0.5/5 ★ – administrator's review of Crysis 2.

[Retrospective Review] I played this game pretty soon after launch on PC. This game takes the first game and sticks you in a boring city full of flat surfaces and throws bad guys at your face for... whatever reason. I've forgotten now. On the surface, Crysis 2 is an entirely generic shooter, something that its predecessor bucked somewhat with the use of the suit which grants boons depending on how you want to approach any combat situation. If, however, you attempt to play the game as anything but a "click on bad guys" game, you quickly realise that the game is just... broken. I am a fan of stealth games, and where the option to sneak by enemies is presented to me I will take full advantage, trying to avoid being detected at all. Ghosting a game gives me an adrenaline rush. Crysis 2 appears to give you this tool as a core component of gameplay - one of your suits' abilities is to render you invisible. Doing so allows you to sneak through (afaik, most of) the game entirely undetected, leaving behind enemies who remain unaware of your presence and avoiding all combat. Except, that's not true, is it? You can sneak through a section of the game, avoiding detection, touching (let alone killing) nobody. Nothing and no-one has acknowledged your presence. Yet a scene will play out right after where NPCs will yap on about how there's some super soldier killing all their bad guy friends. What? Very early on (like... it's within the first few combat arenas IIRC) there's a section that, if you sneak through, you'll trigger an event where soldiers rush into the arena and be surprised and devastated about all the dead bodies. But... you've snuck past all of the bad guys. They're literally walking around the NPCs who are waxing poetic about the supposed corpses littered around. They then proceed to hunt you to avenge their fallen comrades... except they can't. Because you're... well you're invisible. So you just move on. Leaving them behind to search the area for someone they have no evidence exists. I know, I am pLaYiNg It wRoNg!!1! Except I'm not, am I? I could forgive a game for this where stealth was perhaps a minor component, but as mentioned, in Crysis 2 you play as a dude who has a suit that turns him invisible. It's like, a core gameplay mechanic. The set piece and level designers just didn't bother to acknowledge that it even exists. It's such a misstep that it genuinely breaks the game for me. I played a fair amount of the game and kept getting past all these bad guys, yet kept hearing about how deadly I was and how many bodies lay in my wake. Aside from a couple of unavoidable combat sections, I hadn't been seen let alone hurt anyone. I was so disappointed, I abandoned the game. I don't think I'll ever go back, even to play it "properly". The only reason I played for as long as I did was to laugh in perplexity at the brokenness of the experience, but even that got tiresome. Sigh. I had such high hopes after Crysis 1. Perhaps I'd rate it better if I went into it throwing fire and lead everywhere. But I didn't. It sucked.