It isn’t just the suit that can be modded either; Crytek has given a wide ranging arsenal of weapons the same kind of treatment. Various guns found lying around or taken from the dead bodies of marine and Cell forces alike, can be customised quickly and effectively for ever-changing battle tactics. If you have a fondness for a long range rifle but really wished it had a silencer, you find one on a dead guy’s gun; you can probably swap that out to any weapon you own.

Basically, pick up and grab any new weapons you find to increase your toolkit in terms of weapon mods.

You can also often use the environment to help you take down enemies in Crysis 2; there are tonnes of explosives that can be triggered if you do some recon. It is this level design that stands out and propels the game from just another FPS into the realms of something that’s so-far damn near perfect with a great emphasis on playing how you want.

Then there are various vehicles that you can drive, several sections enforce this and they’re short/sweet moments that play into the whole narrative pretty well. They don’t feel forced or too long, in short you never get bored. The game uses a pretty solid checkpoint system to keep your frustration levels down, but there are moments where they could have used a couple of extra ones in some of the tougher battles, especially on the higher difficulties.

Expect to spend around 8-9 hours on the single player if you want to get the best out of it. Perhaps more if you’re looking for all the secrets and taking a far-more confrontational route against the Ceph to gain that precious Nano-DNA for upgrades.

It is also important to mention that a new play of Crysis 2 keeps your suit unlocks as a bonus.

So that about wraps up the gameplay for single player. Oh there are a few lite-quicktime events but nothing that’ll have your fingers in a knot like say, God of War.



Graphics

I’d go so far as to say that Crysis 2 is one of the best looking console games on the market, on both 360 and PS3. The 360 version boasts some nice visuals especially when you’re running it on a good quality HDTV. It does have 3d options but we didn’t bother with those since the TV here isn’t 3d ready and well...we’re not all fond of 3d as you might notice from a recent article. The non-3d is fantastic, the textures are crisp and clear and the special effects look great. The City of New York above and below ground has been brought to life as a war-torn ruin amidst an alien invasion, which makes the perfect backdrop for the action.

The frame-rate stays solid throughout and there are very few texture glitches, we did spot the odd one or two but they weren’t enough to spoil our enjoyment of the game at all. There’s virtually no pop in or out either and the level of detail both in terms of environment and characters is basically top notch.

Animations

There’s a lot going on in Crysis 2 in terms of animation, you can see your suit change as you trigger the various modes and there’s a nice level of animation to the characters, actions, weapons and environments. Nothing ever appears to be static here and it’s all done to near perfection. It’s hard to pick one thing that stands out, but in terms of cut-scenes the whole game is shown from the perspective of your character so you’re always in the action regardless of what’s going on. The death animations are pretty good and there’s a lot of variety in the way your enemies and allies go down.

Physics

There’s a lot of physics running foreground and background in CryEngine 3 and it really shows when you’re hurling cars, smacking bad guys around like confetti and seeing the enemy get blown backwards by a huge explosion. There’s a nice sense of weight to any hand to hand and your Ceph foes are capable of going toe to toe with your Nanosuit 2. They can actually hurl you around and knock you over, this all feels as though there’s some force behind it.