Preview: Crysis 2

An upcoming first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the 2007 video game Crysis and its parallel expansion game, Crysis Warhead. The story was written by authors Richard Morgan and Peter Watts, who has also written a novel adaptation of the game. It will be the first game to showcase the CryEngine 3 game engine.

Release Date: March 22, 2011
MSRP: $59.95
Also on: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
RP-M+ for Rating Pending, Targeting a Rating of Mature or Above
Genre: First-Person Shooter 
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Crytek Studios

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Crysis 2 was announced at E3 2009 on June 1, 2009, and has been in development since 2007. Crysis 2 is the sequel to 2007's Crysis which was lauded for its impressive visuals. German based studio Crytek Frankfurt which developed the first game is the lead developer of the sequel along with help from Crytek UK, formerly Free Radical. It will be the first game using the new engine CryEngine 3. Crytek will bring their technical expertise for the first time to consoles and seeks to uphold their reputation of creating some of the most visually impressive games. The PC version will look better on machines able to take advantage of Crytek's new engine and DirectX 11. Crytek looks to surpass the original Crysis, which is still a benchmark of PC graphical performance in 2011.

Crytek has claimed that Crysis 2 contains the best graphics in the history of video games. Nathan Camarillo said that Crysis 2 has 'best graphics you've ever seen'. The studio also reckons Crysis 2 offers a "complete gaming experience like no other". Crytek has admitted that it's getting "slightly more performance" out of the PS3 version of Crysis 2 than the Xbox 360 edition. Crytek boss Cervat Yerli has claimed that the enemy AI in Crysis 2 is the most sophisticated in video game history.

Crytek’s Nathan Camarillo has declared that developers need to start churning out titles capable of scoring in the 90s if they ever want to be recognised in today’s competitive market conditions. Camarillo commented, "We're going to put out the best game that we can make and that's probably over a 90 rated so it's a fair statement to make." Camarillo went on to say that the need for review scores of 90 percent or more didn't just apply to Crysis 2 and its FPS competition though: "I think you have to be 90 plus to make an impact in any genre now. The quality bar is so high and publishers and developers have put so much effort against high quality games. If you want to be recognised at all, regardless of genre, like anything you need to create the highest quality product possible and anything else is not going to get noticed." He has also said that today's FPS games need 'awesome multiplayer'. "I don't think it has to have multiplayer to have longevity and I think there's plenty of titles that don't have multiplayer that do quite well, but that's more of a genre specific decision. For an FPS game yeah you really have to have it unless you're a very unique kind of FPS depending on what you're [sic] delivery platform is and what market you're going into." he said. Camarillo still believes that Crysis 2's multiplayer is completely unique, "It's different from other FPS games in that you are this ultimate super solider that has the ability to cloak at any point in time, so it's different than modern military shooters, it's different to Halo. You have the manoeuvrability, you're in an urban environment, you can jump, you can slide, you can climb. There's so much you can do in that first-person experience that the other multiplayer games don't offer."

In May 2010, Epic's Mike Capps said he was surprised people could take Crytek seriously as a cross-platform engine company given it had yet to release a console game. In January 2011, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, responded with saying that no other engine could have delivered Crysis 2 and that CryEngine 3 could handle "pretty much any other game", but claimed that its rivals Epic Games’s Unreal Engine could not handle Crysis 2. Crytek has told that it fully intends to make Crysis 3, and that it already has a plan for how the series' story will progress. However, the studio admits that the chances of a third game in the FPS series making it to market depend on the success of Crysis 2.