super suit and told that he is now the only one who can save the world from the invading aliens, and from that point you would think the story would pan out the same way the Halo series did. But halfway the story starts to pick up. I can't spoil it, but eventually you'll begin to learn more about the aliens, the suit and it all leads to interesting territory that I haven't seen in video game before. of course the characters in game are also interesting...sometimes. You have the smart business man, the officer with a tragic past and the conspiracy nut job who is quite sane, all of who have a role to play and twist the story in multiple ways. Meanwhile you have angry commander who hates you and his enemy, angry commander who wants to save world, which I guess couldn't be sidestepped as so many stories these days have to feature these characters. and I suppose the same can be said about the interesting characters a few years from now, when every single story starts using them. Besides a slow start and a few generic characters crysis 2 plot does begin to go up there with the best. Unfortunately it still doesn't beat some of the other sci fi shooters out there who have been praised for there detailed plots.

Gameplay: Of course one of the things the first crysis was praised for was it's amazing game play which have you use a range of diff rent tactics to take down your opponents and it's pretty much the same thing here. You can sneak up behind them and make their heads do an impressive 360 degree turn, or you can grab a giant machine gun and rip them to shreds with those massive bullets. Your also able to be a bit more creative, for instance throwing some c4 onto a car, kicking it off a building, let it crush someone and then blow it up.

the game also feels a lot more fluent than the first crysis. Your easily able to change between cloak and maximum armour, and combined with the fast paced gunfight and...sneaky stealth, it all combines into, as crytek put it "beautiful combat"

although you feel like an invincible human predator, the game does have to impend you in some way. all these actions cost energy which can be depleted rather quickly, meaning you'll have to plan everything out before you get into a fight, which is helped thank to the tactical visor which will show you different options you can take while fighting with the option to customize your suit with different modules that affect performance and the ability to customize your weapons with various attachments.

There are problems though. the stealth does sometimes feel clunky what with enemies still sometimes being detect you even if you are cloaked. The AI is also rather clunky what with the only real threat being the aliens themselves, which only comes in the form of the stalkers who sneak behind you and push you over onto your heavily armoured face. the other more human threats seem a bit dopey think that rushing you, a super powered death machine, will obviously result in your death. As for your allies, well they do the same thing against the aliens, which is you only cloned several times.

as for the muliplayer? well, there isn't much to say. it's fun yes and the added option of super powers is fun but I can't help but feel it's basically Cod meets halo reach. You have your perks and your armour unlocks and your class customization. it just doesn't feel very fresh. You'll enjoy it yes, but probably not as much as other games.

Graphics:

"Can it run Crysis?" that will be the first achievement you will get for this game, unless you go straight to multiplayer. The first one had some of the best graphics ever seen in a video game, which I guess is true, so it would be pretty difficult for crysis 2 to improve on them. Now crysis 2 does look beautiful. In fact I think it looks better than every single game I've played on the xbox... so far. Not only does everything look nice with textures, models and colour being used creatively, but all the physics of the game surpass others out at this moment in time. Buildings collapse realistically! water looks more like water! Aliens melt like frozen jelly! It all work so well that you would think that this would be an improvement over the first crysis. And yet...the first one still looks better. Textures have even more detail, characters look better and this isn't surprising. Crysis is, for the moment, the best looking game around and even today most new pc's have trouble playing it. So crytek obviously had to make sacrifices to make it work on all our favorite consoles. So despite it being less Superior to the previous entry, I still think it looks pretty awesome.

Sound: It might just be me, but if you ever played the first crysis you would have found the sound effect amazing, the music beautiful but the voice acting...well at points...terrible. It's like they got a random person off the street and told them to act. and the same goes for this game as well. There's this particular character in the game who, although only appearing for a few minutes, make some pretty big revelations to the character. And I swear his voice was just so over the top and bored at the same time that my ears crumpled up so that I couldn't listen to him any more. Luckily some characters do have some well executed voices like prophet, with emotion and depth being pored into them by these actors. The sound effects in game are still top notch. From the aliens strange form of communication to the satisfy sizzle of the Xvolt, you just know the developers where keen to make this game sound amazing. The music which has two themes conducted by the great hans zimmer is also well made and superbly well done. My shaggy hear is tipped of to everyone involved in the sound development my ears where healed back into there rightful position thanks to you...until chino started talking. Ow.

Conclusion: Crysis is probably one of up and coming stars in the sci fi generation and thanks to crysis 2, I think it's safe to say that this game series will soon become as well loved as mass effect and halo. This game just work and I'm sure several other gamers out there will agree with me when I say this game has surpassed it's expectations. Still the game does have problems but I'm sure they won't make you go other into a blood thirsty rage. well done crysis 2. you've earned this nice shiny GOLD