The Set up.
So, I downloaded and played the original 360 demo of Crysis 2 the day it came out. Spent a couple days playing it. And I HATED it. The networking, despite my internet being awesome and my NAT being open at the time, was DREADFUL, I was constantly dying before anyone even started shooting, and yet dumping clips into dudes seemed to do nothing. It controlled with a latency and clunkiness that I could not stand. It ran fine, looked spectacular, but it PLAYED like shit. At least for me, in my opinion.
But, I wanted to see how more polished code would run on my PC. I was super curious about the unfinished leaked version of the game, more curious about what an unfinished build of a game is like and less "Oh I'm going to pirate this and play it for free", so I downloaded it, played a few minutes on a couple of levels, beat the first level, and was totally blown away by how it looked and ran. The first Crysis looked great, and I could certainly run it, but it maxed out at 30 FPS, and during craziness it could get pretty bogged down at Max Settings. Crysis 2 managed to blow me away at how good it looked just as much as the original game, and then some, AND played like a dream on my PC, which isn't actually that impressive (dual core 2.93 duo, 2GB 1600 DDR3, ATI 5770), at what I think was max settings but because of the cryptic names for the settings and their infinite scrolling. At times, indoors, it reached 60 FPS. It was amazing.
So, I was surprised to find already the first had arrived, and there was a Crysis 2 demo on Steam. I finished up something in blender while it downloaded, then started it up.
My first reaction was "Well fuck. I sure hope these settings aren't really final". This is the one part of the game that REALLY pissed me off. It's not only a PC game, it's a PC game that is a champion for tech freaks everywhere. There should be a massively complex screen full of all the crazy shit I can turn on, off, up, and down. And there should be presets that actually have qualitative attributes. "Advanced" could be anywhere. In fact, I assumed this would be higher at first. "Gamer" seems like it would be the performance setting, despite being medium. Hardcore was the only one that made sense at all, but with the others making no sense, it was still hard to place for sure as being the highest until I fucking GOOGLED it.
My actual impressions.
So I finally got it up, set to what I hoped was the highest setting, and I got into a game (it should be noted that the server browser had a weird bug with Ping where about half of the servers listed 0 as the Ping). I decided to just get a feel for how it ran, so I picked assault and just kinda ran around looking at the level. Damn, it looks good. Where as the 360 version had some parts that blew me away, on PC, every part of the game looks spectacular. It was really impressive, and it all ran so well too. More than smooth enough for a great MP experience. After that, I started playing for a while. And I'm not going to lie. I was noticing that I was dying awfully quick a lot of the time. And I mean like, one to two shots and I'm down. But it was clear that it wasn't lag. So I wondered if maybe part of my issue with the 360 version was that the lag was made much worse by the fact that the assault riffle is like a laser beam of ultimate and tracking death.
Turns out, that is kind of true. Which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for the fact that it outclasses the machine gun in damage output, accuracy, and sights, and totally rips things apart up close, despite the fact that the shotgun can often empty an entire magazine into a guy at very close range and not kill a guy. I was landing 4-5 shots with the shotgun at close range, and still getting obliterated by the assault rifle, which on top of being great in general, also headshots like a motherfucker. Especially in a game with auto aim (which I turned off before I even joined a match). But, despite having a hard time getting any kills, and not placing very well in any of the games, I was having a surprisingly good time. It was clear that if they improved the weapons balance to make the shotgun more lethal up close, and probably the AR less of a beast, the classes and weapons would work really well. The flexability offered to you by the suit abilities really opened up the gameplay, and I found that the shotgun, despite being pretty weak, encouraged me to play with the suit a lot more than I would otherwise. And I found it all really satisfying. In fact, my only issue was that I kinda wish the sprint was faster, but that was just because of the shotgun being such a terrible weapon.
There was certainly a bit of a learning curve, and I'm still on my way up, but after a bit of time with the game, it became extremely rewarding. The unlocks (despite glitching and setting me back a bunch of levels) seemed to be pretty good, and custom classes look like they will be robust and fun to use. I'm hoping there are a decent number of weapons in the game, and it looks like there might be three of each type? But I'm not at all sure, thats just me going off of the menu design.
Ultimately, I felt like the game, despite having some pretty major flaws (really only one flaw, that being the weapon balance), was REALLY enjoyable. I was really surprised to find myself still playing at 4:30 this morning. And I was having a blast. I'm actually really excited to see what the full game has to offer in terms of Multiplayer, something that I did not expect at ALL.
I just wish they would turn auto-aim off in MP PC games. It's so cheap. You have a mouse, auto-aim is designed to compensate for the lack of precision when using a gamepad. Using a mouse solves that problem. There were definitely parts where people were getting shots that shouldn't have been any where near hitting, and getting headshotted because of auto-aim is terribly frustrating.
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