The game that should be within the top 5 of your holiday shopping list ONLY IF YOUR PC IS GOOD ENOUGH.
Having said that, I was quite surprised with fellow gamers who gave such a low score for this game, and after I read their review, now I can understand why. I played this game at "High" with 1024 by 768 resolution getting above 30FPS all the time. But I do own GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB, Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz (E6850), 2GB of Mushkin DDR2 800MHz RAM, and my 1TB HDD set up to be in RAID 1 mode. So if you are reading my specification and if you find your PC being nowhere near my PC specification, you may need to expect that you will have to play the game at very low graphics settings. After all, Crysis isn't as attractive as it is if you exclude that stunning visuals.
Now excluding those with low-end PC gamers (I apologize but I need to review the game =) ), anyone with PC gamers who own something similar to GeForce 8800 GT, Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz, and 2GB of RAM should be able to enjoy this game with reasonably high visual setting.
The game play itself is quite amazing. The game will make you to think of FPS in a whole new way. You can't play this game as you normally would in BF2 or Counter Strike. Even when you think you are safe from your enemies bullets, your enemies are smart enough to shoot at the nearby trees or the building you are using as cover to collapse them on top of your head. As I just mentioned here, AI knows how to use the nearby environment surrounding them to their own advantages. This forces you to stay on top of your game all the time which is quite intensive but also very exciting. I sometimes found myself getting critically injured even though I was only playing at the normal difficulty setting. I do believe it was also partially because of my lack of experience with customizing myself quick enough, but even if you are used to the customization, your enemies will hurt you badly if you don't act fast enough.
Of course, if you have a good enough PC, the stunning visuals this game offers doesn't even need any explanation. It will make you to believe what you see is what you would see in the real world.
Crysis offers the gamers with stunning visuals, exciting game play, and whole new world for gamers to explore. It was the game that could've easily been 10 out of 10. but because the lack of features for the low-end PC gamers, I would give 9.5 out of 10. For any of you who think your PC can handle this game reasonably well, this is the game you must own.