That is, constructive explanation and criticism over why I am disappointed with Crytek for their product, Crysis 2.

First of all, jeez, I must of played through Crysis 20 times. Maybe not played through in a linear fashion, but I've definitely loaded all the levels multiple times (the earlier levels more frequently) because in Crysis 1, it doesn't really feel like the level has a start and an end. It's so different each time, that you could give me one level and I would happily play it over and over, and I would be hard-pressed to say "I did the same thing twice" and I'm not talking about little things like picking up a barrel or whatnot, I mean, the way you progress through the level.

I play on Contact and Recovery a lot, and in those levels in particular there are many, MANY ways to play any way you want. There's so many angles of approach (road, jungle, high ground, sea, beach) and each have different obstacles and guards to tackle. In addition, there are several different play styles, predator, stealth, all out soldier.. and just mucking around (throwing barrels at soldiers to kill them, etc)

This kind of gameplay is just amazing. It's such pure fun, and I know a lot of criticism goes on Crysis for having bad gameplay but these people have no idea how to have their own fun in FPS these days, they're too used to being shoehorned through tight corridors and this criticism comes 95% from console fanboys who have never played the game in the first place.


Anyway, when Crysis 2 was announced to be multiplatform, I was instantly skeptical. It sounds very elitist, but the fact is unless you develop for PC first, and release on PC first, then make whatever changes are necessary to bring it to consoles, then the PC experience is going to be hampered in some ways by the massive limitations of the console hardware, control method and target audience.


I feel that these three areas have successfully destroyed what made Crysis such a fun and relatively unique FPS (Yeah, jungle FPS has been done before, but never in this way, never with this much freedom)

For starters, lets look at the story.

Spoilers for Crysis 1.

You end the game with a bang, Prophet is going back to the island to svck it to the Aliens, you (Nomad) and Psycho and Helena chase him, the game ends.

Crysis 2, you're in New York, you're a normal soldier, Prophet gives you his suit then buggers off, there's no mention of anything at all from Crysis 1 or Warhead, what in the hell? I want to continue the story, I know C1's story wasn't amazing, but it was suitable to pace the action, give progression to what you're doing and it was mildly interesting. Where did the aliens come from? What's with freezing everything?


So why couldn't Crysis 2 begin on the Island and then move on to NYC?

I have a theory, remember the CE3 tech demo on the Island? I'm sorry, but on PS3 and 360, it looks like absolute crap. Like a grab bag of low/med/high settings on PC, a LOT of stuff like view distance and object pop-in and textures have been compromised. Physics and water are toned down, no object motion blur, lower detail particles.

I don't want to give the consoles too much credit, but Crysis 2 looks pretty decent on consoles. The tech demo for the island, however, really does not.

So what happened? Well they didn't want such a dramatic difference in IQ, so they just cut the entire continuation of Crysis 1 from the drawing board and hacked together a solution to fit the consoles, but leave the PC in the dark.


The same thing has happened with the controls. In order to make it easier for console players with a controller, things need to be streamlined. In my opinion, there can be many different solutions to the whole "4 suit options is good, but combining them isn't possible" instead of merging them into two options. This isn't really a very good solution, it just gives a feel of "consolization" AKA, the act of making things simpler to fit the needs of a different audience.



Now, what developers need to realise, and as a consumer I'm in the right situation to say (unlike other complaints or topics when people with no clue blame developers for things they have no right blaming them for) that the PC and console audiences are completely different. The games that were on each system in the early 2000's were completely different. Consoles had JRPG's, platformers, racers, arcade style games, the PC had shooters, simulators, RPG's, RTS's and more puzzle style games.


For some reason, I think the popularity of FPS like Halo and COD on console is partly to blame, developers or publishers, whoever, has been thinking it's a good idea to merge both audiences by creating a one-size-fits-all model of game development that they think is good for all. But as developers know, when going multiplat you always need to design for the lowest denominator.

This is evidence by Cevat Yerli being quoted (I'm paraphrasing) as saying "If it didn't work on consoles, we cut it from the PC version"

Hang on one bloody second, Mr. Yerli. That is not acceptable. I don't want to sound like one of those high-horse twats but what was Far Cry on? PC. Crysis? PC. Who PAID for the games you and your team poured your creativity into? PC guys. Who made Far Cry for consoles? Another damn team, and they sacrificed what they could to bring a good experience to consoles, while PC had an uncompromised experience with Far Cry on PC.

So what's going on? Why are you essentially stabbing your loyal fanbase in the back? "Hey guys, thanks for buying Far Cry, thanks for buying Crysis, we made these games for PC to take advantage of your hardware that you paid for because it's your hobby, well, here's a new one for ya, forget the name of progress, you can all be thrown back 5-6 years to the days of the Xbox 360! Cheers, bye!"



Now, let's look at the actual gameplay itself. God, I remember being bombarded with the term "Vertical gameplay" by Nathan Camarillo. I'm sorry, but this sounds like pure unbridled PR damage control ****.

So basically, consoles can't handle large dynamic environments with good IQ settings (CE3 demo as proof of this) so it needs to be moved to a City. City's ARE big, but they aren't OPEN, but City's ARE TALL.

Now, who played 2D platformers? What's the most annoying thing you can think of in those games. Falling down from a height and having to go all the way back up. So you can excuse me if I think that stalking opponents in a dense, living jungle is more exciting that climbing up flight after flight of stairs, only to fall down a blown out hole in a building while bum-sliding. Then having to go allllll the way back up.


That reminds me, why remove lean and prone from the game? What else is missing? Do we still get tactical map? different grenades? Ammo selection? I mean, two suit options have already been streamlined, and now we get bumslides and parkour... G...great?


Well it kinda defeats the purpose.



Now let's look at the graphics themselves. I find it ironic that the best looking game of all time, and STILL the best looking game of all time (even vanilla) (also still VERY technically impressive in regards to scale and dynamic gameplay, there's no other game like it) has failed to be surpassed by it's successor.

No matter which way you spin it, Crysis 1 looks ever so slightly better than Crysis 2. Crysis 2 has better indoor environments, without a doubt, it was designed for it, but the outside... what? What happened? Why can't I shoot down trees? Why can't I pick lots of environment stuff up? WHY ARE THERE NO CHICKENS TO THROW AT EVIL KOREANS!?


It seems that everything, EVERYTHING has been butchered, limited, streamlined or hacked down in some way or another to fit onto console, I would not ever have a problem with it, if they gave us a proper sequel to Crysis on PC first, then a year later or 6 months down the line released on consoles. It's happening with "The Witcher 2" and as it stands, it's looking to take the title of best graphics in a TPS by a mile and a half. I'm sorry Crytek, but it looks utterly fantastic. That's a PC exclusive, and then it'll come on consoles, with whatever needs to be cut or reshaped to fit on console, cut and reshaped. The PC version maintains everything that MAKES it a PC version.



I mean, when a game ships with DX9 support, no plans for DX11 to take advantage of the graphics cards that were advertised by Nvidia as having DX11 support and exclusive features for Crysis 2.. That's just not right.

When a beta ships out with console code in, that's not right.

When the full game also ships with the same code in, that's not right.

When they take away mod support "to be released later" (DICE and Treyarch both made this promise, and failed to deliver last year, you can understand why I'm skeptical) that's not right.

When, for an entire year, the only media we see about the game is from the Xbox, that's not right.


When it is PC guys who have supported Crysis through Far Cry and Crysis / Warhead, then get the short end of the stick when Crytek focus their efforts on getting a good looking game to run on Dinosaur hardware, that is not right.

Basically sums it up.

This is the single best post detailing in a well structured and written manner why we're all raging on these forums I've had the pleasure to read.

It truly is a cool story, bro

Now expect a bunch of Crytek Apologists flooding into this post trying to call you names like PC Elitist like thats supposed to be a bad thing.

"This is the single best post detailing in a well structured and written manner why we're all raging on these forums I've had the pleasure to read."

Thank you! It would be much better written, but my girlfriend came over, and then shortly after my friend from Uni, so I had to entertain in ways that don't include sitting in the corner pouring my opinion into a gaming forum I never go on

I completely forgot to write about Multiplayer, and how obvious EA's influence on the game was, I don't know if it's relevant because the MP was made by Free Radical, but still, it's so COD'd it's ridiculous. I've never played a game that tried to imitate COD so much, and I've played Medal of Honor.

It's just insulting, especially when they disregarded intelligent game-types like Power Struggle, which, along with Team Fortresses 'Payload' and Bad Company's 'Rush' is one of my favourite game modes of all time. Now we have.. King of the Hill and... Team Deathmatch. Great.

great post. its all very true. and its a shame that people are OK with such a slap in the face at not only the PC community, but the attitudes of game developers overall is a slap in the face to all gamers everywhere (whether they are too retarded to realize it or not).

yeah im pissed off about the psycho and nomad thing. its like you played the first 2 games as nomad and psycho, but in crysis 2 that just meant nothing. playing as a main character was worthless as they dont even have part of the story in crysis 2, lameeeee.

Oh my goodness, this work of art needs to be stickied, and I'm talking about the OP's well laid out and awesome text, and PLG23's picture

great post. its all very true. and its a shame that people are OK with such a slap in the face at not only the PC community, but the attitudes of game developers overall is a slap in the face to all gamers everywhere (whether they are too retarded to realize it or not).


People definitely need to stand up and just vote with your wallets. There are plenty of other games to play and there are a lot of games from 2010 and 2009 and beyond that are worth your time.

When a developer does something like this (Pulling an Infinity Ward / Pulling a Crytek) just vote with your wallet. Don't pirate, because they will just say "To hell with PC gamers" just make a sensible and overall polite post on their main forums, by all means, express your anger and disappointment and feeling of betrayal or whatever. All it takes is for a bunch of people to call out developers on their mistakes.


At the end of the day, it's not the developers who have power, or the publishers, it's the consumer. If nobody buys the game, and nobody pirates it, then nobody is playing it, and developers will see they need to change their ways. Crysis got 3 million sales, and it would of got more if people could run it past medium/high when it was release, and which ever way Crytek puts it to make themselves look like the victim, the game was pirated to see if people could run it (Yeah there was a demo, but the final game was optimised more and had different levels) and that's the end of it. I pirated Crysis 1. I had an AMD Athlon X2 4200+. Crysis required a 4400+ as the minimum. I also had a crappy 8600GTS. But I still played the first couple of levels, and then when I got a 4850 and a Phenom II X3 720, I played it again, the graphics were awesome, I was getting immersed into the game, and I bought it, because I truly saw that Crytek had done an outstanding job on the game, and it was truly outstanding, it's an unbeaten effort on pure technological game design. Like I said before, the story isn't great, but the gameplay and graphics are just top notch. And as such it becomes and experience that is enjoyable over and over.

With Crysis 2, from what I've seen (and I've looked into it extensively) it just doesn't seem like it's worth a purchase to me. Until lots of mods come out for it, I won't buy it, or pirate it, and that's that.

What else? Didn't Nathan promise a 12hr story? Many reports are coming in of people completing it in 6 hours. They say they don't rush it, they say they used their actual clock to judge the time, and not the in-game timer which is known to reset and stuff.

So what's going on Crytek? All I want to know is explicitly why everything had to be changed so badly for the PC gamers?

It's literally the biggest step back in gaming I've ever, ever seen since COD4 to COD MW2. And that's saying a lot. As a developer, that has to sound insulting, but it's true. Infinity Ward completely slapped PC gamers right across the face, and as a PC gamer, I, and many others, feel you have done exactly the same to us.

I must say that you put all of those things together very well. I totally agree with you about everything you mentioned and the COD'd multiplayer gameplay and it really svcks because, like you, I enjoyed Bad Company 2's rush and crysis' power struggle (which i still play quite often) too much to move on to basically spawn and kill someone across the block then die.

Good job Chaoslava!

Easily the best post on here OP.

Basically sums up everything bad/wrong with Crysis 2 at its core.


I love the franchise so much that I caved and bought it last week, and while I admit the game is fun, and looks great, it doesn't compare to Crysis or Warhead. Close...but not quite there.

...and this comes from someone who also has a PS3 and a Xbox 360, but personally, I feel that Crysis is best played/enjoyed on a PC.

The funny thing is, the game has done so well financially, that Crysis 3 is basically a given.
Will all our (PC gamers') issues from THIS game be taken into account for the next one? Only time will tell.


...and PLG23's pic is classic...in every sense of the word. I can certainly understand the sentiment.
Even though I play games on consoles, I still think of myself as a 'PC gamer'.

Well spoken. I agree, this sums up pretty much every single complain and problem we PC gamers have with this game. Yet very well worded and a better read than most of the usual rants. Would deserve a sticky or at least a lot uf bumps.


@ Chaoslava:

Well spoken too.
Voting with your wallet IS the best thing we can do. I did the same with Homefront when I learned that the SP campaign, after all the bragging about the story etc., is not longer than 5 hours at best and with Modern Warfare 2. I simply refuse to buy or even to pirate, just give them the cold shoulder.

Bad luck for me that I was stupid enough to trust Crytek here and bought the game on day 1, something I will never do again.

And unfortunately a lot of people just don′t get it and still buy products which are unfinished or just deceptive. Maybe this is because they are so used to this practice by now that everyone thinks they get the real deal here.
This reminds me a bit at the frog in hot water. Put him into hot water and he will immediately jump out, but put him into cold water and steadily rise the temperature and he will happily sit there until he is cooked.

I remember the outcry and the discussions in PC forums if Elite Force 2 is worth the money because it delivered "only" about 15 hours of SP gameplay. Nowadays we get games which are basically MP with a 4 - 6 hours SP campaign which would barely have passed as a tutorial in former days.
But are people complaining? No. And if someone does a lot of people will rush in to defend the developers because "The game time is not all that counts!" and "The story is sooo intense!" and of course my all time favourite "You can get bazillions of fun from the MP!"

@chaoslava
Well spoken sums alot up, i to played Farcry then crysis and with crysis i used a pirated version until i had 2 levels left when i bought the game cause i felt the made such a good game that it must be paid, games i play i pay for!
Crysis 2 needs alot but i played single and liked it also multi are good.

And its nice to read a topic that are well written and not tha foul mouthed as most are here;-)

All I can really say with this is:

1) I never played an MP Crysis.... never wanted to... dont really want to now.

2) As much as I would have liked a more direct connection (and please, Crytek... pay attention to this plea... we could use something to fill in the time between 1 and 2.... maybe another Crysis 1 expansion like Warhead), I understand it not being possible since they wanted to get more players in this time... regardless of platform. THAT I applaud. After all, more people playing is a great thing imho.

3) I have actually seen the lean via 2nd mouse button... I would have liked it to be more controlled too, but at least they tried it... frankly, I'd recommend feedback to say which way you prefer... I know when I finish it, I plan to do just that. (And considering how much more controlling they put into the keyboard side of things, Im really on the fence on this one right now.)

4) and finally.... I wont troll this thread... the OP did exactly what he should have... gave his complaints respectfully. I will fill in details as I have for how I see it, but take it as an honest attempt to put a little light on what I've observed as well. (and ok, a bit of a universalist gamer view who just happens to like KB&M more for this type of game then a controller)

Well, my "Voting with your wallet" stage already passed - I made a preorder and already got known that there are no returns.
I haven't got any expectations towards this game to be a worthy successor of C1 - cause it was obvious that it wouldn't be, but I enjoyed MP demo, so I bought it as a "shoot something" kind of game for spare time after work.
But guess what?
IT DOES NOT WORK.
Multiplayer doesn't work for me as I get the beautiful "The connection to your opponent has been lost. Signed out." error about which we have roughly 50-pages long topic with no patch delivered as promised.

So - this game fails on all fronts. From being part of Crysis series, up to working at all.
Miserable. It's a pity one can't do anything right now - there is no refound, there is no re-sale (thank you EA!), no court will make them return my stolen 60$... well... I guess I'll go back to play some non-EA game.

Best post in the forum. I wish I knew about the cutting down statement before buying. I will vote with my wallet and make a loud noise on that.

Not to mention Crysis 1 literally earned millions $$$ (if not more) for hardware manufacturers. Who ever could come up with a single GPU card that could run crysis 1 with high settings and good fps scored lot of PR points too.

Good OP, but in my opinion, a game is downright bad when it is being called "Mediocre". Its so much better to be called a BAD GAME compared to that of being called mediocre.

you see op, the problem is that even if we refuse to buy the game, they will still sell alot on the consoles and that will encourage the developers to focus more on the consoles than the pc because thats where all the money is at.
and everything is you said is absolutely true, as i've tried to explain the same points to people across this and other forums.
and i wish i didnt pre order this game, but with all the promisses the developers made, i really thought this was going to be even better than the original crysis. altho the leaked beta should've been a warning for us pc gamers, i was optimistic enough and believed the dev's when they said that the final version would look alot better and be alot more optimized than the leaked beta.

and honestly i think that one of the devs were so disappointed with the pc version that they leaked that beta build to warn the pc comunity.

This post DOES need to be stickied. Even though I know it won't happen, I'd love to see Crytek actually read this and try to justify what they've done.

This post DOES need to be stickied. Even though I know it won't happen, I'd love to see Crytek actually read this and try to justify what they've done.
"we'll make an announcement about that later" there you go.. :p

Bleh, at least you got some sense of logic into this post. Multiple things I have to disagree with and explain a bunch of ****, but I'm not much of in the mood, instead I actually want to mention that I too loaded up the early levels of Crysis 1 a lot lol. Same for Warhead.

"Contact," "Recovery," and "Call me Ishmael" were my most played levels. I played them....SO....FREAKIN'.....MUCH!! With Crysis 1 and Warhead I just loved playing these early levels repeatedly and playing them differently so many times. In both games, as you progress, it becomes more linear.

Crysis 2 on the other hand to me....it's like watching my favorite movie. When I start to play the single player I want to KEEP PLAYING until the end. I prefer it over Crysis 1 definately. It's more linear but at the same time, I sort of like the coreographed sandbox size of Crysis 2. The first Crysis games were linear but not as linear. Crysis 2 is more linear but there' are many areas I didn't know about each time I were to play through. Playing each scenario again and again is fun. Doing the same thing in Crysis 1 is boring......very boring, but in Crysis 2, it's sort of like watching the replay of an awesome basketball dunk on TV. Of course, you can only watch the dunk so many times, and thus Crysis 2 offers other forms of variety.

Also, you talk about shooting trees not possible in Crysis 2. YOU CAN shoot trees down you know....skinny ones. JUST LIKE in Crysis 1. But in Crysis 2, just look at how the trees are more, well, THICK, and SHORTER. Crysis 1 is in an island. We can shoot down the skinny tall trees, but we CAN NOT shoot the fatter ones. Don't believe me? Try it right now. You will only be able to shoot skinny trees down and thats the same case with Crysis 2.

As for story, I think Crysis 2 surpasses WAYYYYYY farther than Crysis 1. The ending of Crysis 1 left a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, cliffhangers are good, but it seemed way to abrupt. WAY to abrupt, the cliffhanger was way to big for Crysis 1. I like how Crysis 2 has you as a marine and Prophet gives you the suit. It explains how the aliens evolved, what Prophet did at the island and etc. At this point Nomad and Pshyco are insignficant. There's no doubt though that the reason the story is like this is because 1:) There's a much bigger audience with Crysis 2 as opposed to Crysis 1 and 2:) Two sci-fi writers were hired to write the story and Cevat yerli wanted a emotional sense and urban jungle this time (in his mind, he wants to show what would happen if aliens went to the public. We know what happens in private operations already, yeah yeah, but what about when it hits civilians? It makes for an interesting story and shows that the aliens truly want to fight back for their land). The two sci-fi writers (who have written various sci-fi epics) were told this and went from there.

Overall, I prefer Crysis 2 over Crysis 1, but I "Contact," Recovery," and "Call me Ishmael" ARE STILL RIDICULOUSLY fun.

Even if we vote, Crytek's name is stained. It's unlikely they would try to correct their name by risking on amazing games like FarCry and C1, after selling out.

RIP Crytek and thanks for FarCry and Crysis, my favorite shooters.

Moving on to upcoming PC games ->

and honestly i think that one of the devs were so disappointed with the pc version that they leaked that beta build to warn the pc comunity.

Hmm, right now I wish I had downloaded and played the beta. Even if this was an unfinished version of the game it could have given me an impression of the SP experience. I was expecting something Crysis-like, with huge environments and an actual tactical approach.
Instead almost everything I liked so much about Crysis/Warhead got removed - what remains is a very generic shooter with not enough appeal to play it a 2nd or even 3rd time.
(The endless scene in Goulds appartment alone is reason enough for me not to play again. Being confined in an absolutely uninteresting room and forced to listen to Goulds babbeling is increasing the overall game time, but definitely not the fun.)


And about the missing possibility to lean left/right - just one more decision I do not understand. I am very sure that this could have been easiliy implemented at least into the PC version of the game. The "Cover" feature with the second mouse button seems totally useless to me. For some reason it will not work with large parts of the environment or it works in a way that renders it not very helpful.
I am recently playing "Call of Juarez 2" again, which features a similar cover system. Except here it actually works and proves to be very helpful and an actual life saver.

If Crytek decides to change the cover system, fine. Their game, theirs to decide what changes should be made. But at least they should do it the right way, especially when older games show how it can be done properly.

Even if we vote, Crytek's name is stained. It's unlikely they would try to correct their name by risking on amazing games like FarCry and C1, after selling out.

RIP Crytek and thanks for FarCry and Crysis, my favorite shooters.

Moving on to upcoming PC games ->

They never sold out. They expanded, and I don't blame them for moving to consoles. People, when Crysis 1 came out, considered gameplay mediocre (not just console gamers but MANY PC gamers), complained they couldn't run the first game, and thus this all led to low sales. G4 also reviewed Crysis 1 harshly and that actually had an impact to sales (nowadays, G4 cant have such an impact because they've become just simply TERRIBLE) AND Crysis 1 was one of the most pirated games or something like that. Crysis 1 was NOT that big of a success for Crytek, no matter how you want to look at it. Give or take a few years later and Crysis 1 still hasn't sold that well. That is why Crytek wanted to expand.....They never sold out. And IMO, it's all about understanding their situation. I KNOW they still care for PC but I understand WHY they expanded which is why I'm still a loyal fan.

I'll stop supporting when Crytek ceases to support their games, screws the PC version over (Crysis 2 PC is A PROPER PC GAME, I don't care what you say, AND Crytek is still supporting it. Screwing over a PC version means porting the game over last minute with bugs and errors and not caring for it one bit without even addressing issues remotely....*cough* MODERN WARFARE 2 *cough*), and/or become greedy lazy developers (which currently I doubt, but I mean...it happened to West and Zempella....). Crytek right now is working their ASS of on gettin Crysis 2 finished properly on the PC, and they aren't lazy because they expanded to consoles, they are just trying to make a profit off their hard work, unlike with their previous games (except Far Cry 1, that was a success for them).

You've cracked it pro!

i hope chevat reads this one!

Excellent well written awesome post!! You sir, should be the Crytek boss.