Review by: Tom Chick

Crysis 2 opens promisingly enough. A sinking ship level deposits you wet, helpless, and confused into New York City where there's some sort of alien invasion or infection thing going on. Then you get a rousing credit sequence that shows off the versatility of your magic suit. During the opening credits, you'll see that the story was written by sci-fi and comics author Richard Morgan, so maybe there won't be any of the usual half-assed videogame storytelling. You'll also see that the score is by Hans Zimmer and you'll hear the sinewy siren wail of his memorable main theme. Then you play a few levels that seem to be warming you up for some grand romp through a ruined New York City.

And then the rest of the game starts to happen and it all goes downhill.

The previous Crysis games were known for their videocard-crushing engines, sprawling levels, and a dollop of tactical depth provided by your stealth/power/armor nanosuit. Crysis and Crysis: Warhead came from a more rarified place than the usual run-and-gun shooters, with a considerably wider and better view than you got in any mere corridor shooter. They were smart, complex, and most of all ambitious, as if they had been accidentally slipped onto the shelves a generation too early. But no more. Now Crysis 2 sits comfortably on the shelves next to Dead Space 2, Bulletstorm, Medal of Honor, not to mention Homefront, Black Ops, and Halo: Reach. You're liable to hardly notice it.

The early levels are really just a tease. The action narrows considerably as the game progresses. Your HUD's tactical option display shows fewer and fewer options as you go, and it actually goes dark for long stretches as you just blandly shoot and shoot and shoot your way into the storyline. The later parts of the game are hard because of cheap boss-ish battles, or ammo shortages, or creatures with extra hitpoints or cloaking or superjumping power. You get nanoupgrades (this may or may not be their real name), but these turn out to be a poor excuse for an upgrade system for how useless some of them are. They're not enough to mix up the gameplay in any meaningful way, but they do make you feel like you need to boogie to pick up dropped nanojuice from dead aliens before it nanofades. So much for hanging back to nanosnipe!

I suppose you could say Crysis 2 looks good. As good as any other shooter on the Xbox 360. In fact, it reminded me of Enslaved on a few occasions for how the level designers wanted to marry lush greenery with ruined New York City. And not since Alone in the Dark has a ruined New York City been so carefully twisted into obvious "you go here" mayhem. At least this ruined New York City looks better than the ruined New York City in 3rd Birthday on the PSP or the ruined New York City in Prototype.

The physics of selectively explodable things, the AI of guards that sometimes do really stupid things, and the oh-look-another-assault-rifle gunplay are all perfectly adequate. Some of the gunfights feel dynamic enough, but then you get to the harder parts of the game and it's a toss up whether you want to bang your head against cheap difficulty spikes or just endure the tedium of sneaking around them. That's what passes for free-form gameplay in Crysis 2.