The first-person shooter often exemplifies the term ‘formulaic.’ How often have you waded through masses of faceless Nazi’s, and how many times have you saved the world/universe from the machinations of a ruthless enemy hellbent of the enslavement of humanity? How many times can we be funneled down the same corridor with the same shotgun shooting the same six skins of the same enemy?
Too often. Too many times. Crytek, it seems, understands this all too well. Their efforts in the FPS category have been universally well-received, and are almost universally lauded for their creativity, technical prowess, open-ended gameplay and advancement of the genre as a whole.
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Crysis 2 is no different. We are talking prettier, faster, cleaner, tighter, on a bigger scale than anything else out there, and in a more scalable engine than Crytek has ever achieved. There are few games that can stand with Crysis visually, and almost all of those are titles with far less in the way of draw-distance, and with transition-loading and less impressive physics models.
But that’s not what’s important here. I come not to bury Crytek, but they may well be coming to do just that to the major FPS franchises. As an predominantly-focused FPS gamer, I happen to play . . . well, pretty much everything. I will play the hell out of your medal of battlefield’s halo of duty, I have to admit that I am currently, and frankly have been, experiencing a tremendous amount of FPS fatigue. Its the same one-soldier-against-the-world story, the same online-leveling-weapon-unlock system that I’ve seen in shooter-after-nazi/spetznaz-slaughtering shooter.
Now I am fully aware that it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants that one can achieve greatness, or something vaguely like that, but what I have always enjoyed about Crytek’s titles is that they spin. You know you’re playing one of their titles, even if you can’t exactly specify why. There is a sense of scale, of mass, of import to their titles. Even Far Cry (PC) with its totally derivative plot-line (why yes, Cerli, we have in fact read the Island of Dr. Moreau) had a level of maturity of game-play that is still almost unrivaled in modern shooters – and most of those by the same development studio.
There is a nearly-universally-lauded moment that is often referenced by game journalist, reviews, gamers, and enthusiasts: the first time you landed on Halo-Proper, and you viewed the vast, open world before you. This moment was somewhat less exciting to those of us that had played FPS’ in their natural habitat (the PC, sassy) but was admittedly nonetheless impressive. This moment holds not a candle to the first time I moved out into the lush open jungles and gorgeous clear waters of the archipeligo of Far Cry. The first time you realized the only thing keeping you from going anywhere you desired was the hordes of well-armed mercenaries and rabidly hungry mutants.
The original Crysis was a similar eye-opener, due in part to the sheer amount of cash-money involved in running the damn thing. But on an adequate rig, Crysis would make grown men cry and pets whimper in the corner from sheer, sexy, luscious beauty. It married the open, choreographed-sandbox environments of its predecessor with some of the most unbelievably advanced technology in the world, and put Crytek on the map as the industry leader in bleeding-edge engine tech.
Crysis 2 is a horse of a different color, but unarguably from the same bloodline. It’s gorgeous, technically without peer, and in short, a breath of fresh air in a genre that is suffering from too much in the way of identical massively-muscled mohawked macho men dual-wielding SMG’s in defense of freedom. Is it perfect? No. No its not. Is it completely devoid of the demons that plague modern FPS design? Not quite. But what Crysis 2 is, is the smartest FPS I’ve played since . . . well . . . Crysis.
You can jump on at least thirty websites and read a review of Crysis 2. I’m not going to belabor the obvious: its excellent. Its beautiful, and fun, and creative, and a very clean derivation of what makes Crytek’s games so damn good. What I am going to talk about is why. Why every major and minor FPS developer needs to play this game, and learn from it – in short, a how-to make a FPS that wins.
1. Crysis 2 is in full possession of its own identity: This is not Halo or Battlefield or Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. Crytek has built a totally identifiable product with its own game-play mechanics and style that do not ape, copy, duplicate, or in any way steal from other titles. The best franchises are completely identifiable in their own right, from the shortest of glances, and nothing out there looks like Crysis.
2. Crysis 2 builds a world that makes sense: Now, don’t get me wrong. I am aware that Crysis 2 is as much War of the Worlds as it is Cloverfield meets District 9 and requires the requisite suspension of disbelief of science fiction, but what Crysis does, perhaps best, is make sense. You are made to feel like a wildly powerful, versatile force, with many and varied options available to you to solve the problems in front of you and you are never in a position to wonder why you were chosen, why you can absorb bullet-after-bullet, and why the world depends on you. The conditions and rules of the world you inhabit serve to inform that to the most stringent degree. The nanosuit itself is a wonderful device, and does wonders to excuse the many and varied conceits of the FPS world. You have a heads-up display because the suit gives it to you. You can take damage that would shatter a normal man because the suit allows you to. You are the one chance for hope because you alone are tied to a technology reverse engineered from the technology recovered from the Tunguska and Area 51 contact events. There are, at least in a game-play sense, no loose ends that the world of the game does not handle and answer in a comprehensive way. Take THAT, bare-armed gigantically muscled-man standing up after straddling an exploding grenade in your common FPS! Take that, I say!
3. Crysis 2 weaves a mature story without falling victim to hyperbole or over-reaching. Crysis 2 places you in the shoes of a marine thrown into an unenviable position – you have unconsciously and without choice inherited a prototype suit that gives you the ability to be super-human at the cost of your humanity. You can run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and soak up more damage than any human should be able to, but the strain it puts on your body soon becomes apparent. Just 10 hours after first donning the suit, you have shattered bones, ruptured organs, and other bodily damage that makes it obvious that you will never again be able to function without the suit. The suit begins to expand into your body to repair it, and you are now in a position where you can never remove it without killing yourself. The aliens themselves are a malignant, almost elemental force that are simultaneously terrifying, intimidating, and enigmatic. It is blatantly apparent that they are out to wipe humanity off the face of the planet, but we are never given a validated reason, and this makes the almost-faceless Ceph one of the more horrifying enemies in interactive entertainment. Finally, and perhaps most importantly to me, the arc of the story is both manageable and believable.
4. Crysis 2 makes you care: Throughout the course of the title, the emotional progression is thus: one goes from shocked horror at the barbarity of the Ceph (the liquification and collection of human remains to restructure for bio-engineering projects in Ceph Technology) to intimidation at the sheer power of their military might, to despair at the havoc they have wrought on a beautifully recognizable NYC (a moment of particular tragedy is the severed and shattered head of Lady Liberty half submerged in a street) to a defiant hope that all may not be lost, despite the fact that Central Park is clearly no longer a viable dog-walkers destination-of-choice. The final moments of the campaign are among the most visually impressive I have ever seen in any interactive entertainment title, and should not be missed by anyone with a vague interest in FPS titles, science fiction, New York, or people who care about “Oh shit!” moments.
5. Crysis 2 is smart. Call of Duty, and Halo have their own logic. If an encounter doesn’t go well, you change tactics – usually engaging a different enemy from a different position with a different weapon, or try to utilize the AI against itself. Crysis 2 is not terribly different in this regard, but where it distinguishes itself is in the sheer variety and functionality of the tactics at your disposal, and perhaps more importantly, the broadening of situational factors you must juggle. I have reloaded the same checkpoint 5 times, and each time, the AI in Crysis 2 reacted differently. You cannot plan your actions based on predictions you have made regarding the AI based on your experience. You cannot rely on the fact that an enemy will pop his head out of a door at such-and-such a height at this exact timing, because in Crysis 2, he’s already behind you with two of his friends. I enjoy chess, and I rarely have found such stimulating problem-solving gameplay in an FPS, but Crysis 2 passed this mark with flying colors.
I wish to make something clear: I enjoy first-person-shooters as a rule, and while I have used Halo, Call of Duty, and Battlefield as counter-examples in this piece, I am in no way calling into question their validity. Their mention in-and-of-itself serves to validate their status as juggernauts and benchmarks of the genre. But at the end of the day, the things that make them great also make them slaves to their own greatness, and it is refreshing to see Crytek continue to walk its own line.
I heartily recommend you sit down with Crysis 2 and take it for a spin. It might just change your mind about shooters.
Also, check out our Crysis 2/Splitfish FragFX Giveaway Contest Right Here!