Crysis 2

Played on: Xbox 360 (yeah, I know, I do it a lot. I don't have a PS3 yet...)
Available on: PS3, Xbox 360, and PC
Played it for: roughly 20-30 hours

RATING: 7.5/10

Summary:
Humanity is falling. There are radical terrorist groups infecting all the major cities across the world, and they are far to powerful to be dealt with by any existing military. If that wasn't enough, the entire world is undergoing an epidemic far more potent than any other current disease, and there is no cure. Humanity's very existence depends on the use of one technology, a technology that can both end the terrorism, and, with some more research, eliminate the bacteria. The Nanosuit. You play as "Alcatraz," a military grunt sent in to help fight the war in New York. However, when you arrive, you are blown up. Yep, pretty instant climax. But don't worry, the game doesn't end there. You are saved by one of the last remaining super-soldiers, one who wears the Nanosuit, and as his last parting gift, he puts his suit onto you to save your life, and kills himself to sever the symbiosis between himself and his Nanosuit. He was going to die anyway, he had the disease.

Review:
It seems a bit old.
Crysis 2 came into the world claiming it would solve all of game-dom's problems. It was going to be revolutionary; it's multiplayer would make CoD commit suicide, and it's campaign would solve world hunger... well, all hyperbole aside, it really didn't do much. As the sequel to the original Crysis, a game that really blew my mind, I was really hoping that this game would be just as awe-inspiring as it's prequel. It left me a bit disappointed. I mean, sure, anyone expecting it to be better than Call of Duty: Black Ops would definitely be satisfied, but it can't really come close to titles like Gears of War or Mass Effect. The problem is that it tends to only exist for effect. Every chance it gets, it blows up in your face and throws an invisible alien down your pants, and it leaves itself no room to be dynamic. The thing I really enjoyed about Crysis 1 was that you could do it anywhere between guns blazing and stealthy as a snake in the night, and you wouldn't have a hard time completing it. But even if you don't compare it to its father, Crysis 2 just comes off as being overused, and dare I say it...bland.

That is not to say, however, that it doesn't have any redeeming qualities. At least it does quite a good job of combining Call of Duty and  Halo. It has a lot of the more quick, in-your-face events like many of the recent CoD campaigns, but it is like you are playing it as a Spartan. The ability to use armor mode and cloaking are also more Halo-esque, but you can also activate these at will instead of needing to activate them by finding power-ups. These, combined with the Nanosuit's "Nano-catalyst Upgrades" offer an adaptability that neither Halo nor CoD can give. Originally, I played the game on the easiest difficulty, and found it a bit boring, but I have since gone back and played it on "supersoldier" (the hardest difficulty) and it came across as much better and the upgrades were more necessary.

Multiplayer:
Seems like an extension of campaign.
I suppose that the multiplayer combines several good things about different games. It tends to take on a more Halo-type feeling with the multitude of abilities offered by the Nanosuit, just with modern weaponry. It tends to play more like Homefront or Battlefield: Bad Company 2 than anything else. However, even though it is different, that does not make it better. It still leaves room for people to play like a jack*ss, and camp in a corner with an LMG and cloaking, but I digress. Xbox Live will be Xbox Live, and no one can change that.

Crysis 2 was good, but not perfect. It still could have used some fine tuning before release, and the whole experience should have been more like Crysis 1, but it was good for what it was, and it is probably worth buying.

NOTE ABOUT THE NEXT REVIEW:
The next review will be the Battlefield 3 Beta! I haven't had the opportunity to review a beta so far, so let me know if I miss anything/should include other things/etc...

Second note, I know I have been putting off the Gears of War 3 review, but that is because I haven't had the time to finish the extensive campaign yet. I thought it would be better to review several games quickly just by taking a few hours to revisit them, then writing my impressions than to take more than two weeks to get out the one for Gears 3. I can say with confidence that the next review after the BF3 Beta will be Gears 3.