Having been a big fan of the original Crysis on the PC, I quickly jumped at the prospect of seeing Crysis 2 gameplay footage behind closed doors at E3. Aside from the visuals, what made the original Crysis stand out above other shooters was that fact that players used a nano-powered suit that allowed them to turn invisible, super strong, or super fast. The super suit returns in the sequel; however, the game is quite different from its predecessor in that Crysis has been lifted out of the North Korean jungles into a modern day New York. While I wasn’t able to play the game directly, I can tell from the developer’s gameplay footage that this is going to make Crysis 2 feel distinctly different from the original.

While the original Crysis had its fair share of scripted events, from the 15 minutes of gameplay footage that I saw of Crysis 2, things are a lot more scripted, epic, and cinematic in scope. I saw a scripted event where an alien popped out of an office corridor to jump at the player, knocking him down several stories on to the streets of New York. Another scripted scene had the player running by a civilian couple who were begging for your help as the rubble from a building above came crashing onto them. The scene of the collapsing building looked eerily similar to the tragic fall of the twin towers in 2001.

Even though the original Crysis was a very linear game, it disguised that fact by allowing gamers to approach their destinations in very different ways. While I was not able to play the game myself, Crytek assured me that there will be many different ways to approach mission objectives. In addition, the German developer said that there will be plenty of offensive and defensive-type scenarios.

While the original Crysis had you facing drones of North Koreans for most of the game and some flying aliens towards the end of the game, Crysis 2 features aliens that look sort of like smaller incarnations of Transformers from the Michael Bay movies. The baddies featured in the demo were humanoids in that they attacked you on foot; this, however does not mean that there will not be any flying beasties in the game. Towards the end of the demo, the player encountered a boss that looked like the giant two-legged mech from the original Robocop movie. The boss was easily enough taken care of via a near by rocket launcher. In terms of weapons, aside from the aforementioned rocket launcher, Crysis 2 features an arsenal very similar to that of the first game. There’s your standard assault rifle, shotgun, turrets, and more.

Visually, the original Crysis is arguable still the best looking game today. I can say that Crysis 2 looks significantly better than its predecessor. The lighting effects and explosions are amazingly bold and standout right away. The textures are sharp and the art design continues to be superb. However, the game did seem to stutter pretty badly every now and then. Granted, Crysis 2 isn’t complete yet, but the original Crysis was known for being a resource hog on PCs.

Even though on paper Crysis 2 doesn’t do anything innovative or revolutionary, there’s something about seeing the Nano Suit used in an exploding and chaotic night-time New York City that is refreshing.