Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek, published by Electronic Arts and released in North America, Australia and Europe in March 2011 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Officially announced on June 1, 2009, the game is the second main installment of the Crysis series, and is the sequel to the 2007 video game Crysis, and its expansion Crysis Warhead. The story was written by Richard Morgan, while Peter Watts was consulted and wrote a novel adaptation of the game. It was the first game to showcase the CryEngine 3 game engine and the first game using the engine to be released on consoles. A sequel, Crysis 3, was released in 2013.
Gameplay
Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter. The player assumes the role of a Force Recon Marine called Alcatraz. Similar to its predecessor, it provides freedom to customize weaponry and abilities. Crytek wanted to avoid making another game set in a true jungle environment (as were Far Cry and Crysis); New York City has been dubbed an "urban jungle". The urban atmosphere offers new options with relation to progressing and planning attacks. Players are able to navigate between floors and buildings, as well as a destroyed cityscape.
Campaign
The player assumes the control of a Force Recon Marine named "Alcatraz", who gains ownership of the Nanosuit 2.0 from Army Delta Force officer Laurence "Prophet" Barnes, who returns from the original Crysis. CryNet Systems has been hunting Prophet to retrieve the suit, inadvertently pursuing Alcatraz, believing he is Prophet. The aliens seen in the original game have undergone a major redesigning, abandoning the ancient, tentacled exosuits seen in the first game for high-tech humanoid armored war machines that stalk Alcatraz through the ravaged New York City. Crytek stated prior to release that their intention was to surpass the original game graphically and gameplay-wise while also having lower system requirements and also supporting true stereoscopic 3D.
The new Nanosuit supports new and upgraded features. Suit functionality has been streamlined; multiple modes can easily be used simultaneously whenever the user wishes. The first suit's Strength and Speed Modes have been combined into the new Power Mode, the suit binoculars function has been upgraded with an advanced Tactical mode, the Cloaking Device has been modified to allow increased sensory input and silent melee stealth kills and has been renamed to Stealth Mode, while the Armor Mode has been left more or less as is, with the exception of slightly restricted agility and an ever-decreasing energy level. There are two trailers, with one trailer showing the suit in a wire-frame state, the other showing the suit in a complete state. In-fiction, the suit is to feature many improvements over its predecessor, giving soldiers freedom to upgrade their suits based on their own style of combat.
Synopsis
Characters and setting
Crysis 2 takes place in 2023, three years after the events of the first game, in a destroyed New York City which has since been evacuated due to alien infestation. The game begins with news footage of a large outbreak of the "Manhattan" virus, a gruesome disease that causes complete cellular breakdown; civil unrest; and panic about an alien invasion by the Ceph, the tentacled, squid-like alien race behind the incident of the previous game, Crysis. Due to the breakdown in social order within New York City, Manhattan is placed under martial law, and under contract from the US Department of Defense, soldiers from Crynet Enforcement & Local Logistics (or simply "CELL"), a private military contractor run by the Crynet corporation, police the chaos.
Plot
On August 23, 2023, a United States Marine Corps Force Recon unit is deployed into New York City by the submarine USS Nautilus to extract former Crynet employee Doctor Nathan Gould, who may have vital information on combating the alien race. However, insertion goes awry - the Ceph, the alien race that is trying to destroy humanity, sinks the sub, mortally wounding Force Recon Marine "Alcatraz." Delta Force Major Laurence "Prophet" Barnes saves Alcatraz and is forced to kill himself in order for his Nanosuit to assimilate and revive Alcatraz. A recording left in the suit reveals that Prophet had been infected by the Manhattan virus, and that Alcatraz is to finish Prophet's mission to rescue humanity from the alien invasion. Believing Alcatraz is Prophet, Gould soon gets in contact with Alcatraz and asks him to meet up at Gould's lab. However, CELL forces, led by Commander Dominic Lockhart, target and attack Alcatraz, believing him to be Prophet. While on his way to Gould's laboratory, Alcatraz collects alien tissue samples from a crashed Ceph dropship and a Ceph soldier, which cause strange reactions within his Nanosuit, giving him some alien abilities. Alcatraz eventually meets with Gould, who is initially hostile after learning that he is not Prophet. However the last suit recording of Prophet's message causes Gould to relent, prompting Gould to explain that the suit has been busy rewriting its own code after absorbing the Ceph's tissue, speculating that the suit was creating an antibody for the Manhattan virus. Gould and Alcatraz commit to further scans at a Crynet base on Wall Street. The scans are cut short when CELL forces led by Commander Lockhart and Lieutenant Tara Strickland, daughter of U.S. Marine Corps Major Strickland from the first game, ambush Alcatraz and Gould.
During the middle of a prisoner transfer outside of the building, the Ceph attack the CELL personnel as a massive alien spire rises from underneath the Crynet building, releasing a spore-based bioweapon that kills most of the CELL troops in the immediate area. Alcatraz is left stranded and isolated for a period of time while dealing with a Nanosuit malfunction caused by the spore bio-weapon. The suit gets rebooted remotely by Crynet director and Hargreave-Rasch Biotechnologies co-founder Jacob Hargreave, a centenarian who apparently had foreknowledge of the Ceph and had spent most of the previous century using stolen Ceph technology to design the Nanosuit to be used as a defense against the aliens. Hargreave directs Alcatraz to another Ceph spire to conduct an important experiment for him.
