Crysis... wow...

I will begin with a side note - I built a computer recently to get back into pc gaming. I went and bought very high end parts such as a GeForce 8800 GT and hoped that games like Bioshock and FEAR could bring me back to pc gaming and justify the fact that I had spent nearly $1000 on a computer. And while both games were great entertainment, I still had the lingering thought that I could have had a nearly equal experience on the Xbox 360 that I already owned. I mean the difficulty of patching, updating, and installing games onto a pc is always slightly frustrating - whereas on the Xbox 360 it is just a simple matter of inserting the game disk and you are instantly playing. Also a lack of (oddly satisfying) achievements instantly made me feel like I was playing on an inferior system in the past. And I still believe that a much better experience with Bioshock can be had on the Xbox 360, but, Crysis has most definitely justified my recent spending spree and Reinvigorated my passion for PC gaming.

Crysis has the most interesting new feature of any game I have played in recent memory. It introduces the Nano-suit, a powered armor suit (think halo's mjolnir armor) that can enhance the performance/abilities of the player in a few key categories. The suit supports Maximum Speed, maximum strength, maximum armor, and a cloaking system. You can switch between each one at the press of a button but you can only use one at a time and each one depletes power from the suits main energy reserves. So, while sneaking around completely invisible is very fun it does not last for forever and you must find a place to hide and recharge before you run out of power. the same goes for things like maximum armor and speed, you are invincible for a couple of hits or fast for a short burst, but afterwards you are very vulnerable until you suit has time to recharge. This system makes you feel like an unstoppable force, but if you don't think smart and fast a few KPA soldiers can take you down in a matter of seconds, so while you may be the ultimate force you are not unstoppable.

The story revolves around an alien invasion, but I won't say much more to avoid ruining it for people who haven't played it yet, but you play as a US Special Forces squad member who is parachuted onto a remote island in the middle of the ocean to rescue a few scientific hostages. The North Korean Army invades the island to try to take over the unearthing of a mysterious power source buried under the island, but the Koreans seem to have run into some trouble and it is your job to figure out what is happening on the island as well as rescue the prisoners. You guys can play the game and figure out the rest.

Crysis also has some of the most beautiful graphics I have ever seen. The jungle looks absolutely fantastic with swaying tree limbs, realistic shadows, and awesome lighting in general. But the jungle is not the only thing that looks great; the alien ships and the aircraft carrier you board look absolutely fantastic and really blew my mind. For example, when I escaped from the alien ship for the first time a cut scene kicked in and the graphics were so amazing that I didn't believe that it was running real-time and I actually thought that it was a high quality prerendered video until all of the sudden the framerate stuttered momentarily and brought me back to the realization that "yes, this was running on my machine!".

My system specs are as follows:

Core 2 Duo E4500 - 2.2 GHz, 2mb L2 cache, 800 MHz fsb;

2 GB PNY DDR2 677 MHz;

BFG GeForce 8800GT OC 512Mb;

160 GB 7200 rpm HDD;

Integrated sound

BFG 650 watt SLI certified Power supply

Intel 945GCCR main board ( HAHA I know, it was $25 so shut up!)

I was able to run the game on my desktop with all settings turned to medium, with the exception of textures, shaders and motion blur being turned to Very High at 1024x768 with 4xAA. I found that the framerate could be much higher at 1024x768 with 4xAA than 1280x1024 with no AA and looked about the same on my pretty lame 17" Samsung monitor. Also, on my hp laptop I was able to run the game on low settings around 20 fps at 800x600 (dv9207us – GeForce go 7600 256mb, core duo 1.73 GHz, 2 GB ddr2 667) but with overclocking I was able to achieve about an average of around 31 fps. So, crysis seems to like my overclocked settings more than any other game and probably showed the highest performance increases of any game on my laptop

Also the multiplayer is very fun and also quite strange to get used to. All of the nanosuit powers are available to each player and it is interesting to see how each person tries to use a different method to win. Also each level is carefully constructed and very pretty. My favorite level being the fully rendered aircraft carrier, complete with a full flight deck and very expansive interior network of chambers.

So, to sum this all up, crysis is innovative, very fun, has great graphics and is a game that cannot be missed. And I really can't wait for the sequel. So this is a message to crytek - PLEASE MAKE THE SEQUEL!