On another note:

"Crysis 1's intention was, if I were to play it three years later, it looks great. And it does, actually, it fulfilled that. But it made it difficult for entry-level players," Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli related to Gamasutra. "So with Crysis 2, we took a different direction, and it backfired a little bit."

Finally, an admission of guilt from Cevat Yerli. Now if only he can admit that some gameplay design decisions also backfired, the future of Crysis will be looking much better... Atleast, it is good that Cevat is finally opening up to the press and community and is no longer so silent.

Well it's not really their fault is it? When Crysis was released, probably 90% of the complaints were how people could not run the game that well on their 7900GTXs and maybe a little later on their 8800GTs.

They did technically "listen" to the community. Crysis 2 in DX9 is about as good looking as a game gets on a 9800GT, and other lower mid range hardware. (And the 9800GT was the most popular card on Steam about half a year ago. It's been replaced with the HD 5770 now though.).

They were at fault for neglecting the high end community, yes, but I would say they've made up for that. No game so far uses tesselation on the extent that Crysis 2 does. (Maybe Stalker, but that's a **** game.).

Crytek is at fault because of the way they marketed the game... NVIDIA and Crytek had a partnership showcasing DX11 features months in advance of release, the game engine featured tons of destruction and other stuff in a Crysis 2 environment... Crytek marketed the game as high end and was a huge surprise when it came out geared towards the low end market.

If Crytek came out and said that they are gearing the game towards a lower end market with 9800GTX's and the game won't be GPU intense with features like the last one, it would be a whole different story. Instead Crytek pulled off false advertising and got a huge backlash because of it.

Heck, NVIDIA even launched the GTX 590 on the same day Crysis 2 launched, and showcased the card with Crysis 2. Crytek can cry foul for getting lashed at by the community but they completely deserved it by the way they marketed the game... Heck, Crytek got me to blow $1100 on a PC to anticipate it with false advertising and what came out on launch was just absolute crap. If anyone deserves to be pissed off at Crytek, it's the people like me that quite honestly wasted over a grand of cash to anticipate a PC-killer.

Crytek have tried to do what every developer is trying to do - ride the Call of Duty wave and hope to have a fraction of the success. They do this by copying Call of Duty in most ways - highly linear and simplistic gameplay that appeals to more people, urban setting with a focus on close quarters killing, a focus on being "cool" instead of "fun", and plot that focuses on 'America in Peril', as well as extreme handholding, dumbing down of all game mechanics, duplicating the multiplayer experience, etc. - and tweaking it in other ways - significantly better graphics, Nanosuit powers, longer and better single player campaign, etc.

And the problem with copying something is that you'll never beat the original. Instead of having faith in the 'Crysis' brand and it's own unique personality and flavour, Crytek showed that they have very little faith in their own product, and more faith in Activision Blizzard's product - so they tried to make their own version of it. Instead of a real 'Crysis 2' we got 'Crysis of Duty'. Instead of a Crysis flavoured multiplayer, we got Call of Duty's multiplayer with Crysis' Nanosuit attached. How is anyone supposed to say "I prefer Crysis 2 to Call of Duty" when Call of Duty is it's own thing - albeit a dumb, obnoxious and offensive thing - and Crysis 2 is trying so hard to be Call of Duty that it spits on it's pre-established fanbase and trades everything it has just for a chance at making more money.

Ultimately, that's what Crytek did with Crysis 2 - they traded personality and identification for the hope of greater profit. They didn't want to make 'Crysis 2', they wanted to make 'Call of Duty's Profits'. And it backfired in a big bloody way. They have less sales on three platforms than Crysis managed one on. And now, PC Gamers don't talk about Crysis 2 - they talk about Crysis. Console Gamers don't talk about Crysis 2 - they talk about Call of Duty. And Crytek don't even have vast sums of money to comfort them as their product is bashed across every forum that talks about it.

Crysis 3 will Crytek's final attempt at making something out of the 'Crysis' brand. EA won't write them a blank cheque for a series that can barely break 3 million sales on three platforms - they need to pull in the big dollars, or they'll be out of Publisher funding.
Crysis 3 will be more linear, louder, dumber, and with a bigger focus on "scale". It has to be - they need a big hit, and they can't take chances. They'll sacrifice everything to get those profit margins up. Buildings will explode in intense scenes of urban destruction - massive body counts will arive with faster gameplay with less focus of tactical play. And no one will care on any platform, because it'll be just like every Call of Duty title ever made.
Mr Yerli will respond to Crysis 3's terrible sales with "Crytek is now shifting it's focus to the mobile and console development scene" and be left with little to no funding to make Facebook games for EA, before being sold to Activision Blizzard to make map packs for Call of Duty.

Just wanted to tell you guys, yesterday I wanted to play C1 MP. Just for the nostalgia.
I have played it before, but I just realised "Oh, I've got 1.2 not 1.21" so I updated and guess what. I can't play because my version is too high!
So I played C2.

The story in Crysis 2 is easy to follow unless you're retarded, like Talon.
/word
You just have to have to understand this really good story.

Of course a book will go into the story and characters in a more detailed manner than a game. The book is ONLY story so it has more opportunity to go into detail. That's an unfair complaint.


Also, you stated "Simply put, if you can't understand the story on a first playthrough without reading a book about the game, then the story is absolute ****. "

This implies that you couldn't understand the story on your first playthrough, so I assumed you were retarded. My mistake if I misunderstood.

You dont get it. If you have to read or look at something else to understand something further. That means there is something wrong with it. Example, you have to read a book to understand Crysis 2. That mean that the story in crysis 1 and or 2 was not told very well.