SecuROM's deactivation tool has been dubious from what I understand.
Like if you wipe your hard drive or your hard drive dies or whatever before you can deactivate, you lose that activation forever.

I liked the original Crysis, so I'm thinking about picking up Crysis 2 when it hits like $30 or so. The DRM doesn't bother me, but I always hate paying so much money for games.

Hey guys if the DRM ever stops you from playing years down the road you could just download a fixed exe OMG PROBLEM SOLVED.

And yeah, I agree with the OP to some extent. It's a great FPS and miles above most shooters that come out now-a-days. It's not as good as the original though.

You do know that pirating the game in the first place also solves that problem and saves you money, right?

Then you're a scum-sucking leech on the industry who isn't supporting PC gaming though.

Unless you are also buying PC games which have no DRM because then you are supporting PC gaming.. just not the kind that shafts the people who are not being leeches.

Then again, that still leaves you as a scum-sucking leech :P

(not condoning piracy by the way)

Well not talking about what I think about the online activation or anything, but about the game itself...

I must say that, after having finished the game, I am mostly disappointed by it.

Graphically I have mixed feeling : It looks gorgeous... from a distance, as soon as you get too close some texture are kind of blurry and a lot of little object looks very low quality (like the bottles for example)

Concerning "openness" or "destructibility" it's a major step down from the previous game, you are very often confined into a small corridors with very few options there are some more "open" area but you never really have this feeling of "freedom" (even thought it was still limited) you had in Crysis or Farcry and they could have made some effort hiding the magical invisible wall a little better. The only time I tried to swim around danger I ended up hitting a wall only 3 or four meters from the shore.

Concerning destructibility... well you can destroy concrete where the game let you to (some pillars and the "covers") but otherwise plant, glass, trashcan are totally indestructible, and sometime things can only be destroyed by certain weapon.

Kick a car with "maximum power" it won't have a single scratch... now shoot it in the windshield with a handgun and it will take fire.. it won't explode no, just some ugly looking flames.


But most of that is minor, my biggest gripe with Crysis 2 is the gameplay it self. First let me make this clear I am not some professional FPS player, I am not even what you could call a "good" FPS player, I consider myself average at best... but even at the highest difficulty level Crysis 2 is stupidly easy.

There is not a single "strategy" or even skill required, activate stealth, take all your time to aim, shoot (you lose your cloak), pull back behind cover, wait for health and energy to regenerate and repeat. Works every time even against armored vehicles.

The enemy are just stupids, they hide being wall... not bad... but ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE WALL, the one exposed to your shots... and sometime they only just stand in the open screaming "sniper" while waiting for you to shoot them.

Also that have zero attention span, if they can't reach you fast enough they just forget about you... no matter that you killed 2'000'000 or their comrades hidden behind the exact same pillar, not a single one of them will have the idea to check behind said pillar to look if you are still there. (unless they are very close)

And that's when you try to kill everybody (at least in area where the enemy don't spam forever) , if you rush to the exit it's even easier just run from cover to cover in stealth or in some level, activate maximum armor and run in straight line to the exit. An as soon as you can upgrade the suit (upgrade stealth, armor and energy/health regeneration ) you basically won the game.


In conclusion for me :

Regenerating health + regenerating invisibility + stupid enemies + tons of cover + tons of ammo = fun/challenge killer

It's been quite some time since I last played Crysis so maybe I remember incorrectly, but in Crysis you actually had to put some effort to remain stealthy and being discovered was actually making things a lot harder. Here if you are discovered just zig-zag for some seconds to let your energy regenerate and re-activate stealth and you are good to go, the enemies will shoot at your last known position for some time then completely forget about you.

Sleep is an unfortunate nesessity :)

That's pretty much how I remember Crysis and I played it recently.

What exactly do you expect from AI? If you use stealth and take out all the soldiers without alerting anyone then yes it is easy because that's the point of taking them out. If you miss one or flub a kill someone will fire off a flare and reinforcements will arrive.

If you cloak in plain view of them they aren't fooled and will continue to fire at you. If you cloak then move they will search your last known position. If they are alerted (Yellow) they won't be fooled by you moving around in front of them while cloaked.

As for the corridor nature of the game it's perfectly acceptable here because you are in New York not some sprawling island. Tthere are still multiple paths to take through almost every area and there are very few actual corridor sections.

Well what I expected from the AI was to work like you said, that would have been the minimum ... except that in Crysis 2 it doesn't work like that at all.

Flub a kill, they will fire off a flare, raise the alarm... and... nothing, it's not any harder, maybe one or two new guy will spawn but as they are as easy to kill as any other it's not an issue,

In the end finishing the whole level completely stealthy or start firing rocket at random, doesn't change a thing. Just hide behind something for X seconds to let your energy recover, re-cloak and continue like if nothing happened.

Actually they are, if you cloak in plain view they will shoot exactly at the place they last saw you, so just move one meter to the left or right outside the line of fire and you are perfectly safe (as long as you don't start shooting at them). And they only investigate your last known position is it's accessible and close enough otherwise they just stop forget about it.

In the later level I no longer cared at all about being detected or using sniper scope, so I walk cloaked until close to an enemy, de-cloack, fire with a short range weapon, re-cloack, and walk away, as you haven't shoot cloaked you you normally have more than enough energy to walk out of harm way.

The only time it doesn't work is with alien because of their rushing ability, in this case when you are noticed just activate Maximum Armor, shotgun or grab any alien foolish enough come your way and run to the next cover.

Also I never noticed any real change with either yellow or red mode, yes the enemies move, sometime they even throw a grenade at random, but it's as easy to grab them or stealth kill them.

EDIT: IMHO what they could have done that would have made it more interesting is that when "spotted" some enemies would equip themselves with infrared goggles, forcing you to be extra-careful as stealth wouldn't be as effective. They could even have included some infrared using soldier as "special" enemies guarding some key areas, it would have forced you to think of some alternate route/strategy to avoid them or neutralize them.

If I've gotta do that anyway why should I pay in the first place? That's my point, but we've discussed this before between us:)
That's a little strong, don't you think? Are you obligated to support an abusive industry? How do you vote with your dollar and still take part in your culture? You can still buy games that are DRM free.
I figured, of course, I had to eventually as well:)

We spend one third of our lives asleep, it's a weird thing.

I think we can agree DRM free PC games are exceptions rather than rules. You are obligated to support an industry if you like the product and you want more of said products. If everyone pirated games simply because they disagreed with the DRM then the dev/publisher wouldn't make any money and would simply stop making games for the PC. This is already happening with companies like Lionhead, Epic and Rockstar all but giving up PC development (Fable 3 seems to be the execption).

How do you support an industry that uses a system you don't like? How do you vote with your wallet? Simple you wait for the game you want to reach a price you find acceptable. I bought Splinter Cell: Conviction, Assassins Creed 2 and HAWX 2 all with that horrid DRM but I didn't pay more than €10 for any of them. The message to the publisher is clear, I want to buy thier games but not at full price if they are going to restrict me like that. Seems Ubisoft did get that message as they have relaxed that stupid DRM system.

Piracy is not voting with your wallet it's simply taking it for free, there is a big difference. If you truly object to some DRM or other thing in the game then don't buy it and crucially don't pirate it either. When a game sells poorly yet there are thousands if not millions of people playing it that doesn't tell a publisher the DRM was wrong or the price was wrong it only reinforces thier oppinion that PC gamers are mostly thieves and if anything the DRM wasn't strong enough.

Pirates are just as destructive to the games industry as publishers are and unfortunately it's the average honest gamer caught in the middle.