Crysis 2 on Xbox 360
I'm probably a little less than half way done with the single player campaign. So far, it seems like a standard campaign with a few added elements. The story is nothing special (yet?), but the gameplay is pretty solid and allows the player to be a bit more tactical than in most first person shooters. However, once my cover is blown, enemies know exactly where I am, even though I'm using a silencer, and then it turns into me hiding behind a chest-high-wall, putting on armor mode, shoot a couple guys, then duck back into cover. The lighting is probably the best I've seen in any game. However, textures and graphics look mediocre when your face is pressed up to them. But whatever, I'm knit picking.
My real problem is with the multiplayer. Like everybody and their dog has already stated, the game, at least on paper, feels like a cross between Halo and Call of Duty. However, the game doesn't play as well as either game. It might just be the less than great internet connect at my parent's house, but my experience can be summarized in one word: inconsistent. Let me elaborate.
In Call of Duty (Black Ops or MW2, whatever), a guy goes down in 2-4 shots. Lag is an issue, but it usually means enemy character models not walking smoothly and getting shot when, at least in your perspective, you're around the corner. In Halo, a you drop a guy with 4 shots to the head. Lag is not that much of an issue, at least in my experience.
In Crysis 2, you have armor mode, which temporarily gives you more health, to put it in simple terms. You can take a lot more fire while in armor mode before dying is what I'm trying to say. If you don't use armor mode, you'll go down very quickly. I died more than a dozen times by a guy hipfiring across the room with an LMG while I wasn't in armor mode.
One game, I tried using a shotgun and got in a close quarter fight with a guy with an assault rifle. We both enabled our armor mode and I unloaded 4 buckshots into his chest. He didn't go down and rather sprayed my general area with bullets, dropping me with two connected shots. Moreover, any gun is capable of a one hit headshot, provided the target is not in armor mode. A lucky LMG hipfire spray across a room can trump 10 aim assault rifle shots.
I'm probably not getting my point across as coherently as I'd like so I'll just end this. The demo of this game was great and I really want to like the full game, I really am giving it the ol' college try. But spotty hit detection, unreliable killcams, and poor connection and gameplay experience is enough for me to never touch the multiplayer ever again. However, my friends enjoy playing this game, so I play with them. I don't use primary weapons but instead, I use the pistol because then I have some tangible excuse for losing all my gunfights.
Oh yeah, and the menu music also gets really distorted because it was compressed too much. It pisses me off almost as much as the whole online experience.
