CRYSIS 2

A cinematic FPS with tour de force visuals.

- Robert Jones

The heavily armored SWAT team member crashes through the apartment’s left-hand window, rappelling in on a cord and blindsiding me. My Nanosuit detects the impending assault just before the impact, though, injecting nano-bots into my bloodstream and speeding up my reaction times massively. As a result, just as the SWAT is about to open fire I pivot my armored torso just enough to destabilize his incoming trajectory. As the muzzle flashes and the rounds miss me by inches, we collide together sending both myself and the SWAT team member flying out the apartment’s right-hand window.

Grappled together and plummeting many floors in a hail of broken glass, the fight isn’t over, though, and both the cop and I trade melee blows repeatedly mid-air until, finally, gravity catches up with both of us and we crash into the New York City street below. Luckily I’m wearing the CryTek Nanosuit, which switched to Maximum Armor mode just before impact, so I walk away from the encounter. The SWAT dude, in nothing but a tactical vest, isn’t so lucky. He bleeds out on the sidewalk.

This sort of bombastic, cinematic set piece sums up Crysis 2 perfectly. Indeed, this is a game that is, sometimes quite crudely, nothing more than a series of ’80s action movie-style set pieces and cutscenes, with little room for any subtlety. As the Nanosuit-clad protagonist, you bring death to your foes, both human and alien, with such bombastic gusto that I feel it almost transforms into a violently relentless art form.

RELENTLESS VIOLENCE