Crysis seems to be one of the most anticipated PC games in this part of the year. Does it live up to its hype?
Well?
Yes and No
I'll start off with a bit of back story.
You play as Nomad who is part of the US Delta force, they are a squad kitted out with futuristic nanosuits which give them all sorts of abilities (more on that later) Delta force are called in because a group of American archaeologists have been captured by the North Korean Army after making an unusual discovery.
Now onto the game, it installed fine but took a while. Once i clickd the shortcut i was forced to watch through about 4, un skippable, company logos (this can be fixed in the configs) Once i was at the game menu i adjusted the settings to suit my PC and i was off. The game began in the dropship and i was stunned, the graphics, even on medium, were amazing, the faces and animations were incredibly life like, yet the lip syncing seemed to be out a bit.
The first two thirds of the game see you making your way across the island to locate the caves where the "artefact" is.
On the way you are fighting the North Koreans. The gameplay itself is pretty good and fairly open ended. The real twist is the NanoSuit. It has 4 modes, these are:
Max Armour: You can absorb more hits (this is your default mode)
Max Strength: You can jump higher, throw things further hit harder, and it helps supress the wandering of your scope and recoil.
Max Speed: Make you run a lot faster for a period of time.
Cloak: Makes you virtually invisible for a certain period of time based on your movements.
These powers may seem like a gimmick at first but they are essential to your survival and are very useful the most being cloak and armour in my experience. Another nice feature is the fact you can customise your weapon on the go. Press a button and Nomad will hold his weapon up to the screen and you can attach silencers, scopes and laser sights and much more, this gives you so many options on how to approach a situation.
Graphically the game is virtually unbeatable, even on medium it looks great. For example when you grab an enemy you can see the stubble on his face and all the tiny imperfections. The way the light passes between the palm leaves looks incredible, i could go on but i don't want to bore you. The incredible life like-ness of the ocean and the way the water moves is breathtaking.
What impressed me more than the graphics were the physics. Throw a grenade into a hut and the corrugated iron roof panels will fly off as individual pieces, you can pick up almost any item in game and use it as a weapon, even a live chicken! The best part for me is the dynamically destructible trees, shoot a trees trunk a few times and it will break and fall to the ground, the fronds will crumple and bend as they hit the ground in an incredibly lifelike fashion.
The Ai of the Koreans is incredibly inconsistent, sometimes they will flush you out with grenades or work together as a team to flank you. But other times they turn into planks! Once i saw a guy looking up into the sky and continually crouching and standing up, i ran up to him and hit him in the face and nothing!
Now we get onto the bad part, this will be hard to keep the spoilers so i keep it as bare as possible.
Once you reach the caves you are in a Zero-G level fighting aliens, this part is incredibly tedious, it is a vast, yet beautiful, 3d maze full of annoying enemies. Once you finish the zero G level you are back outside but it is all frozen. Again it looks fantastic there is snow and ice everywhere. Yet again there are more aliens to fight which are monotonous and take silly amounts of ammo to die, from here to the end of the game you wont see another Korean. It turns into another average shooter, the emphasis is taken off of using your powers and is just mindlessly blasting stuff until it stops blasting you. It is a far cry (excuse the pun) from fighting the Koreans and using you ingenuity to outsmart them. And it is a real shame and in my eyes really lets the game down.
I haven't really had a chance to play the multiplayer but judging from the beta it seems like it is okay, it has Power struggle which is a cross between BF2's capture point system and UT2004's onslaught.
One thing that most people overlook is the Cryengine 2 Sandbox2 Editor. It allows you to create levels and drop into them in real time. It is one of the easiest editors to use and even though it is daunting at first it is well worth learning as you can have so much fun messing around with it.
Overall this game, for me, is a bit of a disappointment, mainly due to the last sections of the game, the first part with the Koreans is fantastic but it really does go steeply downhill once you reach the alien sections.
Overall i would give the game a 7.5 out of 10. I am keeping the score high purely because of the brilliant editor.
My specs are:
AMD64 4000+ 2Gb DDR PC3200 400mhz RAM Ge Force 8600GT
running all on med @ 20-35 fps.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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Advantages: The most visually stunning game graphics your eyes will encounter. Disadvantages: The kind of computer you would need to run this game at decent playability will cost you a kidney.
TheDisciplineofRevenge 30.08.2009 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
Review of Crysis (PC)
Advantages: Great gameplay, action, guns, maps, online, can be bought for £2.00 these days Disadvantages: players online who manage to cheat, when you constantly die
Advantages: Great gameplay, action, guns, maps, online, can be bought for £2.00 these days Disadvantages: players online who manage to cheat, when you constantly die
Geddes-i 23.10.2008 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
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Dec 2nd, 2007
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