TheHUD

They have the races, the powers/classes and the environments... I want a Mass Effect MMO You know Bioware must of have learned so many new tricks with Old republic and even though that still not out and this is kind of a leap. I still dream of the day they make a ME MMO, they would have 60 dollars waiting for them from me

Spiderman always looks weird when you run with him. They gotta perfect that first

Ugh I always buy things day one like a sucker :( Congrats to everyone who hasn't picked up any of this stuff, amazing deals

    Deaths in genres come and go, some are revisited, some are rebooted and some are left at the bottom of the ocean floor never to be heard from again.   The most recent of these deaths would no doubt be the Music genre, your Rock band and Guitar Hero’s, and while some people still find joy in playing them with their friends, it seems that sales and notoriety are plummeting. The question stands though, why are they dying or dead for that matter? To most people the answer is pretty obvious but bottom line you’re going to have to blame the over saturation of the genre in the short time span since it’s been released. Sure certain companies can be blamed without even a second guess but they’re never going to change. History tends to repeat itself so my question to you, whos next? Which genre has a big fat X on the back its head?

   If I was to ask any avid video game consumer which genre is making the most money, they’d most likely respond with Shooters. The same company that has been deemed, “Franchise Killer” is pumping out more Call of Duty’s then the average number of hits a normal gaming company makes in a life time. Even now this year we’ve had 5 big shooters releases already and were only in the middle of March. To the average person who got to play all of them, at least 3 out of those 5 releases are great and memorable (ie. Dead Space2, BulletStorm, KillZone3, HomeFront, Crysis 2) but we have to ask ourselves, is the industry getting shooter fatigue? Maybe that’s why BulletStorm had so much press on how different it was. There are only so many ways to kill a pixel this day and age and I’d be lying if I said Bulletstorm wasn’t a gust of fresh air. I find myself and the people I listen to though, grow tired of holding the left trigger and tapping the right to make progress in video games today. As much as I love shooters, can the genre handle this much exhaustion?

  Your thinking to yourself ok, the shooter genre slows down a bit and or stops hypothetically, why would that change how you feel about those gems you’ve spent so many hours on? I’d like to hope it wouldn’t, some of my favourite games of all time are shooters (Mass Effect 2, Uncharated 2, Gears 2) but I hold Guitar hero 2 near and dear to my heart as giving me some of the best gaming experiences of my life I literally grunt every time I hover over the box. I can still remember gathering with a bunch of friends and trying to get the Kick the Bucket achievement and even though I never got it and had blisters all over my fingers from trying all night it was still a memory I’ll never forget. If anyone asks me which music game to pick up, Rock band or Guitar hero, I always tell them unless you’re going to have friends over every week, go take 20 bucks and buy GH2 and let the magic begin.   So why is it that I cannot get myself to play a game so near and dear to me? The answer is fatigue. I’m tired of pressing a bunch of buttons in unison with strumming to progress and no amount of crazy peripheral or variety is going to make a permanent change to that feeling. Starting to sound familiar?

    I don’t really care which shooters come out but I do care how many of them do. I love my Halo’s, my Gears of War’s, my Call of Duty’s but to put things in perspective no matter how great Rock Band 3 is I never bother popping it in for that very matter and that my friends scares me. I doubt this could ever happen but if this continues and only gets worse, could there be a day I groan when Half Life 3 is announced? As crazy and far gone as this is, at the time I never thought I’d be sick of the music genre. I mean how could I when I had so much fun playing the GH2 demo at Wal-Mart every day after school?

I recently saw this game on the Iphone for a decent price and was wondering if anyone picked it up? I've heard this is the or one of the FF's to pick up but i'm not sure if its worth getting on iOS instead of buying the original.

May hardcore drinking commence

CRYSIS 2 Review

   The shooter genre has given up plenty of different types of games this generation but I think we can all agree they’re starting grow tiresome if not repetitive. Not to fret though, there are some gems out there. Crysis 2 suits you up (no pun intended) in a futurist New York City to defend off aliens known as the Ceph. The norm for first person shooters has taken a shift for a while now towards the call of duty idealism and that’s where Crysis 2 shines. Although it still has the hold for iron sights then shoot mentality, imagine a world where a symbiotic military suit was added to spice things up against alien robot squids. I would definitely feel a whole lot better if I could run into the battlefield at high velocities while invisible, attack my prey then switch to armor mode and go rambo without even a scratch.

   The single player mode does exactly that along a very flat storyline. You’re a soldier named Alkatraz, along with a group of marines have just been attacked by the Ceph. Sadly it seems you’re the only one who has made it and even that’s stretching it. From there on you’re introduced for a brief amount of time to the main character of the original Crysis. He offers you his role in stopping the Ceph at the cost of his own life. The game takes off holding your hand the first couple of levels as a child just learning to walk keeping you just at a good enough pace that you’ll feel comfortable by yourself but curious enough to explore different variations of combat. Like I said earlier, the story isn’t much to brag about but then again alien invasions aren’t really new to our line of entertainment. That’s not to say there aren’t any good ideas, the end of the game I definitely felt more connected to the storyline and more entranced into being a super soldier that I was left wanting another piece of the pie.

   I’ve heard a lot of talk about the graphics and bottom line it’s either or. Everything I got close to looked incredible and left me stunned as well as Crytek’s lighting was just phenomenal but on the other end of things anything far out looked incredibly washed and generic. This wouldn’t normally bug me because you’re generally not shooting guys 10 miles away but Crytek took the route of Point of Interests much like Gears of War. Meaning you’ll be walking down broken New York streets and/or Parks minding your own business when all of a sudden a Y button prompt will appear. When you press it the camera flares off into the distance onto something the developers feel you shouldn’t miss. I love this feature so much but 2 things usually came to mind. First, what I said earlier about the distance visuals will bother you and second, 9 times out of 10 the prompts just let you know an alien ship flew by. Don’t get me wrong, the first time it happened I was ready to hunt down some squids but after multiple times it was much like hearing your favourite song a million times, we get it it’s FRIDAY.

    Sarcasm aside, first person shooters today need good sound. You can’t have you’re gun sound like something Joe and the boys play with out back to pass the time when games like battlefield set the standard. Sound is key, the cherry on top. Crysis 2 has some great orchestral moments that really build up tension that gave me a strong urge to fight crime and look mysteriously out into the night as buildings exploded behind me. That being said I could not stand the sound of the weapons, every gun aside from the awesome Microwave gun and K-volt (Self-explanatory, and yeah its awesome)sounded exactly the same, it was just a matter of how it shot that was different. If you’re like me, then you want a gun that sounds deadly and gets you riled up every time you listen to it click when you reload.

   Single player manages to mark off everything on the check list with some hickups along the way, it offers a great experience that leaves you wanting more. I’ve never been to New York but the game definitely managed my cravings and that says a lot. People can withstand minor graphical and audio fidelities and even sometimes empty plots line but gameplay is what keeps you coming back. Crysis 2 has this to a T but is short of dotting the I’s, while roaming around feeling like a bad-ass is awesome, if your opponents are boring to fight then what’s the point? If I was to compare the Ceph to anything I’d have to say a low IQ covenant comes to mind, you still have alien type movements and great ambiance until they see you.  After that it’s a straight up sprint and bitch slap. It was a great foundation in AI but I’m more interested in where Crytek goes from here. When human players are added into the mix that’s where things get interesting. Multiplayer is a very cookie cutter Call of Duty clone with a power suit added in but it has a few tweaks here and there that make it pretty memorable. Kill streaks are huge in this day and age and sadly so are campers. Crysis takes the good and kicks the bad straight in the balls. If you want major points then you’re gonna want those Kill streak, different from CoD’s kill and add credit, this time when an enemy has fallen so does their dog tag and ergo thy credit is up to you to aquire. This completely changes your annoyances with campers as I hadn’t come across any. If you’re interested in the allure of the now standard levelling up/perk system but want enough variety to keep things interesting then look no further.

   The market is getting saturated with Shooters, that much is clear. With Juggernauts like CoD and Battlefield leading the way it makes sense the way Crysis follows their footsteps. It keeps it familiar to veterans of the ladder while offering interesting gameplay mechanics (the suit) to make it fresh enough for everyone to join in. Crysis 2 is a great product that you won’t want to miss if you’re a fan of genre but doesn’t innovate high enough that it’ll pull fans of other genres into it.

4/5

Pros

·          Suit Variation (Cloak, Power, Armor)

·          Great Multiplayer

·          Best First Achievement/Trophy

Cons

·          Lackluster Story

·          Gun sounds are weak

·          Washed Long distant Visuals

Developer Tips

·          Points of Interest should be memorable