Is there any factual information regarding this being a console port or are people just assuming that based on gameplay?

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Factual?

The initial screen in the PC demo said:  [PUSH START TO BEGIN] Pretty damning.

Also, check some dev interviews:

But obviously, you're really developing for the lowest common denominator, although we won't go into which console that is, the two versions have to be the same, right?

Yes.

On the original Crysis, though, you were working with no real limits, we'd love to know how you're finding it, comparatively, working within far stricter confines?

So, the way I approach that is, and this is an intentional thing for me, I say 'I really don't care if we can do it or not, we have to do it'. I am a programmer myself and made some of the engine. So when I say this is what I want and people say to me 'you can't have that' I say, well, I can have it in CryEngine 3. The upshot is don't tell me we have to compromise, find another way to do it. They have to find a way to experience Nanosuits and New York and the sandbox freeform experience, all of these things have to be a part of the technical execution. So when I say 'get me that' if it runs okay on PC, but not 360 and PS3 yet I say okay, that's not a fact, but there's only like one out of a hundred times that ever happens, then we don't do it. So what I'm saying effectively is that there's a narrow band of core experience which we pump through to all and then it's the engine which scales up and down based on the platform. And when I say 'up and down' it's more up on PC and then safe on console. There ultimately, there has been literally no compromise whatsoever, because I worked on it, not just as a PC game. Actually one was no different apart from the pressure of making it more positive and I didn't want it to make a PC-like game on console. I really wanted to make it an intense blockbuster experience on console, and then scale up on PC because the engine can.

Do you think PC gamers will be suspicious then of some features being cut because they don't scale down to consoles?

No, no, that's why I'm saying, like, perhaps you didn't understand me, we didn't make any downward revision. With any streamlining; it's not a matter of reducing scope. I'll give you an example of that, for example Nanosuit 1 vs Nanosuit 2. Nanosuit 1, at foremost, which setting shall we switch onto. You know, you have speed, strength, cloak, armour. You could choose one at a time, but then it was four choices. Thinking hard about it, we said 'how can we streamline that?' because it's a more complex concept actually, to begin with.

 Otherwise? Anyone familiar with both console and PC based shooters can spot the console conventions. Just to note a few:

-PUSH START: What other PC shooters prompt you to press a button to begin? I can't think of any off the top of my head, but every console game I've played from NES to PS3/360/Wii does.

-Extremely limited graphics options: Crysis had pages of graphics options. Crysis 2 has 4 options total.

-DirectX: Crysis used DX10, Crysis 2 has stepped back to use DX9, because the 360 is incapable of using DX10.

-Level Design: Compared to Crysis, the levels in Crysis 2 are terribly short and very linear, with limited fields of view. Simply put, the gorgeous horizons and vistas in Crysis are too much for the consoles to handle.

-Likewise advanced physics: You could use bullets to chop down trees in Crysis. You could destroy buildings. Both absent here, likely, once again, because of the limited power of consoles.

-Checkpoints: PC shooters allow you to save anywhere. Console shooters use checkpoints at the beginning of a level and before set-pieces. Guess what Crysis 2 uses?

-Multiplayer: 16 players max, small maps. Warhead had larger maps and higher player limits. In fact, the entire multiplayer design is a carbon copy of the MW multiplayer.

 

And it's not just limited to the above. So, yeah. It's a console port.

All of this is even more funny when you notice that Crytek themselves flat out admitted working for consoles is hurting PC game development.

http://gamer.blorge.com/2010/12/03/crytek-video-game-consoles-holding-back-pc-gaming/

It must be a bitter pill for them to have made the Crysis 1 engine, then basically be told to downgrade it so it will work for consoles.  Worse, they then have to publicly defend Crysis 2 as an improvement over 1.

Wow, there's a lot of negativity in this thread, and I don't think all of it is enitrely deserved.

I'm just about finished the single player campaign, and I'll put up a review once I'm done, but frankly I've found it to be a whole lot of fun.  It's more kinetic, and much faster paced than Crysis was.  While Crysis gave you vast levels and tasked you with getting to the other side, Crysis 2's level are more like a funnel for the action.  To me, neither is better than the other in terms of fun - they're quite different and equally enjoyable!  I've never understood the mentality of "Game 2 must replace Game 1"  Crysis and Crysis 2 can stand along side one another and provide equally compelling experiences.

The biggest mistep the game makes is that it's story is so damn disconnected from the first game.  They could have called it "Nano York City" and no one would have guessed it was once a sequel to Crysis - merely a spiritual successor, like Bioshock to System Shock.  Rather annoyed at that, because Crysis really hooked me in during it's third act.

Now, is Crysis 2 a console port?  No bullshit answer: yes.
"Press enter to start" ?  That's a console trick to determine which controller slot the player is using.  With PC, we auto-detect this shit.
Non-destructible environments?  That's a move to supress the CPU drain on limited console CPUs.
Enemy intelligence that's phased in due to distance from the player?  Another CPU saving trick.
No DX10 or DX11 support?  Limitations of the Xbox 360 holding back the tech.

Is it a bad game?  Hell no.  It might be a smaller, more spectacle-orientated FPS than it's predecessor, however that still means it's better than some 90% of the garbage that floods the market.  Medal of Honor?  Homefront?  Please.  I'd take Crysis 2 over that trash any day of the week.

Some of the other things are actually design choices.  The small scale multiplayer helps keep the player from being spammed to death in a game where your opponents can be invisible, near-impervious to damage or jump down and one-shot-kill you in a moments notice.  64 players with that type of power?  No one would play it because no one would survive more than a few seconds.

In any case, I feel that Crysis 2 is getting a lot of flak it doesn't deserve.  Is it as good as Crysis?  Unless the ending is mind-numbingly awesome, no.  Is it better than anything Call of Duty has coughed up in the last seven years?  Absolutely.  Does it make Halo 3 look positively ancient?  Damn straight.  Does it make Medal of Honor look like the CoD wanna-be that it is?  No question.  Crysis 2 is a great game that doesn't live up to the original - which is one of the best games ever made.

Frankly, I think Crysis 2 is awesome.  They just need to fix the damn multiplayer.

Crysis

Crysis 2

Call of Duty: Black Ops.

I know which one I'd rather not play.

What specifically do you mean by fixing multiplayer? I don't have the game yet, but MP is a pretty big part of deciding whether or not I buy an FPS, if it's borked somehow I'd rather wait for a bit.

I hated Crysis 1, and I despise the COD series - I take it I won't like this one either?

He may mean that multiplayer is modeled almost completely off of console conventions of multiplayer. Small arenas, fast-paced action, short matches. They've taken a few hundred pages out of the CoD multiplayer handbook. If you're more into, say, the multiplayer found in Valve's games, you might not enjoy it.

Then again, he may mean the fact that, despite patching and fixes, the Crysis 2 servers are still not working very well. Crysis 2 routinely forgets my CD key, and asks me to re-enter it (a bug), or, according to Crytec forums, takes days to recognize LE bonuses (another bug). Servers are still failing to load a match when they're full (another bug), lag is... to put it lightly, rather pronounced when it rears its ugly head (I've had matches where the average ping is 200--not unplayable for many games--but players are rubber-banding and such. Makes for a harsh match when you have to lead your targets by a few seconds just for a chance to hit them).

Pings, on average, are fairly high (low-end seems to be 100), and the server list's reporting of ping is suspect. It lists most NA servers, for me, as 109 or 209 ping. Not 99, not 101 or 101, but consistently 109, which suggests, to me, that it is being somewhat less than accurate with the numbers.

All-in-all, multiplayer hasn't been great. If you like the style, CoD does the multiplayer better. If you don't like the style, there are a dozen better offerings in the PC department.

Thanks for the heads up. I like the style, but I like the Crysis "universe" if you will, much better than CoD (I do own Black Ops on PC). I guess I'll give it some time.

Just finished playing through the crysis 2 SP game.  It was a lot of fun.  I'd highly recommend the game for that alone. 

nice video here: 

At the moment, the multiplayer component is basically non-functional.  And there are reports of legitimate users being banned due to the borked security system, and pirates are seemingly able to play the game and are able to re-generate CD Keys to circumvent bans.


If you enjoyed Crysis then you'll enjoy this.  It requires far more thought than most FPS.  Keep in mind that the game drastically changes the Crysis universe; it feels really disconnected.  My review is nearly finished, I'll put it up later tonight.

Completely agree there.  Multiple strategies available based on how you want to play. 

I've finally got the full game. It can run on the extreme setting thanks to the awesome video card from the Design a spell contest, (thank you again folks).

There are two, maybe three things that irk me about it.

It's confusing as hell. At one point, the guy stops in the middle of combat, to get stabbed by an alien, then goes about it like nothing happened. The screen is so filled with static, blood and artifacts, that most times I don't know what's going on. The camera angles most of the time during cutscenes are so off, I don't understand what's going on. 

I had to download an third party mod to change the individual settings, which is just plain wrong.

 And in multiplayer, I have to play with nanovision permanently on, otherwise I get murdered by a million campers hidden in every corner of the map.

Other than that, it's a nice game. Not great, not as impressive as the first. Maybe it's because I've seen bombarded New York in every other game ever made in the last decade, maybe it's because my high-tech armored soldier gets tossed around like a rag doll every few minutes, maybe it's because up until last night's patch melee would stop working and all my nano-thingies would dissapear.

 

Crysis 2:CAN YOU PLEASE SEND ME THE FILE BEYOND MADISON SQUARE (default_91_madisonsquare_926.meta) Because my game is stuck and won't allow me to go any further. the saved files are sored in c:\users\ name\saved games\crysis2\savegames.

the files are on average about 350kb.

 

Crysis 2:CAN YOU PLEASE SEND ME THE FILE BEYOND MADISON SQUARE Because my game is stuck and won't allow me to go any further. the saved files are sored in c:\users graham\saved games\crysis2\savegames.

the files are on average about 350kb.

Crysis 2:CAN YOU PLEASE SEND ME THE FILE BEYOND MADISON SQUARE Because my game is stuck and won't allow me to go any further. the saved files are sored in c:\users graham\saved games\crysis2\savegames.

the files are on average about 350kb.