I really enjoyed my replay of the first game, and did not care much for Warhead. I hear this one is the worst of the franchise and the most linear, so I'm not expecting much.
I played the very start. It opens with the by-now-classic FPS trope a tilting, sinking ship. Then Prophet from the first game shows up and promptly kills himself, which was actually pretty shocking considering he's a character with zero personality. And now I'm into wrecked New York. The game looks really nice. The suit controls have been streamlined a bit - you automatically get speed and strength if you run or jump over stuff, I'm guessing the same will be true of strength. So your only options are armour or cloak. I'm surprised they didn't just put armour on the whole time too, to be honest. I'll have to check if that drains your energy more now or something. The enemies are now slightly futuristic looking marine types. I'm glad they mixed up the setting for the sequel, but I do kind of miss the North Koreans a little.
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This is as linear as reported. Even when it does open up an action bubble, they tend to be slightly wider corridors. Taken on its own terms as a mainly linear shooter, it's fine. Very impressive pyrotechnics and the basic 'cloak-decloak-shoot some fools-recloak and retreat' pattern is still fun. Other differences: you now have to tag your own enemies, which is fine but a strange choice when they're streamlining everything else; there's some light RPG stuff where you kill aliens to get nanopoints and upgrade your suit - unfortunately it's heavily restricted and ineffective so I've basically disregarded it already.
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Aaaand I'm at a siege section. Can't be bothered with one of these so I'll take a break.
I've been exclusively fighting aliens since very early on in the game, and while they're bipeds and basically just tough soldiers, so it's not as bad as the ones from the first game, they are really tough so there's not a lot of scope for messing around with your powers and such. Bit of a slog.
It's fine, it just doesn't stand up to the fun of Far Cry 1 or Crysis 1.
It's basically "ooh, this bit is some Crysis-y fun... oh no, another annoying bit. Ugh, one of these guys. WHERE ARE MY KOREANS?" I've bought the faster power-recharge and that's pretty much the only interesting upgrade, so I'm just cloaking past as much of the game as I can. The aliens might be bipeds now, but they're just not as fun to play against partly because they have no character.
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I'm about three quarters of the way through the game, so I don't think this will get any more fun. The difference is glaring when I compare this to my recent Crysis 1 replay where I was loving it pretty much all the way through - even the bits I had got stuck on originally (tank level, zero-g level, escort guy to various fires level) I was able to race through to more fun sections.
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Ugh, this has devolved into purely siege sections and fight giant mech sections, both of which are incredibly dull. The mechs in particular highlight just how under-powered your super-soldier is - you have to flank them and shoot their big glowy weak spot (of course) at the back with a rocket launcher or similar. Problem is, as soon as you get a shot in, it immediately throws an EMP at you so you lose all your power and have to limp off as quickly as possible hoping to get cover before it shoots you. Then wait for your power to regen (assuming it's not constantly throwing more EMP area attacks at you), then spend 3 minutes trying to flank it again because you move so slowly and it will turn around on a whim. It also seems to be able to hear your lightest footstep which makes it all extra difficult. Meanwhile you've got infinispawning enemy foot-soldiers running around too. Plus, like Paul said, the checkpoints are a pain in the arse - you always have to kill two grunts and run around picking up all your weapons at the start of each attempt before the mech shows up. This may be where I quit the game...
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Finished! I got past that mech fight using some tactical hints from a walkthrough and a lot of patience, but it wasn't fun. After that, though, the game picked up again. It went back to human enemies, gave me some nice stealthy sections and even a 'limited battery flashlight' section where you need your heat-vision ('nanovision' here, nonsensically) to navigate and smoke fools but that means you can't have any of your other powers on. Apart from that it was mostly bombast, which frankly I was quite relieved about. I was able to cloak through most enemy groups so it basically turned into a very impressive action movie simulator, where you're running over collapsing bridges, jumping between buildings as they collapse, and navigating a levitating, crumbling Central Park. I power-kicked a NY taxi-cab off the side, then a few minutes later I saw an alien doing the same so I indignantly chucked a red barrel at him and blew him over the edge.
The story was mostly science men and army men shouting at me or each other. It did some cool transhumanism stuff though, where it revealed that all the people wearing nanosuits are basically walking corpses (or 'robocops'), kept alive by the suits but too damaged to live if they ever leave them. It's also implied that the suit overwrites your personality with Prophet's at the end, and also the guy speaking to you through the game turns out to be a >100 year old dude in a cryo tank who's communicating through a computer simulacra of himself - all very Bioshock. AND it turns out that the aliens have built a ton of subterranean stuff across the planet centuries ago, not just the ones from the first two games (which reminded me of the route the Spielberg War Of The Worlds adaptation took). The storytelling isn't too sophisticated, it's overstuffed, and the ideas aren't super-original, but I quite like the unfolding mythos.
So basically, looks gorgeous, impressive action setpieces and occasionally recaptures the Crysis glory, but far too much annoying stuff, dull stuff and linearity.
Rating: Orange.
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