E3 2010: Crysis 2 (Impressions)

by: John - posted: 7/2/2010 4:58:00 PM

One thing I came away with from seeing Crysis 2 was it’s do damn beautiful. Crytek’s really done a tremendous job at making an incredibly impressive engine and EA showed off the PC version on an incredibly huge LCD TV.

Crysis 2 takes place in the urban jungle of New York as the aliens have made a full on assault on the Big Apple. So we’re moving from the island setting that Crytek is famously known for in both Far Cry and Crysis to something different for these folks.

The nanosuit is back, of course, and offers up some more features. There are a few ways you can play the game using your nanosuit and two shown in the demo were a predator mode and a warrior mode. The predator mode gets its name from the movie naturally, and it serves as a more stealth oriented approach. You can turn on the cloaking feature that makes you almost invisible with that subtle light refraction effect in play. The warrior mode is all about brute strength and this is the one where you would use to kick things around for example.

The demo also showed off a heat vision that really did invoke the predator feeling when viewed. Another cool feature was the ability to tag enemies with a feature of the suit, Doing so would generate a red outline around the enemy letting you know where they were when you or they went behind obstacles.

When watching the demo, it was all about cinematic violence. I mean there were so many things that happened in and around the main character. I think the team used the term choreographed sandbox to describe what they are aiming for in Crysis 2. But make no mistake about it, it was explosions and bullets throughout the fifteen minute demo with some great looking scripted action in the mix.

One of the cooler sequences showed the main character shooting a sticky bomb to the back side of a taxi. He then kicks the taxi towards and enemy and as it gets there, he shoots the taxi again with another bomb causing a massive explosion taking out all those around it.

The gunfights and various action showed were all visually incredible and just from the quick demo I saw, I could tell the engine that Crytek designed was top notch. The visuals were some of the best I’ve seen that day but a game isn’t just about visuals. There’s a ton of action shown and the scene that ended the demo was quite impressive.

A very large building comes crashing down as chaos reigns with people and aliens around you. The building’s demise is so visually intense, I just sat there amazed at what the engine could accomplish. I mean there were windows shattering, parts of the building falling apart everywhere, and dust clouds just building up all around as it came tumbling down. I hope that EA releases the footage because it’s just so cool to watch.

While I didn’t like the turn in Crysis where it became an alien attack story, I’ll give Crysis 2 a chance partly because of how amazing the engine looks and also I did enjoy two-thirds of the first game. I think they have some amazingly talented developers over there at Crytek and Crysis 2 should be the next game that all the PC folks ask if it can run well with the latest graphics cards. Now, let’s hope the gameplay matches the level of quality the game engine can produce visually.