Earlier in the week, Kombo and a number of other media outlets were sent to New York City to partake in the festivities of the word premier unveiling of Crysis 2. Since the first game was a PC title, it’s probable that not many of you ever played the game, but if you did, you likely remember the mesmerizing graphics. Home console gamers will now be treated to those very same graphics and it’s going to be a joyride for all involved.
Crysis 2 takes place in a ravaged and destroyed New York City after aliens invade and begin their assault on mankind. Equipped with advanced alien weaponry and intelligence, these aliens are ready to takedown mankind once and for all after failing to do so in Crysis. Everything in New York is consumed by flames and you are the last to fend off these invaders and save the world from the brink of destruction. To properly give you the power necessary to complete this task is the Nanosuit 2, the most advanced piece of technology on the planet.
We were treated to two different looks of the game, one with you battling against Crynet Security, whom are PMC. In this first section they are the bad guys, but the game’s story will become far more complex than that and the Crynet story is deep and volatile. The actual gameplay shown here was intense and graphically very rewarding. It opened with your character perched on a building looking at the roofs of the surrounding New York structures. The player then zoomed into Crynet Security PMC members patrolling a rooftop and you hear them talking about your character. Expanding on the abilities found in Crysis, you’ll be able to enter a longer invisibility mode this time around for stealth gameplay, and that’s exactly what happened here. By going invisible for sneak attacks, the player was able to wait until the moment was right to shoot an enemy or use a sneak melee attack to neutralize the soldier. Of course, we also saw some intense gunning action in this section, too. After exiting the cloaking ability, the player slowly stalked a soldier by watching them walk behind several solar panels and then opened fire, completely destroying the solar panels and the soldier, but this alerted more soldier who were stationed across the way, whom proceeded to fire in you direction. To start off this attack with a bang, one enemy was shooting machine gun round in your vicinity, but the other one shot a rocket, which caused the rock structure to fall apart and forced the player to move to a new location for better protection. This gameplay demonstration utilized all the functions of the Nanosuit 2. Stealth was used, increased armor protection against bullet fire, and sensory to listen in on enemy communication.
The second gameplay section shown had the player battling the alien invaders. This scene opened up with your character being captured and taken away by Crynet. After boarding a helicopter to evacuate the area, a sudden quaking occurs just before the building by your side gets destroyed by an alien attack, thus causing your chopper to crash and leaving you in the middle of an incoming alien attack. What differentiates this building destruction from other games was that the building didn’t appear to be static or have a different color palette to it from the rest of the outside world. Although the game was setting up for an attack to occur, everything happened so fast and seamlessly, the destruction of the building looked natural and it kept the whole environment feeling alive as one thing and left you wondering where the attack would be coming from.
Upon waking from the crash, your Nanosuit isn’t functional right away and you watch as several massive alien soldiers’ approach PMC soldiers on the ground and unleash gunfire on them to be sure they don’t survive. A couple of the straggling PMC soldiers made an effort to shoot the aliens with machine guns and a grenade launcher, but it was to no avail. Once again, you are alone and you must fight for your life. As soon as the Nanosuit got up to speed and began to function, the player picked up the grenade launched left behind from the killed PMC soldier. The alien forces then maneuvered their way behind cars for cover from the weapon. We saw the player shoot on the right side of one of the aliens, but it would then run to the left to get away from the blast and explosion. Even when positioning a shot between two enemies, they each scattered away for cover.
The A.I. is very intelligent this time around and utilizes cover and evasions techniques far more than they did in Crysis. This was further demonstrated when two aliens flanked the player. Instead of being flanked, he met with one of the aliens head-on and began to shoot the gigantic beast with a shotgun and threw a melee attack with the butt of the weapon at him which caused it to step-back and the secondary alien attacked from the player from the side. During the battle with just that one alien, the vision and location of the secondary alien was completely lost. It soon retreated back towards a building, but it wasn’t getting away. Several rounds of grenade fire were shot surrounding it, thus leading to its explosive demise.
Crytek knows how to make great graphics and after Crysis, no one should ever doubt what this team can create. Despite being early in the development stages, the demonstration looked amazing and was already running beautifully on the Xbox 360 hardware. With the advanced physics engine in place, all the destructible environments gave off a realistic vibe with the way the rocks fell and reacted upon crashing down to the concrete road. Killzone 2 may currently be the best looking FPS, but, based on this footage, it has just been outdone. The city of New York was amazingly rendered so realistically that you’ll feel like you are serving mankind and the city is its last saving grace. If you can protect this city, then you can protect the whole world. It’s still many months away from completion, but what was shown will impress all shooting fans.
Crysis 2 is slated for a holiday 2010 release and the wait is going to be a long one. Sadly, we didn’t get any hands-on time at the event, but seeing the game in motion on a home console was truly amazing. It may be going up against Halo: Reach this holiday, but Crysis 2 looks to have the makings to takedown Halo. Hopefully, testing the game out directly will be in the near future.