Crysis Review

Pretty much everybody in the gaming community knows about Crysis, how it’s been flogged and what it’s capable of. It was all Direct X10 this, nanosuits that, next generation of shooter thinking the other! And do you know what?
They were bloody right!
Now, I won’t disappoint, because I know what everybody wants me to talk about here…the big juicy trees! No? OK. The graphics then, how about those?
Firstly, they’re wonderful, secondly, they don’t affect the loading times one bit, and thirdly, they slaughter pretty much every card out there.

Even on a lower end card, the graphics are beautiful, and the developers have got it just right, no matter how far you turn the settings down the faces look insanely well animated, and the nanosuits look bulky and perfectly capable of doing their job.
Textures look beautifully detailed and clear, and the weapon models are second to absolutely none whatsoever.
The only major gripe is the strain on lower end cards; this could have been helped hugely with an option to reduce foliage density and quality. I know this may raise questions of realism in the game, but I don’t seriously believe anybody is going to miss a little bit of grass or a bush, especially when sacrificed for better textures, models or shader effects.
I have a tip however for those on lower end cards; keep everything low but the shaders, they make a huge difference, especially at night, and don’t consume much power at all.

Crysis lives up to everything we were promised; collapsing shacks and huts onto Koreans, picking up most things, punch cars, jump insane heights, customize weapons, grab and throw enemies…
The last one, sadly, is disappointing, as once grabbed the Koreans tend to stay pretty static, with only the eyes moving. Some shouting, screaming and grappling would have been far better. On the contrary, chickens and frogs are much better for picking up, as they continue their natural behaviour in your kind, loving hands. (Before being used as flying target practice.)

Just to give you a feel of how this game actually works, you need to know about two of my brilliant experiences:

a) Grabbing a Korean by the throat, tossing him into the air and shouting “pull!” before shotgun blasting him over a cliff…into the sea…to his death…yeah.
b) Driving a vehicle insanely fast into an enemy truck, bailing out just as it exploded, blasting the faces off of the confused escorts and hiding in some bushes for ten minutes whilst a dozen Koreans looked in vain for me. Any who did come close, got a shotgun shell wedged in their ass.
See how much fun you can have with an oversized piece of Kevlar and some microscopic robots!

It isn’t without flaws though, as pretty much any contact from an occupied vehicle results in your immediate and untimely death, including any slight scrape from a bit of wobbling metal, which by all rights would bounce off of a nanosuit. It is also impossible, despite the strengths of the nanosuit, to take on a tank with your fists…believe me, I tried.

The game works in action bubbles, just as we were told, every so often you’ll stumble upon an enemy base, loaded out with jabbering Koreans (playing in Delta mode, all the speech is in Korean). This is where you stop and look around; just to find that one beam to break, the one sheet of metal to nudge…or the right vehicle to run the lot down with!
Most bases are completely open, with an obvious entrance, but a lot of the time, just scouring the cliffs will reveal a route which can be accessed by strength jumping your way up and hiding inside one of the many buildings, recovering suit energy and waiting for the right moment.
The next step after accessing these bases is totally up to you.

This really is a game for the free thinker.

The game works heavily on improvised action gameplay; pure spontaneity. Though you may find that you spend a lot of time trying the same sequence over and over because you keep dying, it often emerges that you’ll result in a totally different set of actions. This game really does require on your feet thinking, constantly and unwaveringly.
Do you know what? It’s a hell of a lot of fun. A lot of games promise to deliver this, but Crysis really hammers it home, add the nanosuit in and you can run away at speeds you never thought possible, hide under enemies’ noses (and jam a shotgun up said nose), throw them sky high like clay pigeons, or stand there and take the hits whilst manically cackling, mowing them down.

“Quickies” - The Good
• Insane Graphics
• Full DX10 support
• New dimension of FPS thinking
• Nanosuit powers fun to use and add to the improvised action well.
• Weapon customisation nice feature
• Half decent story
• Environmental destruction is second to none
• Can grab enemies by the throat
• Nice explosions
• Lots of improvised action (suit switching etc.)
• Enemies are smart (reinforcements, gang up on you)
• AI is realistic (i.e. can only see you when cloaked if they saw you cloak, AI doesn’t cheat).
• High speed stunts in vehicles are awesome!


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