Crysis 1 was an average game with great visuals.

Crysis Warhead was a good game (but very short) with great visuals. (Downfall is length)

Crysis 2 is a good game with great visuals. (Downfall is MP)

I really find it ironic how the community is reacting to Crysis 2. When Crysis 1 first came out no one gave a **** about it. Either people used it to test their GTX 285 SLI rigs or bashed it as unoptimized junk. Now here is Crysis 2, a game that has just as amazing graphics (in different respects of course) but runs well on my GT 240 with Very High settings @ 1600x900.

But how did the community react? They started calling it consolized crap. Sure the graphics options and “Press Start to Begin” are a little annoying, but how about trying to focus on the gameplay itself than trying to find little errors that don’t affect the game at all?

Look at the singleplayer. Crysis 1 had a mediocre singleplayer. Looked great…yes. Had some new things…sort of. Gameplay…ok. Crysis didn’t really bring anything new to the table, besides the Nanosuit. Having a somewhat open world was not new. Vehicles were not new. An island environment was not new. It wasn’t a bad game by any stretch. But the gameplay was nothing to tout. Sure it was fun for a while, but a gamer would have a lot more fun playing something like Mass Effect or even Half Life 2.

Truth be told, the only thing that actually kept me going in Crysis was the graphics. I bet if my settings were turned to low, I wouldn’t have had even half the fun. The level of visual quality was so great that it made you want to see more. Almost gave the false impression of an awesome game. More like a long sight-seeing trip. The story was crap. “OMG Save the archeologists! Oh no aliens! They took Prophet! Crawl into that cave and come out! Oh no it’s all icy! RUN!” That’s basically all it was. No depth.

All-in-all. It was a tech demo. No one played Crysis in mass. The multiplayer was mainly a flop. (Crysis Wars was an improvement, but who the hell would play Wars with better games like Battlefield and CoD 4 (only good CoD) out on the market? (Although I will admit, Wars is better than Crysis 2 MP)
Crysis Warhead fixed some of Crysis’s mistakes. It added more action and fast paced gameplay. It made the load more manageable for systems. And it felt, FUN. I had more fun playing any individual level in Warhead than I did in the entire Crysis combined. Add on Rygel’s texture mod and XConfig 1.3 and you’re all set.

What Crysis 2 did was take all of the action from Warhead, and place it in a new environment, New York City. Nothing bad about that. They made the environments a bit smaller. (Of course. It must fit in the console’s 512MB memory.). But they made up for that with more vertical gameplay, detachable HMGs, more weapons, suit modules, etc. Personally, I found the singleplayer to be a whole lot of fun. One of the better games among recent titles. It paces itself. Starting with small Cell battles, progressing to full scale street battles with aliens. It’s not like Black Ops in which you start with some cool slow motion cutscene and you run across the street until you get to the next level where you see more slow motion cutscenes until you get bored.
It’s flaw however, is multiplayer. Yes it’s fast paced and fun. But it suffers the same fate as Call of Duty. It doesn’t LAST. Once you get bored you either buy another CoD game or you buy some overpriced map pack. When I first played Battlefield: Bad Company 2, I was blown away. It has a moderate learning curve, but it keeps you playing forever.

The story in Crysis 2 is flawed as well. If you read the book Crysis: Legion it makes sense and actually turns out to be a nice story, but the game itself only gives you half of the picture. It doesn’t tell you why Lockhart hates you. Or why Hargreave seems to know everything. Or who Rasch is. Or why the Cell want your ass. (At least properly…no.) You have to read the book to figure everything out, and most gamers won’t do this.

About the graphics, yes it is DirectX 9. But the game still looks fantastic. Not necessarily better than Crysis 1, considering the scale, but still one of the best. The recent DirectX 11 video shows tessellation on the bricks and much nicer water. The only “improvement” there for me is the water. When I’m battling with aliens, I don’t notice if the bricks and rocks on the sidewalk have depth. I’m too busy playing the game. It’s a nice addition for those with high end rigs that want to go sight-seeing, but it’s not a feature for the masses. (Only 20% of gamers have DirectX 11 graphics cards.)



All In all I would give this game a 9/10.
Singleplayer was fantastic.
Multiplayer is okay.

Yes. Exactly.

Agreed.

Disagree about Crysis 1. It's great to play on newer hardware and there is lots of fun to be had with the enemies. Crysis 1 was so full of detail it would be hard to appreciate if you just ran through the game. Mass Effect is no fun at all but a good game and story. I think people should appreciate the detail in games, that's what develelopers do it for.

Crysis 2 sits like a console game though in parts, throwing countless enemies one after another and that's what people didn't like about Crysis 1, when the aliens came out of the mountain. The KPA were a lot better than CELL in Crysis 2 in my view and I loved the talking they used to do when hunting for you.

I disagree about Crysis 1 too. I don't even remember how many times i replayed it. Just for fun. Especially with the destruction and fun with the KPA soldiers.
But Crysis 2...
I finished it only ONCE! Why? It was boring! Tho the story was kinda interesting, but the game it self...
Run here, kill that, run again, wait.... OK kill it, run finish. When i was in the middle of the game, i started to avoid combat as much as possible and wanted to finish the game just for the story...
Yes, we have the new ledge grab, modules, new guns. But i miss the old nanosuit, where you could actually sprint without loosing your energy...
And the destruction of the environment. I missed that most. Just cutting down the jungle was the stuff i repeated every time, never got bored of it
They just took out most of the stuff i liked about Crysis 1.
But i play the MP of Crysis 2. People may disagree, but i didnt find Crysis 1 MP really fun, tho it had some good stuff.

Thanks for your feedback guys.

Personally I thought Warhead was a much better designed game than Crysis though.

I'm gonna go try and replay Crysis to see if I missed anything noteworthy.

I just wasn't won over by Warhead. it was too easy and short but yeah it had some good set pieces and a atmospheric music score. I think they over post processed it as well which what looks like a wash of too much colour grading.

I've been playing Crysis 1 a lot lately and appreciate it more, especially with the extreme quality config.

I also disagree that Crysis 1 was mediocre. I had tons of fun playing it. And i loved that on my second playthrough i ended up in different parts of he same area and played the game differently than the first time.

Well since this is the gamesas forum. I can assume most of you liked Crysis 1 a lot.

I agree with most of this, like about crysis 1 warhead etc, but the story in crysis 2, I think, was pretty well thought out. I mean you do start out as someone not knowing anything about all this. But if you paid attention, the cell wanted you because they thought you were prophet and you were a bio hazard. Also because hargreave wanted the suit so he could be "alive" again. most of the questions are answered and you just need to pay some more attention. which sadly most gamers don't. But very good review.
P.S. The only thing I didn't get from the game is lockhart's unreasonable hatred of you.

Honestly, I like all the games, but warhead is my favorite. I liked Crysis a lot but I think that Nomad sorta made it boring. Psycho's dialogue was great, especially with the pilot (Neil, right?). C2 is also good and has some re-playability, but not as much without those HUGE maps and destructible housing (well, shacks).

Crysis 1 was visually awesome and at times fun to play because of the open gameplay that empowered gamers to do what they please even though at times this sense of freedom limited by various types of barriers. All in all it was a pretty descent game. I did have more fun with FarCry than Crysis, probably because it didn't take itself as serious as Crysis 1. However, everytime I try to play Warhead,l lose interest very quickly. I don't know why.

As for Crysis 2. It is very console centric but I generally don't mind games being console centric. However there were some things that should not have been cut out or left out of the PC version. I would have appreciated if Crytek allowed for a higher level of graphical fidelity with the PC version so that I am not distracted by annoying pop in from textures or geometry. Overall the graphics were outstanding even though at times the bloom was overdone.

Now my main beef with the game is with gameplay flow. I don't like unskippable cutscenes. ALL (even tutorials) should be skippable. Don't force me to watch scripted sequences. Its fun the first time but not the second, third, fourth etc. Allow me to skip them ALL. Its even more painful when some of the cut-scenes were in first person and at times it was nauseating. Next I don't like the force walk that is found in Gears of War. Allow me to run freely all of the times. The fact that sprint, a basic human ability drains the suit makes no sense whatsoever. At least in Crysis 1 when you used the suit your ACTUALLY moved noticeable faster and not slightly faster as in Crysis 2. The speed at which you move when using sprint should be the default sprint and when you use the suit it should be similar to that of Crysis 1. Finally, it would have been nice if they load the game while showing the briefing, it would make the flow of the game feel more natural than watching a cutscene and then loading game. If you are "consolising" your game at least copy some of their loading tricks.

C1 = graphics over story
Oh and you shouldn't be able to sprint forever

Crysis 1 multiplayer lagged too much. Tank and Vtol battles were nerve-racking. Servers under 150 ping were nearly impossible to find. Any good pinged servers I found used annoying speed hacks. Only thing I miss in C1 was gliding to dodge bullets. Power Struggle was kinda fun, but getting claymore'd in every building then spawning a mile away got REALLY tiresome. Framerate dipped often. C2 never dips!

Crysis 2, imo is a much better GAME (you know, a thing you can actually play).
It's very optimized for how well it looks. Ping and framerate is hardly ever an issue. Effects are nice.
Consolized or not, this game rocks.
Just kinda wish it had Low - Med settings, so my friend can get over 28 fps on his laptop. In every match I must remind him to re-turn off the SSAO... lol. Damn thing keeps auto-turning itself back on.

Notice I only compared multiplayer. C1 and Warhead single-player is Great!

The original Crysis has a better single player campaign in terms of gameplay; it was more open, with more tactical options, and proved more a challenge. It's ending, though a cliff hanger, set up the sequel and gave it every opportunity to deliver something amazing. Unfortunately, it didn't. Crysis 2 had better atmosphere and feeling; it felt bigger and more epic, and packed more of a real story - even though it was still a fairly bland story that didn't really go anywhere. Crysis 2's biggest mistep is the piece of **** ending - yet another cliff hanger. It's frankly disgusting that the story went nowhere, and featured zero actual developments. If one were to play Crysis 3, they could skip Crysis 2 and they wouldn't even realise they'd missed something.

Crysis 2, for me, is still a fun game, and I'm looking forward to replaying it with the DX11 patch. Unfortunately, it could've been so much more than merely what it is: the game console-tards are going to buy while they wait for the next Call of Duty.

Crysis 1 would crash a lot on my computer, making the game pretty much unplayable. I never made it through the entire campaign because of that. no use in checking out the cool mods either:(

Warhead on the other hand worked pretty much flawlessly. but no mod support!:(