Available on

PSN!

Platform

Playstation 3

Genre

Shooter

Publisher

Electronic Arts

Developer

Crytek

ESRB

M (Mature)

Released

July 5, 2011

- Solid level design
- Action is still frantic as ever

- Levels don’t feel so “new”
- Some lag issues
- Some trouble finding online players
- Spawn camping
- Horrible load times

Review: Crysis 2 (PS3)

Review: Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3)

Review: Call of Juarez: The Cartel (PS3)

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Crysis 2 Decimation Map Pack

Score: 6.5 / 10

Over the past few years, downloadable content for online games has become a staple of the industry. It not only provides additional content for players but additional revenue for Publishers and Developers for already released games.

I reviewed Crysis 2 a few months back and it was by far one of the best games that I have played in 2011. I enjoyed the campaign far more than the online play, but the multiplayer was solid nonetheless. The Decimation Map Pack is the second downloadable pack to be released for Crysis 2. The Decimation Pack contains 5

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online maps and two new weapons.

Those who have played through the campaign will feel pretty familiar with the new maps as they are basically offshoots of the single player levels. This is where my first issue with the Decimation Pack lies. It feels as if the maps should have just been included with the original game instead of being sold

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separately. They don’t feel new at all. Even with the familiarity of the new maps, they do play quite well. There’s a good mixture of maps with close quarter and long range combat. All online modes can be played on each of the new maps.

With any downloadable content that’s released, the most important thing is that there’s a sizable community to play the content with. This is where Crysis 2 falls short. There are servers dedicated strictly to the new maps, but you’ll be hard pressed to consistently find a game to join. Sometimes it would take 10 to 15 minutes to join a game and other times I wasn’t able to find any online players. Other times when you’ve just finished a match and returned to the lobby to load the next map, the game simply won’t load the map or you’ll be booted out of the room. On top of this, the loading times for the online levels are terrible. It can take easily up to a minute to load an online map. This becomes increasingly frustrating after you’ve spent so much time looking for people to play with.

Even when you do find an online game to join, there are several issues you’ll come across including spawn camping and lag. Several times throughout a match you’ll be killed within a few second of spawning and other times you’ll see players occasionally skipping across the screen.

The Decimation Pack retails at $9.99 and while there is a decent amount of content, the scarce online community as well as the familiarity of the maps make this additional content passable.

- Siddharth Masand
(August 22, 2011)