It has greatness in it, but it doesn’t know where to go like Far Cry 2 does. It’s the jet-fighter sim of open shooters but it can’t square being really fiddly with the needs of an action game.
Despite bursts of overwhelming power the player is actually quite fragile and spends a lot of time skulking in the bushes (I love this stuff), which plays kind of odd with the MAXIMUM GAME tone they’re broadcasting. It’d make a great Predator game, though, especially if the fiddly interface was contextuallized as esoteric alien tech.
They made a good stab at it but another Half-Life-following shooter campaign was not what the world needed in 2010. I’m still amazed that CryTek bolted out of the gate with Far Cry and then just sort of deflated. I guess they wanted to play in the big leagues and got chewed up by the same forces pulling everything in the late PS2 and 360 generation.
It seemed a lot less like inexplicable deflation to me and a lot more like learning all the wrong lessons from Far Cry’s big flaws. Muting all its strengths and chasing all its weaknesses to try and shore them up.
Yeah, in retrospect, as the midbudget/high-tech category that has periodically thrived on PC (Origin Systems as a precursor) was squeezed, they tried to survive by moving into the shooter space opened up on consoles, and away from the open sim-ish shooter space they wanted to be in. At the same time as everyone else.
Which makes it all the more surprising that Ubisoft picked up Far Cry and did it better, but they have been pretty good at wrestling conceptually-crunchy games into mass-market ones. It’s funny to think of it, but the bland Far Crys that followed 2 really needed that interesting game to build off and I’m sure Ubisoft considers it an important game, even if they’d never do it again.
I agree. Crysis 2 has an okay campaign (one of the few where “hardest” doesn’t mean enemies just instantly laser you the moment you show your face), but it has honestly one of the best MP shooter designs of all time and I’m still pissed off about its closure.
It has the same general structure as NuDoom, a structure that I would argue it popularized - corridor with cutscenes/dialog into big arena fight, repeat - but where NuDoom allows no expressiveness, Crysis 2 is nothing but cool combat sandbox, so it has a nicer texture.
i remember playing the demo of Cryisis 2 MP and i was still pretty new to all of it, and i remember seeing some grass and looking moving, and then being shot to the head.
i remember liking a bit but i don’t remember much
ground branch is probably the only true successor to raven shield and ghost recon except it has this added element of being an amazing 2 gun match simulator. cuba can attest to me clearing planeloads of guys with nothing but a M9 and shotgun switching between the two for some fancy shooting
