Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 5

I played great gobs of Crysis 2 over the weekend. Enjoying it still, for the most part. I’m seven hours in, according to my Steam stats.

I think I’ve been a little too sloppy with posting spoilers, blatantly listing out the storyline and such, so sorry about that. I’ll try to be a little more general with my descriptions from here on out, for those of you who haven’t played but are interested.

• So, when I last checked in I was getting killed repeatedly.
• I am still there, doing that. Or having that done to me.
• My third attempt at surviving the current blitzkrieg is successful. It’s one of those fights where you’re stuck in a relatively enclosed area, and have to stand your ground until everyone is dead. These are my least favorite types of fights, as I prefer to be able to run away and hide and regenerate.
• Though I kind of liked them in Bioshock 2, because you could set up defensive perimeters and such. The stand-and-fight sequences in Crysis 2 are sprung on you, though. As I suppose they would be in real life.
• Some street skirmishes follow. I can once again run away and hide and kill people at my leisure.

• Remember the intro movie I talked about? I am now sitting in a chair watching an NPC watch it. He watches some of it twice. Take your time. Maybe you could watch some Portal 2 promo movies while you’re at it.
• More fighting after a too-long bout of not-fighting.
• I realize I am the type of person who complains about lack of story in games, but am also the type of person who, when forced to sit and listen to story, gets impatient and doesn’t listen very closely. This isn’t really fair.
• Though in my defense, the story is not being explained interestingly.
• Heh. I go to try to open an apartment door, but wind up just ringing the doorbell. Bing-bong! Cute. The apartment is full of soldiers, who have been alerted to my presence by my ringing the doorbell like I’m delivering a pizza.
• I am not delivering a pizza. I am delivering BULLETS and a six-pack of GRENADES with your choice of DEATH and a side order of GARLIC TWISTY-BREAD.
• A few more street skirmishes, including some involving aliens. Some of them kill me, and I am brought back to the last checkpoint, which is miles away. Gnurf.
• Killed again. Shit. It’s like three blocks of jumping over rooftops just to get back to the start of the fight that I keep losing.

• Alien ship flies through the city, pursued by choppers. Again, I hope I get to fly a chopper soon.
• The plot now calls for me creating a diversion.
• I kill twenty soldiers and blow a couple things up. This somehow does not count as a diversion.
• Ohhh, okay. There’s specific designated diversion targets I have to blow up. Gotcha. Thanks to the enemy soldiers for planting Diversion Bombs everywhere. I wonder what they were going to do with them.
• I’m, um… getting a little bored with fighting soldiers. Some of it is me, not being more imaginative with how I’m killing them, some of it is the game. But this bunch of soldiers I’m killing aren’t much different than the last few hundred.
• I take it back. I just got to snipe a ton of soldiers from a very high rooftop. That was fun. They are not terribly bright, these soldiers.
• Ahhh. Okay. I owe Crysis 2 a big apology. I’ve been complaining that all this killing could be avoided if only I would open my mouth and tell the enemy army I’m not who they think I am. The game just explained why I can’t do that. And it wasn’t even like an NPC looked into camera and said it, it was done very naturally through some dialogue that wasn’t even addressed to me personally. Very good.  Sorry, Crysis 2! You were right and I was wrong. I am a jerk.
• A bunch of things happen. Now, a new NPC is talking to me on the radio. I don’t like him.

• I have a bunch of alien cooties collected now, so I buy a power for my suit that will show me the routes the enemies have taken. A tracking program, in other words. As a stealth machine, I am interested in tracking.
• Wait, I shouldn’t have bought this. It’s very easy to tell what routes my enemies take because I am usually watching them from a distance through a sniper scope.
• I think this power would be useful in a jungle setting where I foliage obscures everything. Not so much in the city. Buyer’s remorse.
• Some fun fights with a bunch of friendlies and a bunch of aliens. I think these friendlies are indestructible, because I just watched one getting whaled on by an alien for a couple minutes and he didn’t die.
• Another stand-and-fight section involving loads of aliens. Stressful. By the end I’m just running around my little area firing wildly with whatever weapon I happen to be holding. I don’t care for these parts.
• Major, major me-vs-alien stuff. I am so desperate for a checkpoint because I’ve killed tons of them and don’t want to have to do it again because I killed a lot of them by sheer luck.
• For instance, I tried to switch guns, and accidentally switched to C4. I tried to fire the gun I didn’t switch to, and wound up throwing C4, which landed in the perfect spot to blow up an alien.
• If anyone was watching, it probably looked cool, but in reality I was just clicking my mouse like a total spaz.
• Checkpoint. Whew. Good place to stop.

Review Score, Part 5: Some entertaining fights, some not-so, more checkpoint woes. B