I tried both Bulletstorm and Crysis 2’s demos yesterday.
Bulletstorm was neat. Felt like Unreal Tournament meets Gears. Or a strange GoW in 1st person. The concept and weapons were different enough from Gears to make it fun. While the level was short, they made it so you can keep replaying the demo over and over again to improve your score. How do you do that? Well, the whole slogan of Bulletstorm is “Kill With Skill”. The game gives you various powers to start combos (sliding kick, telsa cable, boot-kick). Then they’re put into a StreetFighter type juggle move where they hover in the air for a few seconds which gives you the opportunity to shoot at their helpless floating body with your weapons. Various different things can be done from headshots, to attaching a sticky grenade to them, kicking their body, and exploding it when the body is near other enemies (think of a remote air-mail bomb). One of the funniest things that I found was environmental damage. Some concrete walls were partially destroyed, so when I pulled an enemy towards it with the telsa cable, he was impaled on the exposed crossbars of the wall and I got “Voodoo doll” points for it.
Crysis 2 was similar to a Call of Duty style game, but with a sci-fi twist. You get basic classes (Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Snipers, Heavy MG, etc.), but you also have these exo-skeletons that have abilities like instantly adding Armor, invisibility, or a sprint boost. Each of these run off of the same battery, and only one can be used at a time. The game also has all the same COD style weapon and perk unlocks. Unfortunately in order to use items like a suppressor on a weapon, you have to unlock it by completely challenges for each weapon. It makes BlackOps unlock system with points seem like the way all games should go now.
I ended up playing the Crysis 2 demo for a lot longer time than the Bulletstorm demo, though I thought it would be the complete opposite, considering I haven’t even played the first Crysis game.
There were still MANY flaws in the Crysis 2 demo not to be overlooked. Things like client-side advantage, ping, hit-detection, and the speed of players are just to name a few. I know the game’s not completely done, but when you find a bug like the “Tactical button layout” causes the right-stick to both zoom and crouch with a sniper, it just makes you think they really didn’t work on the game.
So does this change if I’m going to buy either game?
I’m still unsure, but Bulletstorm was fun. I think the co-op aspect of the game could be fun as well. Considering it’s an EA game, I should be able to get it cheap. At the same time, not many of my close gaming circle friends may play this, but my extended industry friends probably would. So I may pick this one up (and get that exclusive GoW3 beta, hehe).
For Crysis 2, I’ll continue to play the demo and see how it pans out. It has some neat things about the game (love the sliding when running), but other parts of it need a lot of improvement.
