(Edit: There are possible spoilers in this post in regards to characters.)

Okay first let me begin by saying that this is only my opinion and it's based on my experience in the single player campaign on the PC. I'm not big on the Multi-player shoot em up part. Second I'd like to just state for the record that I'm posting this because I think it's important that Crytek hear as many reviews as possible so they can understand what type of product they released. Yes there are people complaining and others praising the game, my intent is merely to give it a level headed rundown of my experience considering the good and the bad of the game.

I'll start with the good parts of the game. I loved the first Crysis, there was little I could find wrong with any part of it and if you asked me to come up with even one thing wrong with the first one the only thing I could say is that it ended. The story elements of the first one were FANTASTIC and I've played it a lot, and it's one FPS I always return to. Crysis 2 also has a great storyline it's well paced and has plenty of twists and turns that kept me going the entire game.

Crytek also did an excellent job updating the suit and making it feel even more powerful and made it feel like a sentient character of it's own. I love the nano vision additions to the game, if you're a fan of the predator movies you will relate when I say that through most of the game I felt like a predator stalking my prey and it was awesome. I also think the 'purchase' system to upgrade your suit by killing aliens and collecting their spores was a great addition giving the suit a gradual and steady increase in power.

The gun selection was also off the charts and I'm happy with the fact that ammo was readily available and only on a few occasions was I ever in a situation where I was out of ammo. This coupled with the fact that the selection of weapons early on made it easy to choose between a stealthy sniper or all out commando tank made things very nice and offered options. Something the first game didn't give players.

And my favorite thing with this game, the score. The music is brilliant and why shouldn't it be? They got Hans Zimmer to do it. It set the mood of every scene and sequence in the game epically and I found myself saying on more than one occasion "This is badass".

Now onto the bad... First of all I'm just gonna come out and say it. This game was released in a beta state, and I have to question how QA allowed this into the public market in the condition its currently in. The first thing I noticed when I attempted to get into game was the fact that my key code didn't save... "okay" I thought I'm not going to play online anyway lets check out the single player. I went into the graphical settings, my normal ritual for a new game, to change the settings. No ability to change my graphical settings except presets. I also noticed the 3d is disabled. Upon doing some further research I find that DX11, as the game is said to support and utilize is not actually active. When I went into the control settings I found another frustrating scene, a standard setup for a console port. Now don't get me wrong, I love my Xbox360 and I love my console games as much as I love my PC games. I prefer to play my FPS on my PC and pretty much everything else on Xbox... but to me, at this point I felt that I had been deceived by a company I had trusted. This wasn't supposed to be a ported game and all of the promises the company had been making seemed to be melting away.

At this point I decided I'd just pop into the game and manually change the settings through the command console, again I was disappointed since the command console is essentially useless. It has only a handful of commands available and none of which handle the direct graphical changes like motionblur. But I decided to press on and into the game I went.

Now as I said, once I got into the game and began playing it the experience was an epic one. That being said there are still some problems here. First on my mind are the plot holes, especially dealing with missing characters from the first game. You see Prophet and he plays an important role here, but no mention of Psycho, Nomad, or Helena Rosenthal. All characters I grew to love in the first one and the way the first game left it I at least expected to hear about their fates if not interact with them directly . Instead we are given a whole new cast of characters and there is no background or foreground for that matter.

I have to say that I'm also disappointed that the pak files are encrypted to dis-allow any modding to the game since I had high hopes for modders to finally get into the engine and reskin predator like the one some ambitious modders attempted with the first one.

Another issue I had during the singleplayer campaign, and again I have to ask how this got by QA and why it was allowed to pass, were some of the immersion bugs. Audio loops for example. I would stealth kill someone, his buddy would come up and keep saying the same thing over and over again. Many times I found this happening and the guy was not even in line of sight (one level above the guy) in one case. I also like to play a more stealthy killer and many times I'd take out a baddy with a stealth kill and even though I was nowhere near anyone else and no one was in line of sight I was still some how instantly visible and everyone was running to my location. This occurrence also happened with silenced snipe shots,which was completely unrealistic and was never a problem in the first one.

So to conclude this review I have to say that I give the campaign a C+. There is so much potential but it's executed so poorly it feels like they just rushed the game out the door and said "Oh we'll fix the problems once its out with a patch". This unfortunately seems to be a trend that EA is getting into more and more. EA has truly lost focus in my mind and I'm started to get nervous anytime they release a game because they seem to be a company that leans more towards quantity than quality and that's a damn shame.

Just a quick review of pro's and con's:

Pros:
Great Story with an epic feeling
Musical Score rocks (Hans Zimmer)
The suit sufficiently gives you that "I kick ass feeling" with plenty of upgrades and badass moments.
Great gun selection early on allows you to play how you want to play. (stealth or run and gun anyone?)

Cons:
QA wtf were you thinking? The game is in an unfinished state.
Make no mistake this is a console port but it's at least a decent one (sort of)
Unable to mod.
No DX11 .
No ability to change or tweak graphical settings beyond presets.
Console Commands are almost non existent.
Story has a lot of holes and can leave you asking WTF happened to...?
Sound Loops and line of sight issues that can ruin the immersion factor.


Thanks for checking out my review. Hopefully we'll see a patch in the near future to address some of these issues.

-Deke

They better make a damn good patch, or they'll never interact with my money again. This is my "pre-**** you" to Crytek/EA or whoever was in charge of passing this out the door.

Excellent review, btw.

I'd have to agree with you Jodeth. Here's hoping we get a patch here soon with perhaps an acknowledgment that they messed up and are working to correct the issue. I doubt we will get the apology and that always makes me wonder. Why are gaming companies so afraid to admit they messed up with a release and then apologize for it. I wonder if they recognize that if a rep comes out and say's "Yes we F*ked up, we're really sorry but have hope we're working to fix the issue bare with us" that they would put the entire community at ease and the debacle that has become these forums would have abated thereafter?

And thanks for the response, I figured a good level headed review is what they need to see in order to identify some of the issues and hopefully fix them. But time will tell.

I'd have to agree with you Jodeth. Here's hoping we get a patch here soon with perhaps an acknowledgment that they messed up and are working to correct the issue. I doubt we will get the apology and that always makes me wonder. Why are gaming companies so afraid to admit they messed up with a release and then apologize for it. I wonder if they recognize that if a rep comes out and say's "Yes we F*ked up, we're really sorry but have hope we're working to fix the issue bare with us" that they would put the entire community at ease and the debacle that has become these forums would have abated thereafter?

And thanks for the response, I figured a good level headed review is what they need to see in order to identify some of the issues and hopefully fix them. But time will tell.

I wouldn't expect an admission of fault inside of a week, at best. They don't want to sour things up during their primary sales window (i.e. the period around release date). The reviews from gaming sites are all pretty good which means people will still be going and buying the game despite the bugs.

I enjoyed your review mate but could you chuck the word spoilers at the top please? I was holding out for Pyscho and Nomad to appear, mentioning them without a spoiler disclaimer is a douche move.

Cheers

I'll be honest, I don't expect them to admit fault or guilt. EA isn't a company known for admitting they screwed something up and I have a sneaking suspicion that employee's who do mention screw ups made by the company are usually pink slipped that same day. It also gives me incite into the character of the company and its thoughts about its customer. Essentially to me it says that EA thinks we'll just buy anything :-/

In comparison take a gaming company like Blizzard. When they mess up they come out and say it and apologize. Sure the gamers get mad, but once the apology is made most people calm right down and things go back the way they were. They spend a lot of time on quality instead of quantity which is why they only release a new game every few years (expansion packs for WoW not included in this assessment) and every game they release has been a hit with reviews in the 90% range. Their expansions to WoW are just as popular and are released every two years.

And when you compare companies like EA to Blizzard you really see the difference. EA is like a game machine always hoping for the one hit and throwing out as many games as possible (a waste of funds in my opinion) never answering to anyone but themselves. They are like a drunk baby with a bucket on its head trying to shoot a target with a potato gun. While Blizzard works for the gamers and really cares about them and the service they give. Sure they want to make money but they recognize that quality and giving the players good service is how to attain it and that's really why their business model works so well for them.

ShaunOfTheFuzz sorry about the spoilers. I guess I shouldn't have assumed that everyone knew about Nomad and Psycho not being in this game. I have edited the post to mention that there are spoilers. Hope that helps!