Now, I've been hearing people all up in arms about the Bulletstorm demo, probably just because it's made by EPIC, who did Gears of War. Ya it look cool, has some cool ideas, but I think people are missing a real true hidden gem that was released just 2 days ago. Well... Dead Space 2 came out just 2 days ago and that is definitely something you should pick up. Awesome game.. But I'm talking about the Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo. I don't have very many pictures, because I couldn't find very many that do the game justice, so be prepared to read rather than look at pretty pictures.
I feel like Crysis is being a little underrated by people who haven't really taken the time to play it. Crysis 2 is a learning curve at first, but it's very familiar. Crysis 2 sports the exact same control scheme as the Call of Duty franchise, you could say that their ripping it off, but it works perfectly and is good for people that are shooter fans. I was able to jump right into the fray, I even placed 1st in my 1st game! The controls are almost exact give or take a couple of buttons.
In a nutshell, this game almost feels like Call of Duty and Halo had a baby. You'll see what i mean when I go over the features of the game. Right now actually!
Features
At first glance, Crysis 2 seems like just another shooter, borrowing ideas from other shooters.. But lets not forget that the first Crysis game was using these same ideas on PC back in 2007, roughly around the same time Modern Warfare and Halo 3 came out, Crysis actually brought new ideas and implementations to the table that we're only now starting to respect. When I heard Crysis 2 was coming to the consoles, I was both excited and skeptical. I wasn't sure how they were going to work all of the abilities into the control scheme of a modern console controller. But I have to say, they worked it out pretty good.
I won't have to explain much, because everything is exact to COD controls except the D-Pad and the Bumpers. Your bumpers now sport 2 armor abilities "similar to Halo Reach". Your D-Pad now holds your grenades, you need to equip them and than throw them.
Unlike Halo, you have all of your armor abilities available to you at all times. These abilities include:
- Maximum Armour (almost like an over shield, extra armor you can trigger in a firefight)
- Cloak (Simulated invisibility to sneak up on people.)
- Run (same as COD, slowed down while in Power Armor mode)
- Super Jump (Holding the A button will make you jump really really high, almost like having a jetpack, but quicker.)
 |
| Maximum Armour Bitch!! :D |
These are just your default armor abilities, everyone in the game has them. These abilities can be upgraded as you progress throughout the game.
All of these powers are used with limitations via the energy meter. Every ability uses energy, and once your energy meter is empty you just have to wait for it to recharge. This is good because it balances the game and encourages you to use more than one ability. However, if you do like using one ability, like say.. The cloak ability, that ability will level up higher than all of your other abilities. The more you use it the better it gets.
I've only made it to level 10 so far, so I've unlocked some things, but probably not as much as I could.
There are some cool little features you can add to your armour and replace. One ability in particular that I've replaced is the ground stomp. This ability allows you to crash to the ground with a powerful shockwave after jumping and holding the B button. I decided to replace it with an unlocked ability, I can't remember what it's called haha, but it's basically a sonar ability to let you know when enemies are nearby. It's starts off with a quiet beep and gets louder as they get closer to you or you get closer to them. This helps a lot when flushing out campers or if you're looking for a stealthy kill. There's also a similar ability that allows you to detect cloaked enemies. You can really describe these as perks, similar to call of duty. But as similar as it may seem, it is a completely different multiplayer experience.
The game is balanced in a couple of different ways, you gain experience and unlock different things and level up your abilities. But unlike CoD, you don't just unlock your weapons at a certain level, you eventually earn weapon unlocks/class unlocks, and they also become available as you progress. This isn't necessarily due to your level, depending on your performance, you can receive attachment upgrades and unlock new weapons. This might be due to level as well, but you're not restricted to a certain gun or attachment at a certain level. It's hard to say what it will actually be like in the retail version because a lot of things are locked out in the multiplayer demo.
There are 2 available gametypes in the game. One is your typical team deathmatch, 6v6. The second gametype is basicaly king of the kill. An alien ship drops a pod, and you need to find and capture the pod for however long you can to earn points.
Killstreaks are present in the game, I've only witnessed 3 so far, and I'm not sure if they're customizable, they're not in the demo. The way this works is you collect dog tags after you kill an enemy player. These dog tags count as your killstreak. Instead of just simply killing someone, you have to collect their dogtags, 3 tags=rader, 5 tags=giant beam thing, 7 tags=alien air combat thing. the equivalent to a helicopter in COD, except alien, which is cooler. If you miss the dogtags you don't get the killstreaks, sometimes you'll have to kill more people to get your streak. For example, I killed 9 people, but only collected 5 tags. I like this system better, because it doesn't spam the game with constant bombings of killstreaks. You can go through a whole match without ever seeing a killstreak. This is a much better balance because you still get your reward for your streaks, but it's not as constant, and you can focus on having fun more. Also, you don't have to use your streak as soon as you get it, or before you die. If you only have 2 tags and you die, than yes, you lose your streak, but if you hit 3 and than die, than you will still have your rader, but your tag collection is reset. Same as if you hit 7 tags, you will have all 3 of your streaks if you die. Unless you used one of your streaks at some point. Regardless you will still have whatever streaks you leaft off with before you died. Your tag collection still goes up even if you've used a killstreak reward.
I'm probably not explaining things in a way everyone can understand. But what I can say is, that Crysis is well on its way to being the next big shooter franchise. The game is just as good if not better than Halo and Call of Duty. Fanboys will probably disagree with me, but that's why they're called fanboys. This first glimpse at Crysis has really impressed me, even with such a small experience, it feels massive and complete, give or take a few bugs here and there.
If you're interested in the Crysis 2 Multiplayer demo, you can download it now on the Xbox Live Marketplace under game demos. The multiplayer demo only has one playable map, 2 gametypes, and only allows small class and character customization. It's definitely worth playing, I've been playing it for the past 2 days and haven't gotten bored of it yet. The game feels incredibly balanced with all of the features it has and is just damn fun!
So play the game a couple of times, get the feel for it, and enjoy it! It takes a little bit of getting used to, with all of the super jumping and what not, I definitely jumped off of the edge and killed myself on more than 10 occasions... but it was still super fun to kill myself!
 |
| Say ello to my lil friend! |
In conclusion, Crysis 2 is a beautiful looking game, top notch graphics and excellent gameplay. I personally can't wait for the release of this monster! A nice surprise after seeing all of the other dry shooters out there (and seeing the same damn COD game get released 4 times in a row...).
Look for Crysis 2 March 22nd, and here's a visual taste since my explanation doesn't do it justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment