Gamesugar

March 28, 2011

A Rough Start for Crysis 2

Filed under: Editorial Rants — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Brad Johnson @ 8:01 pm

Crysis 2
Update 04/04/11: A patch has now been released, aiming to resolve many of the issues described here. Patch notes can be found here. Original post follows:

I’ve been playing Crysis 2 for the past week, and while normally this is about the time you’d be reading my unrelenting logic assault in the form of a review, it’s going to be a while longer before that occurs.

Crysis 2 has had an unhappy launch on the PC, with both the multiplayer and singleplayer components plagued by an entire menagerie of bugs, ranging from the annoying to the nigh-gamebreaking species. While this could fairly be grounds for a resoundingly negative review, I am not entirely comfortable committing such to print at this time, with the knowledge that the digital age affords developers the ability to promptly right such wrongs for all players.

Flaws remain flaws, and should be considered—hence this writing—but I would prefer not to write a review that could, in a week’s time, no longer represent the product. Therefore, I will allow some time to pass in the hopes that a patch will be distributed and the game can be properly reviewed.

In the meantime, however, I would be remiss not to advise players on the matter of the game as it currently exists. As I implied previously, I am playing Crysis 2 on the PC, and thus some or all of the bugs I describe here may not exist on the console versions; I urge players to do their research before making their purchasing decisions.

Crysis 2

The nano-catalyst glitch resets the upgrade currency to zero, Not cool, if you’ve got a lot saved up.

First and foremost among these problems is the nano-catalyst glitch in the singleplayer campaign, which causes the player to suddenly be robbed of the game’s upgrade currency, and very probably prevented from collecting any more of it. This effectively disables player progression, and while it is certainly possible to continue playing the game, it cripples a significant portion of the experience.

Singleplayer is also hampered by a glitch that causes the melee attack to stop working until the game is restarted. While less damning, this remains aggravating all the same.

On the multiplayer side, matters are even more dire. On launch day many found that their serial keys were habitually being forgotten by the game, preventing them from playing online (a dirty fix has since been found, but for uninformed players the problem may remain).

Also, since launch day many servers have suffered from a problem that prevents games from launching, instead stranding players in the lobby to wonder exactly what is going on. As of this writing, the servers I have tested have been functional and the issue seems to have been resolved. If any players are still encountering this problem, please leave comments to that effect.

More recently, many players have found themselves suddenly disconnected, often within minutes of joining a game. The nature of this issue seems random; players may find that they are able to play uninterrupted for an hour, and then suddenly be disconnected from three games in a row. Due to the unpredictable nature of this issue, I cannot say for certain whether it remains prevalent at this time, though I encountered it as recently as last night.

Still others have found their rank progression and stats have been reset to lower levels (or completely wiped out), sometimes more than once.

Some have reported that incorrect CD-keys can be used to access the multiplayer, thus potentially allowing pirates to play unimpeded. Support staff on the MyCrysis forums have said that a patch to be rolled out later this week will incorporate security measures aiming to solve this issue.

Crysis 2

Crysis 2 may be something to behold when it runs as expected, but presently a myriad of glitches hamper the product.

I stress that the problems described in this article may be solved at any time, even at the time of this writing. The information here is based on my experience and what I know of the issues some others are encountering, in the absence of any better information from Crytek, and should not be considered absolute, nor complete (there are certainly more issues than the handful of major concerns that I have described here). I encourage any readers playing the game to offer their own experience in the comments.

Posts on the support forums suggest that the Crytek team are aware of and working to solve these issues; when the major issues have been worked out (most specifically, the gamebreaking singleplayer currency glitch), I will follow up with an update, and my full review of Crysis 2.

In the meantime, I suggest current players (and potential customers) attempt to remain informed on the MyCrysis forums.

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