A walk in the park ...
Not that the last mission, although named as such, was easy. Still, I really liked the irony, and the appropriateness (it's Central Park, after all, but like you've never seen it). So I've finished Crysis 2. I've been taking screenshots along the way, so I'll probably be posting some once I've sorted them out.
Among the memorable firefights was the one in Times Square. While the other soldiers were holding the aliens' attention, I was running cloaked from target to target, bashing aliens or executing stealth kills. The arrival of a pinger, the three-legged alien, really put a damper on things. And again, I only just had enough anti-tank rockets to kill it. Also memorable was the final boss fight. Finding that the Cloak Tracker was actually a worthwhile investment, and then seeing how quickly those cloaked aliens went splut once I'd tagged them and hit them with microwave. And finally, I was kinda surprised that Alcatraz survived. Frankly, at some points, I thought he was a bit too self-sacrificing for his own good. Jumping into alien structures, knowing that they fritz the suit and that the suit is literally your life support system? How many times was that again?
It was kinda embarrassing, but I played through most of the game with a single weapon, the Scar assault rifle. I only occasionally switched to the anti-tank or grenade launcher for the heavily armored assault aliens or the gigantic three-legged ones. And then I discovered the microwave cannon and the Gauss rifle. I thought the concept of the microwave cannon was pretty ingenious. Since the Ceph were like cephalopods, with a high water content in their bodies, aiming microwaves at them quickly heats up the water. End result, they swell up quickly and burst. However, I have to keep the cannon on them for the duration, if they duck to the side, I have to do it all over again. Still, they die quite fast, so the microwave is ideal against standard aliens. The assault Ceph, however, takes quite a while to kill, and all the while, I'm exposed to its return fire. Safer way to deal with it was the Gauss, a railgun based sniper rifle. 4 shots from that could kill an assault. By comparison, 3 anti-tanks kill an assault. A sniper round with close to the power of an anti-tank? Sweet. But I was really very sad that Gauss ammo was in such short supply.
The other thing that I kinda regretted was getting the Deflection armor mod late, only during the last mission, in fact. Unlike the Armor mod, which depletes energy on taking damage, the Deflection mod depletes energy by time, making the suit virtually invulnerable for a certain period. And quite a substantial period of time, at that: I could take a machine gun and stand toe-to-toe against an assault Ceph, and come out the winner.
Near the end, I found that C4 could be surprisingly useful. I'd lob it at an assault and start running, detonating it at a safe distance. Amazingly, I'd killed assaults with just 2 packs of C4. Even better if the assault is standing with a group of grunts or stalkers: the explosion would take those out too. Grenades were the only weapon I never managed to figure out, couldn't ever loft them accurately to the intended target.
All in all though, Crysis 2 was definitely quite an experience. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes shooters and whose system is at least minimum spec. It does in fact still look really good on such systems, as my brother's computer has shown.
Among the memorable firefights was the one in Times Square. While the other soldiers were holding the aliens' attention, I was running cloaked from target to target, bashing aliens or executing stealth kills. The arrival of a pinger, the three-legged alien, really put a damper on things. And again, I only just had enough anti-tank rockets to kill it. Also memorable was the final boss fight. Finding that the Cloak Tracker was actually a worthwhile investment, and then seeing how quickly those cloaked aliens went splut once I'd tagged them and hit them with microwave. And finally, I was kinda surprised that Alcatraz survived. Frankly, at some points, I thought he was a bit too self-sacrificing for his own good. Jumping into alien structures, knowing that they fritz the suit and that the suit is literally your life support system? How many times was that again?
It was kinda embarrassing, but I played through most of the game with a single weapon, the Scar assault rifle. I only occasionally switched to the anti-tank or grenade launcher for the heavily armored assault aliens or the gigantic three-legged ones. And then I discovered the microwave cannon and the Gauss rifle. I thought the concept of the microwave cannon was pretty ingenious. Since the Ceph were like cephalopods, with a high water content in their bodies, aiming microwaves at them quickly heats up the water. End result, they swell up quickly and burst. However, I have to keep the cannon on them for the duration, if they duck to the side, I have to do it all over again. Still, they die quite fast, so the microwave is ideal against standard aliens. The assault Ceph, however, takes quite a while to kill, and all the while, I'm exposed to its return fire. Safer way to deal with it was the Gauss, a railgun based sniper rifle. 4 shots from that could kill an assault. By comparison, 3 anti-tanks kill an assault. A sniper round with close to the power of an anti-tank? Sweet. But I was really very sad that Gauss ammo was in such short supply.
The other thing that I kinda regretted was getting the Deflection armor mod late, only during the last mission, in fact. Unlike the Armor mod, which depletes energy on taking damage, the Deflection mod depletes energy by time, making the suit virtually invulnerable for a certain period. And quite a substantial period of time, at that: I could take a machine gun and stand toe-to-toe against an assault Ceph, and come out the winner.
Near the end, I found that C4 could be surprisingly useful. I'd lob it at an assault and start running, detonating it at a safe distance. Amazingly, I'd killed assaults with just 2 packs of C4. Even better if the assault is standing with a group of grunts or stalkers: the explosion would take those out too. Grenades were the only weapon I never managed to figure out, couldn't ever loft them accurately to the intended target.
All in all though, Crysis 2 was definitely quite an experience. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes shooters and whose system is at least minimum spec. It does in fact still look really good on such systems, as my brother's computer has shown.