Crysis

Crysis has been one of the most watched and most talked about games for the last few years. It promised to be the best looking game ever made, and it promised to deliver a deeper, richer and more engrossing first person shooter experience than its pseudo-predecessor FarCry. And it managed both.

It's probably impossible to review Crysis without spending great lengths talking about how good the game looks. So I'm going to get it out of the way first. Crysis looks amazing. If you have something like an 8800gts and a couple gigs of ram and a dual core CPU, you can probably play it with everything on high at a good resolution. And in this state, it looks utterly beautiful. The sunsets are breathtaking, the island foliage is gorgeous, the character models are astounding and you will feel like you're experiencing something very special when you play this game.

Right, that's the visuals done and out of the way. So what about the story? You play as a USA supersoldier type (with a fancy high tech suit called a nanosuit), you're part of a team sent to explore why an American team of archaeologists was taking captive by North Koreans just as they were making an important discovery. Things just get better and better from there. Need an example? GIANT ROBOT ALIENS! It's no more of an interesting story than you'll find in your typical FPS game, but it's a pretty solid plot by FPS standards. The game also looks utterly gorgeous, by the way.

The game presents many playstyles through the customisation available. Your weapons can be customised - you can attach and detach silencers and torches, you can switch between different types of scope and you can even use tranquilisers for non-lethal takedowns. Your usual assortment of weapons is in here. And then there's your nanosuit. The nanosuit might just be the best thing about Crysis. It has a small energy bar which drains through use and recharges with rest, meaning you can't use it too often, you have to be selective, which gives for a deeper and more tactical experience. With the suit, you can turn invisible for short periods of time, become super strong, super fast or have super armour.

Just to give an example of how that may play out ingame, you spot a camp up ahead with enemy soldiers patrolling. You drop into stealth and sneak past them to take cover behind a building. Using strength you leap right up on top of the building, then survey the scene from high up, tagging enemies with your binocs so they appear on your radar (just like FarCry). You then use strength to smash open the roof of the building, so you fall inside. Switching to speed, you tear out of the building towards the Koreans, faster than they notice you. You then switch to armour and take down all the enemies at close range with your weapons, while taking reduced damage yourself and also giving them no chance to react or call in reinforcements. And that's just one of the ways you can approach that particular situation. With your tools available, there are many, many other ways you can attack the enemy. Crysis is an extremely deep game when compared with your typical shooter. Oh, and it looks utterly gorgeous, too.

And the AI is utterly wonderful. The North Koreans will take cover, try to suppress and flank you, use grenades creatively, and also check out things that interest them. This is one of the more interesting elements of the AI. They queue up and remember things that happen, then order them by importance. If an enemy sees something rustling in the bushes, he'll come over to check it out. If you thick quick and lob a grenade as a diversion, he'll immediately turn to check it out. But if he doesn't find anything over there (like, for example, you) he'll turn around and resume his original search. It's very refreshing to play a game where the enemies don't just have more health, but are actually smarter. Crysis's AI also facilitates various playstyles, if you want to play the game as a run n gun, the AI will react as you'd expect. Similarly, if you prefer to play the game as a stealthier, the AI will facilitate this, without being specifically designed for either playstyle. Crysis has some awesome AI. The game looks amazing, too.

The style of the game changes quite a lot over the ten or so hours you'll spend playing. The game is split into roughly three acts. The first act takes place in the lush jungle foliage. The second act takes place entirely in zero gravity, where the recoil of firing your weapons will propel you, and spent shell casings float around in the air. It feels like you're underwater. The final act is also on the jungle, but it's been xenoformed by the aliens into an icy jungle - there are some truly epic battles against aliens here. It's quite refreshing to play a game that changes so much over its length, as so many games - especially shooters - tend to stagnate in those final few hours from doing the same thing over and over and over. Crysis does not suffer in this way. The game just keeps on throwing new set pieces and scenarios at you. You never feel like you're playing filler. The game also looks utterly fantastic.

Crysis also features a great sandbox level editor (which is actually pretty easy to use once you get to grips with the basics), and your typical assortment of multiplayer modes. But really, it's the singleplayer experience that shines, and the technology that backs it up. Crysis is probably not the best game of the year, but it is nevertheless a magnificent achievement which every FPS fan or techhead should play. If you like deep, clever shooters then Crysis delivers, if you like fast paced firefights, Crysis delivers. If you like beautiful visuals, astounding technology and magnificent physics, Crysis delivers. Oh, and it looks absolutely beautiful.

...and overall it's pretty good.

As you should know by now - graphically it's gorgeous - and sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy the views. Do 'google' the minor bit of editing needed to enable the 'Vista-only' top-quality graphics settings for running Crysis on XP - and it seems sad and odd to me that we users have to hack this - but it's v easy to do.

'Which FPS is best'? Easy - it's the one you enjoy the most. If you enjoy having the option to really think your way through a level, and choose your own angle/plan of attack, then (large chunks of) Far Cry still takes a lot of beating - and so does most of the first half of Crysis. (...and it seems that Far Cry 2 will 'major' on this... yipee...)

Where Crysis left me a bit underwhelmed was that some of the other/latter sections really aren't that good - inside the alien mothership is kinda okay for a while, but drags on, and the airbourne section is utterly unenjoyable - it's like trying to control a hippo on ice, using string! Oh, and the thankfully short tank section is... err... thankfully short.

And overall the game isn't that long, so you're very quickly back at the opening sections vs the Koreans... which may be no bad thing... One side issue of it being short is that you very quickly get to use all the fire-arms the game has - there's no gradual climbing up a 'tech tree' to anticipate/enjoy as per Far Cry. Which is a bit of a shame.

Much more of a shame - for those of us wanting an 'islands' map, well, you'll be sadly disappointed as there isn't one (...the one from Far Cry I've replayed countless times....). I know critics would have moaned 'lazy', but we players would have LOVED it! It's bizarre too, as the boats in the game are great - but almost unused - although jumping the waterfall in one, pursued by angry-wasp helicopters, is a real hoot!

So, don't get me wrong, there are some lovely open levels initially, which you can enjoy again and again, but none seem to pull you back quite so strongly as Far Cry's did.

Now - to stop my ramble - it's a good game, but not great. The control of the suit is clumsy - and whilst the cloak is fun - it sort of doesn't fit 'what feels fair' somehow (for me)... even if it is pretty key to survival.

Bottom line - if you enjoyed Far Cry, then you likely already own Crysis - if you didn't enjoy Far Cry, I'd doubt you'll enjoy this.

To summarise - I had to rebuild my PC the other week and I've NOT reloaded it - whereas Stalker went straight back on... warts and all!

In short...
Positives:

Game length - the storyline took me well over 12 hours of solid game-play to complete. More experienced gamers would probably do it in less, but either way it has the greatest number of levels in any First-person-shooter I've played.

Graphics (if you have a powerful enough computer) - immense graphics and sound quality; particularly explosions - watching an RPG hit a helicopter looks like something out of a Bruce Willis movie.

Natural non-linear levels (i.e. every level has tonnes of possible successful routes - you aren't just guided through, and with this you can approach each level in your own style - gung-ho power and strength, slow and stealthy, or anywhere in between).

Tonnes of action - there are calmer levels, and ones which require more stealth - although this is mostly up to your preferred method of gameplay, but in every level there are tense moments, and the fighting scenes are just epic. The part of the game where you are in an alien, zero-g environment is not only disorienting, its scary. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible - that's how awesome this game is. It encapsulates you.

Negatives:

The amount of power your computer needs to run it. My laptop packs a 2-core 2.46GHz processor, 4GB RAM, and a 1GB ATI RADEON 5470 video card - well over recommended spec, and it can still only really cope with medium graphics quality in action sequences (although the graphics are still awesome on this relatively low setting). Of course, being a laptop, it's performance is always a little reduced compared to the equivalent desktop.

Had a couple of glitches on the way through, where a door didn't open or an event didn't occur which should have done, which means I couldn't progress, and so had to revert to a previously saved game to redo the last part. No-one else seems to have this problem, so it's probably just a one-off, but it was slightly irritating the once or twice it happened, where I was looking round for a way out for half an hour or so, and couldn't find a way forward anywhere. Every time replayed the part of the mission I got stuck on, it ran fine and the door opened/the something happened to enable me to continue, so there wasn't any big problem.

Conclusion:

On the whole, buy this game for graphics, gameplay, and only if you wanna spend a significant chunck of every night for at least a week trying to get through intense fighting scenarios and fantastically constructed, and scenic, levels. A first-person-shooter gamer's dream.

Don't buy this game if your computer spec is less than recommended - 'cos recommended spec for this game is really the minimum if you wanna take advantage of the great graphics.