Maximum Awesome - Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo Review

yay kids! with the release of the highly anticipated Crysis 2 right around the corner Crytek have gifted us with their shiny new multiplayer experience in an Xbox exclusive demo, lets jump right in with the details!

Let’s begin with the handling and controls. I know what people want to know most of all is how does a hardcore PC shooter handle when you bring it to a console? fairly well actually in the case of Crysis.
If you’re a Call of Duty fan you will find familiarity with the controls: reloading, jumping, ADSing, shooting it’s near enough the same layout, the differences lie in the additional control that Crysis allows you.

Your mighty nanosuit powers are mapped to the shoulder buttons allowing you to hit RB for Stealth and LB for Armour. Stealth allows you to become partially invisible with a slight shimmer Halo-style and Armour just allows you to soak up a bit more damage. In the full multiplayer you will be able to swap these out for different powers but at the moment the demo restricts these features.

A great part of the multiplayer is how Crysis 2 gives you freedom to move about the map. When you sprint you move like lightning, you can moon jump like Halo and ground pound in mid air with a tap of B, if you jump and you’re facing a high wall you will smoothly mantle over it, and if you tap B while sprinting forward you can execute a cool ground slide during which you can fire your gun making pew pew pew noises (pew pew noises are optional).

It’s a really satisfying way to move around the map and really suits the hard and fast gameplay of the multiplayer but it’s definitely not on the level of smoothness as Brink’s SMART movement system.

The next thing on the fps checklist is progression. In the demo there is a couple things to progress through and unlock: ranks, 4 classes + 1 custom class, extra weapons, add-ons for your weapons like silencers (pussy), extra skills called nanosuit modules similar to Call of Duty perks which either effect armour, stealth or your power (damage and accuracy), so Crytek have given players a fair bit of customization and choice of options to augment their playstyle. To top it off you also got your tag background which is like CoD tags and a nice little clan tag feature.

So I heard you like game modes? So does Crytek. You got 6 game modes in the full game but only Team Instant Action and Crash Site are enabled in the demo. Team Instant Action is team deathmatch till you reach a kill score and Crash Site is CoD headquarters where an alien drops some sort of radioactive alien device, so of course the objective is to run in there and rub yourself all over it, just be careful because after a time it will explode.

If you’re a bit of an fps fan you might wonder about balance. In terms of guns the shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle and machine gun are all fairly balanced and have their pros and cons, I can’t really judge the level 50 unlocks as these are the only guns available to you in the demo.

One major flaw I can talk about is melee damage, in Crysis 2 you can smack your enemy with a melee attack and it will kill them in one hit, I kid you not. The melee damage works like this: one hit kill without armour on and two hit kill with armour on, except in the case of if you are already damaged or they melee you from behind initiating a Halo-style assassination which will kill you regardless of whether you have armour on. I have no idea if Crytek intended this but at lower levels if you’re close enough you might as well just run around using melee.

Another problem is the spawn points, on occasions you will spawn within spitting distance of the enemy which needs to be fixed so you don’t spawn and get a bullet in the back of the head. One game of Crash Site a guy spawned right in front of me in the green house allowing me to take him out within a few seconds into the game

The last thing I can say, which isn’t a huge deal to be fair, is the demo gun sounds are kind of weak as the assault rifle has a pathetic rattle and the shotgun sounds like you’re kicking a coke can, of course the following unlockable guns maybe a bit more boomstick for player tastes but for futuristic weapons they leave a bit to be desired.

All in all it’s a solid and enjoyable multiplayer experience, a few tweaks and fixes might be in order to maintain a bit of balance but if you’re a fan of shooters like Call of Duty or Halo you might find Crysis 2 offers you something new from both worlds.

I don’t really like rating things on numerical scales but here goes. I give the multiplayer a 4/5.