Crytek has recently stated that the Crysis 2 multiplayer would be quite different from any other competitive online games. There are over 70 developers from the Crytek team that are working on just the multiplayer portion of the game alone. With this much manpower put into just one aspect of a game, there will definitely be some high expectations.

One thing that helps Crysis 2 stand out compared to other games is with the use of the Nanosuit’s abilities and the ease of access to them on the fly. The original Crysis allowed players to swap between their abilities thanks to the Nanosuit, but required you to sort through a radial menu that felt somewhat awkward when choosing a power. Luckily for us, Crysis 2 have streamlined and corrected this issue.

Another cool feature for the game is that the entire multiplayer is set in New York City. That means you’ll see famous landmarks, the skyscraper skyline and a host of other small details that help immerse you into the city. Having skyscrapers is key to Crysis, as players will be doing a lot of climbing and jumping during multiplayer sessions. Some of the developers have even claimed that the game feels like “parkour with guns.”

Crysis 2′s multiplayer will feature 6 core game modes, with each mode extended with different variants and options. One game mode is called “Instant Action”, which pretty much translates to team deathmatch. Another game mode is called “Alien Craash Site”, which is very similar to “King of the Hill” from Halo or “Domination” from Modern Warfare 2. In this gametype, players must rush to secure objectives, in this case the objectives are pods ejected from an alien ship.

There are 2 factions that players will choose from, the Marines and C.E.L.L. In the multiplayer career, players have the option of using 5 preset classes or customizing up to 5 classes of their own, much like Modern Warfare 2. New options for those classes are unlocked as players rank up, with a level cap of 80 for the general rank and a level cap of 20 for suit rank. Over 20 suit upgrades will be abailable, each with their own 3 tier upgrade system. There will be approximately 140 challenges, over 20 different weapons and about 250 dogtags to collect.

While in a normal multiplayer match, players will experience a good variety of encounters ranging from close quarters, to wide open areas, to even vertical battles down the side of a building. The Nanosuit definitely showcases its usefulness in these situations with its ease of access to seamlessly switch between abilities and powers to best support your current needs.

The controls have been refined for a more fluent and quick combat experience that can allow for some interesting combos. Pressing the jump button once gives you a standard jump, but pressing and holding the button enables you to jump further and higher than normal. This will let players scale structures and buildings fairly quickly. If you jump towards a ledge and narrowly miss it, you will automatically grad the ledge and pull yourself up. Running at a high speed is easily achieved by clicking in a thumbstick. Cloaking is controlled by one shoulder button while armor can be activated with the other.

Remember those combos I mentioned? With all these basic abilities always at your disposal, it grants you the ability to perform some interesting action sequences that’s worthy of any Michael Bay movie. Let’s say for instance you see an enemy in the distance on some rooftops. In almost no time, you can clear the distance on foot with a high speed run, jump up and scale the structure, go into cloak as you reach the rooftop, sprint to the enemy in just enough time to come out of cloak. Here’s where the imagination runs wild. You can then A) Take out the enemy from a short distance with a headshot from a machine gun, B)  Unload a shotgun blast to their face, C) Have the last thing they see is your melee attack, or D) Sneak up on them and release some tension from their neck by snapping it.

Now its obvious that you can’t cloak, run and have your armor forever, as these are all powered by a centralized energy supply that is depleted when abilities are used. Fortunately the energy regenerates when you’re not using any abilities.

Hopefully the game can carry its weight when pitted against the big boys of multiplayer like, Call of Duty, Halo: Reach, Medal of Honor, Killzone and Battlefield. The game is set to release in March of 2011.