Since the original came out three years ago, Crysis has come to be a defining PC gaming experience, with incredible graphics and almost unreasonable hardware requirements!
Today saw the release of the Crysis 2 Multiplayer demo, which you can download here. Sadly, developer Crytek’s servers appeared to be struggling under the weight of all the excited PC gamers this morning. Login problems seem to have been solved now, and while it’s certainly busy, it is possible to join games again.
From March 1st to 13th you can play multiplayer games over two maps and two game modes. Team Instant Action is basically a team death match, while Crash Site is a kind of capture the flag match, although the location of the ‘flags’ changes throughout the game.
You can level up in the demo, gaining XP through kills, protecting crash sites and so on. This will allow you access to more classes of soldier and more varied weaponry.
Whichever mode you choose, the action is fast-paced, intense and more in line with Halo than Modern Combat, thanks to your Nanosuit’s exaggerated jump ability. Any newbie will find their first few games dispiriting, as they get torn to pieces by experienced players, but this helps you learn how to not get killed, and you’ll soon be racking up kills yourself!
The menu system and method for joining multiplayer games still lags behind console titles like Battlefield 1943. Instead of letting players try and fail to join full servers, it would be much better if server choice was made by the game and you could just jump in. Nevertheless, this demo shows that Crytek have created a formidable multiplayer experience, which will help build up hype for the full game, coming on March 19th (25th in Europe).
