Crysis 2 Multiplayer Impressions

The demo for this went up on Xbox Live last Tuesday I believe. It's only on 360 for the MP beta right now, so if you have the chance and shooters are your thing hit it up.

My write up will be pretty quick here. The game is essentially Call of Duty meets Halo: Reach. It also has a bit of a Killzone vibe in the weight of guns and characters. So what does this mean for a FPS fan? Well if you like the progression system from Call of Duty, the perks, the guns, and emblems you'll have that here. If you're a Reach fan and liked the armor abilities giving gameplay a unique/varied way to engage and play, you'll have that here too, although I'll say that Crysis handles the balance of these things MUCH better than Reach did.

The controls are Call of Duty lay out, with these differences. Lb = armor ability. RB = Invisiblity. Right on dpad= Grenades. Down on dpad = thermal vision. Left on dpad = gun attachment abilities such as holograms. up on dpad = binoculars? Not 100% what up is really supposed to be used for as it isn't explained well at all.

All the other buttons/sticks are Call of Duty with how you run, crouch, shoot. Some other things you can do with these abilities buttons are while you run if you hold down B you slide and can shoot while you slide on your back. Really bad ass. :) You can also jump into the air and hit B to come down and punch the area around you. Everything dies in that radius. Also bad ass, but less useful.

I could gush over the games good points, which are plentiful from: gun play, gun balance, the awesome strategies to using armor abilities, the great layout of the map in the beta, the smooth terrain traversal, etc. Or I could just list my few problems with the beta which were: Netcode needs improvement for lag issues, matchmaking needs to be faster, game needs to replace team mates who quit faster/easier since 1v6 isn't a lot of fun, the melee needs to be toned down, and the hit detection needs to be improved. The melee issue is that too often people are not shooting each other and instead are either invisible going to 1 hit melee kill each other or are turning on armor as they run up to you to melee you to death. Oh and one other thing is they really should rework how to use holograms because holding down left on dpad, then hitting right trigger really isn't that smooth to encompass into your gameplay.

Overall very impressed considering I had 0 interest in this game before this. Looking forward to seeing how this game shapes up in the final build slated for March. :)