With RPG Elements - The Search Bar!

Monday, March 14, 2011

The Battle of the Bloom - Crysis 2: Multiplayer Demo Impressions

I have to say I was a little bitter when the Crysis 2 multiplayer demo was only released on the 360. Seeing as Crysis was a PC game to shun the audience that put your game on the map seemed like a bad move to me. Then a few weeks later the word came down that Crytek was indeed releasing the demo on the PC. On March 1st I eagerly downloaded said demo because I was excited to see what Crytek had done with the sequel to one of my favorite games.

I'd seen some video of the demo in action so I knew all about the Call of Duty revamp the Crysis multiplayer had received. Gone are the big battlefields, only to be replaced with close quarters combat and the same perk based level up system most shooters these days have.

Getting into my first match I was greeted with the absolute worst thing in this demo, the Bloom. This game is really and I mean really bright. I usually play my games with the brightness a little higher than suggested and this time I had to turn the in game brightness down to zero and it was still to bright. I blame this on Crytek's over use of bloom. Everything is so shiny, it's blinding. I'm going to take a wild guess on this and assume Crytek is using so much bloom because it's covering up some weak textures. Seeing as they need to cram this game onto the 360 the overall graphics are going to suffer and we all know the secret to covering all that up is with bloom.

The controls are not up to par either. They just feel wrong like there's a slight delay or something. It's like they were going for that "weighted" feel like Killzone 2 but in this game it just doesn't work. When you have a fast paced shooter like a COD or a Halo then you put a weighted delay on the shooting it just feels off. I tried both the mouse and keyboard and my wired 360 controller and neither of them felt right. Also with using the mouse the sensitivity wouldn't stay were I put it often resetting to some random number while I was playing. When you're playing a game and all of a sudden the mouse goes all wonky due to the sensitivity deciding on it's own to change it doesn't inspire confidence.

Everything about this demo feels wrong. It's not fun to play and it's always feels like you're fighting with the game on top of the other players. The bloom is a major problem that needs to be toned down in the final game or preferably taken out all together. The controls are garbage and need major tweaking but I don't think either of these will happen. The first Crysis was a great game with amazing graphics (Part 1 looks better than part 2) and super tight controls. I don't see how Crytek could drop the ball this hard on the sequel but it's a real shame. I know it's only a demo but a demo is suppose to help sell the final product and all playing this demo has done for me is make me not want to play Crysis 2. It took a game I was super excited for and made me not even care. Crytek may address some of my issues in the final game but I'll never know as I will never play Crysis 2. Maybe the mod scene can get their hands on this and actually make the game playable, of that we can only hope.

No comments:

Post a Comment