'Crysis 2' stumbles due to poor AI

I think that I should intro this review by saying that I am what you would call a casual gamer. I don't have a lot of time to spend completing games, and I'm very picky about the ones I play. My preferred games tend to be arcade-like First Person Shooters (FPS), and I'm more comfortable in on-rail games than sandbox ones. I did not play the first Crysis game, but when I saw trailers for "Crysis 2", it immediately piqued my interest, so I decided to go rent it.

This review is, then, not for hardcore gamers; you know better than I do whether you'll like "Crysis 2". Instead, this review is for casual gamers like me who enjoy spending the occasional night/weekend playing a new release. I played "Crysis 2" on the easiest level, mainly because I only had it for a couple of days and wanted to finish the storyline.

"Crysis 2" is a beautiful game. Graphically, it's one of the most impressive I've ever seen, especially on a console. "Crysis 2" takes full advantage of this, from tearing down skyscrapers to sending the gigantic metal tentacles of an alien ship soaring through the air before crashing back down into the Earth.

The developers did a great job of providing breathtaking detail to even the smallest degree. I could write a whole review about the graphics of "Crysis 2," but I don't have the space or time for that. Just know that it definitely gets this right. The soundtrack is another part of the game that is very well done.

The storyline of "Crysis 2" is somewhat annoying. From what I can tell, you don't have to have played the first game to get the general gist of what's going on. Explaining the whole plot would be far too complicated to outline here, but basically you're a marine who has acquired a nanosuit that gives you temporary extra-human powers, which includes taking a serious beating and surviving. You battle aliens and private operatives and the impending possibility of a nuclear strike on the city to oust alien invaders while trying to save New York City. Usual stuff.

The Nanosuit 2.0 is the main character in the game. It allows you to jump high and sprint while giving you the option to activate a cloaking feature or an armor feature. However, all of these require energy that, when used up, has to regenerate before you can use the suit's powers.

It would have been nice if your powers didn't drain your energy bar so quickly, but then again you're not invincible. Even with the suit, your character can still die from sustained fire or taking jumps that are too high.

The combat system in Crysis 2 isn't revolutionary. There isn't much of a cover system worth mentioning, and the weapons you're given don't vary much from the usual shotgun/machine gun/sniper rifle categories from similar FPS games.

The most frustrating part of the game, and the reason why I found it draining to play, is the artificial intelligence. The human soldiers you fight are pretty stupid and easy to kill. You can use the suit to go in guns blazing, or use strategy and sneak around, but since the game doesn't really specialize in either, neither option is that much fun. The aliens, or "Ceph" you fight are bullet sponges, even on the easiest levels.

They are more intelligent than the humans, but they will just stand there and take a clip's worth of fire. Once you get close to them, though, they're a pain to kill because they dodge and charge all over the place; unless you can grab one of them and choke them to death, which is an instant kill. I usually ended up just bludgeoning them to death out of pure frustration.

The Ceph also will do strange things, like run away from you or completely miss you in a charge and just stand there, fighting air. Considering the amount of work put into the graphics and storyline, the AI sticks out like a sore thumb.

This game wasn't for me. The point of playing a short, heavily scripted FPS is that your character is so fun to play with because of his abilities that you just want to destroy enemy after enemy. I ended up simply getting frustrated with my character, his limited abilities, the weak weapons and the stupid AI. Others may find the combination of stealth and brute force attractive, but the only reason I beat this game was because I'd already invested so much time into it. Crysis 2 isn't a bad waste of a couple nights, but it's not really that enjoyable either.

2 out of 5 stars.