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Crysis 2 Multiplayer GamesCom Hands-On
I've always thought that a bunch of dudes running around beating each other up with nanosuit-augmented powers could be awesome. Who didn't? I don't care that it took Crytek buying up the remains of a defunct studio (Free Radical, now Crytek UK) to do it. I'm ecstatic that Crysis 2 multiplayer is shaping up to be what I always wanted.
Crytek 2's approach to using the nanosuit in competitive play is brilliant. Much of the suit's power lies in mobility: super speed, soaring jumps, acrobatic takeout slides. This was just as true in the original Crysis, but you had to press a button to pull up the power menu, select a power, then leave the menu and do whatever it was you were trying to do while a bunch of dudes use you for target practice. Now all of those awesome moves are controlled within the context of movement itself.
On an Xbox controller, tapping A does a regular jump while holding it for a few second charges up a super-leap. Holding A as you come up to any lip your arms could feasibly reach uses a brief burst of super-strength to mantle your body up onto the platform above. The bumpers activate what used to be suit modes, with LB making you briefly resistant to damage and slow, and RB cloaking you for a few seconds.
It sounds intuitive, but better than that it plays intuitively as well. Within a few deaths of picking up the gamepad, I was flinging myself pell-mell across NYC's ruined landscape in search of a better tactical position. Crytek UK has crafted tight, intimate levels that take full advantage of the nanosuit's mobility. Both maps available at GamesCom -- one an odd juxtaposition of modern and classic architecture of a modern office building crashed into a decrepit apartment tenement, the other an interconnected set of rooftop gardens -- are vertically diverse. It's hard to get a great read on them from a bare few rounds of play, but new strategies were springing to mind in just ten minutes of hectic action.
Sure, it's more CoD/Battlefield-type gameplay rather than some crazy departure from multiplayer norms like Resistance 2 or MAG. Judging from the relative sizes of playerbases for those games, I don't think that Crytek is staying awake at night worrying about it.
Solid guns-and-grenades core gameplay and a progression system that looks as deep as any Call of Duty's are a great spine for Crytek UK to build on, and so far the former Free Radicals seem to be taking full advantage of that. Crysis 2 is the best thing I saw today, without question -- though Diablo III not having any live gameplay at the show didn't hurt.
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