Far Cry's big brother.
When i saw the first pictures of Crysis, it was mind-blowing. The comparison shots between real-life photos and game pics were uncanny. Along with the boasted 'technologies' behind the game, including improved performance under DX10, physics at a huge scale, weather/climate change and the most sophisticated AI ever in a sandbox environment - it wasn't difficult to capture any gamer's attention. Enough about yesterday's news and let's concentrate on 'now' - the game is out, i have a high-end PC - did it live up to my expectations? A short answer would be Yes, but there was a lot of deliberation behind that.
WWIII?.....Nah
Crysis takes place in the future, 2020, in a time of tension between USA and North Korea. You, 'Nomad', is among several elite soldiers equipped with nano-suit technology. This American team is sent to a remote tropical island for the retrieval of American archaeologists excavating there. It turns out that North Koreans have occupied much of the island and are intent on harnessing the island's uncovered technologies for military strength. Within moments of deployment from a jump jet, it becomes clear that there is a greater enemy than North Korea out there.
To powerful....Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!
One major thing about Crysis when it comes to gameplay is that it is heavily linked to the performance of your machine. Taking the graphical fidelity and immersive environments out by lowering the settings is like trying to type up an epic essay with the letters 'o, w, s' missing from the keyboard. The game becomes that much more an experience as the sandbox environments draw you, the gamer, into its world when it feels so believable - in a Hollywood way. Graphically, this game has a hunger for raw power as it brings my Q6600 + 8800GTX to its knees - why it does so is easily explained away by the gorgeous pictures it produces. And this is only in DX9 mode with tweaked settings - DX10, a feature of the Vista operating system on higher settings would look another league better, if only if it ran a playable framerate. Grass, leaves, dust is blown about by the wind. Each individual leaf casts a soft shadow created by an actual sun and the people are modelled to an extreme that could haunt you the moment you see their faces close up. This is not to say that this game is only fun to play because it looks and feels 'so good', but it is pretty much half the story.
Emergent Gameplay
The game is sandbox, meaning that anything goes in how you want to play the game. Your experience through the game is never exactly the same after playthrough after playthrough - it is something people describe as emergent gameplay. The nano-suit that is made available immediately gives you the choice of strengthening your armour, boosting your physical strength, boosting your speed or even cloaking yourself. And those are your choices - boosting your strength allows you to jump to higher places, punch/throw objects/enemies harder/further. Speed past guards or run away from them if you want to avoid unnecessary effort (or saving bullets). Sneak past defences whilst being invisible etc. The destructible environment itself can be used as weapons such as punching down walls, throwing large objects or using it as cover - in a way, the game becomes as much fun as you'd like to make it. Do want to conserve ammo and just use a large trash bin as a weapon? You can. Want to kill the enemies by just grabbing and throwing them? You can. You can use the vehicles to run people over or use its mounted gun. The vehicles do feel a little buggy at times though because there are times when there are unexplained unresponsiveness. Vehicles and large machines are particular highlights of the game and that also complements the weapons that are made available. There are many vehicles in the game and are very fun to drive, particularly when the game lends itself to opportunity. You can customise your weapon, such as silencers, scope, type of ammo, flashlight/grenade launcher etc. It offers so much variety that actually impacts the gameplay. Using silencers is particularly useful for disguising your exact location but sacrifices the damage inflicted - and is something i almost always used because it suited my styIe of play.
Audio as you never seen before
The audio fidelity in this game parallels the visual department. Just as the game is a visual treat, the immersive audio in particular beats out as good as your sound system has to offer. Cranking up the volume, people in the house would think you were watching an epic war movie as explosions, gunfire are realistically emulated in a action-movie fashion. The complementary soundtrack is just perfect; never sounding 'too recognisable' to alienate the mood, but rather complements the action/mood in your surroundings in an almost-subconscious way. By the end of the game, you'd be hard-pressed to single out a single soundtrack of the game, but you'd know it was there exaggerating the peaceness of your surroundings or cranking up the tension in the appropriate situations.
Naughty Crysis!
There are certain criticisms I have to make as someone who's played a huge variety of games. While Crysis goes above and beyond as a FPS by creating an amazingly sophosticated sandbox environment, it underutilises some of the advantages of sandboxing. Crytek played the emergent-gameplay card but considering what Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (a sandbox PS2 game) accomplished in both depth and variety, Crysis seems lacking, at least in sandbox-terms. It feels as if Crysis was inhibited by its shooter genre (and striving for the best visuals) and need to tell an engaging, but ultimately linear and predictable plot. While these criticisms mar an excellent game, they are borne out of my expectations from the technologies behind the game. For a first person shooter, this sandbox element is thus far unparalleled.
Who in his right mind plays Crysis....online?!
One big 'however' factor that comes into play is the community aspect. With the sandbox editor being flexible and easily accessible, it offers incredible user-generated content and is something not to be sniffed at. Along with mods and all-sorts of 'jazz' you can easily find something entertaining once the campaign is over. Even if the game does not feature ragdolls or explicit gore, i think there is something out there to change it even if Crytek condones it. And then there is the online multiplayer - while it can be entertaining, the lack of players in a huge map ultimately means encounters aren't as often as you'd like. 'Power Struggle' as it is called, is about trying to destroy the enemie's base of which is best done by acquiring nukes. It has its own plus points being that it's unique, you get to use your suit powers and it looks very nice. But the multiplayer just simply pales in comparison to what else is on offer, like Counter Strike, Battlefield, or Call Of Duty 4. Simply put, the multiplayer is not something you'd buy Crysis for, but for its touted 'ultimate single player experience'.
Conclusion
In the end, this is definitely a game to get once you have a very decent machine (up to date gaming rig). I wouldn't recommend it to people who don't have very capable machines as it is an experience that can be spoiled even if it is playable on older machines (due to good scalability of the game) and thus, Crysis is a game to be enjoyed later but shouldn't be a sole reason for a PC upgrade or a complete new build. There is a slight bitter taste for the aftermath because it uses a clas-sic cliche for the sequel to Crysis. That bitterness though is overwhelmed by the sweet sensation that is the taste of adrenaline-fuelled action that just FEELS epic. And maybe if you don't have a capable machine, just wait, wait till the second game of the trilogy to come out. Maybe then, playing it though from 1 to 2 in a more capable rig will be that much better an experience than if you played the games separately.
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Graphics: 10
Sounds: 10
Gameplay: 9
Multiplayer: 8
Storyline: 8
Impression: 10
Score: 9.2
Gamespot Score: 9