Crysis

Nano suits, North Koreans, and Aliens...oh my! Is this some screwed up version of The Wizard of Oz? Nooo! It is the basis of the new Crytek game............Crysis! The very same people that gave you Far Cry! Usually I would ask 'is this game worthy of the hype?' and tell you to read the rest of the review to find out. However, in this case we are going to skip that crap and get right to the point. Go get the damn game! I will sum the review up right now. Gameplay and story are near top notch, graphics are killer, and chopping down trees with any gun is just a freaking hoot! Now that that part is out of the way, you can read the rest if you want.

Graphics are supposed to be a big selling point for Crysis so, we will go into that now. (Sorta) The computer I play Crysis on is far from high quality so, I can't tell you that the game looks like the vids and pics that have been on the net. However, even on my medium system and the game running on low, it looks better than any other game that has graced my computer! I swear, I don't know what they did but, damn, all kindsa pretty! I probably should mention that I run Crysis on a DX9 system as I refuse to switch to Vista! With that said, I will say that everyone with XP can run Crysis and make it look sweet! Sure, not everyone can but, if you have a game system, Crysis will most likely run and well!

I am going to intervene with the review here for a second to run the specs of the puters I run it on. This will kinda give you a hint as to if you can run it. My rig is an Athlon 64 3500, 1 gig of ram, and a 7800 gtx. I can run Crysis on medium and be ok but, I keep it on low as it runs faster without hiccups. The other rig is a Athlon XP 2400, 768 ram, and a 6600. This one basically has to stay on low settings but, it will run it without a problem! You can't ask for better! The graphics really are great though! There is not a game out that can beat it. The water, trees, and the level of detail that went into the people is just amazing! You can see veins in the forehead if you look! The level of detail even on low is just great. The sheer amount of detail in Crysis is amazing. The faces are the one thing that stand out to me. Almost every person has a distinct face, You can pick then up and give them a name before you throw them off a cliff and not see them again! As mentioned before, the water and the trees are most impressive! There is no other game that does water like Crysis! I swear, you can go swim and look down and think you are in an actual ocean! It is very easy to get lost in the ocean if you are not paying attention. Not to mention the fish and sharks that are swimming around. For the most part, the game is so pretty, that it defies what you think a computer can do. I can't tell you the difference between DX9 and DX10 because I don't have DX10. I can tell that if you only have DX9, you are fine as there is nothing that matches it! There are a few things I should mention between dx9 and dx10. One of the main things is that in the DX9 version, you can not mow down trees in multi-player nor can there be a day and night cycle. These are only for those bastards that have Vista! I am sure it looks better with DX10 as well but, seriously, Vista is an over priced pos that has a ton of problems. Not worth the money to upgrade in my opinion. The DX9 version is damn near as good and if you have a good enough rig, there are ways to make Crysis run like a DX10 machine. (sorta)

I am sure there are some of you that loooove the sound part of a game. I don't give a crap about this part. Music is minimal and the sound effects are as they should be! Fire a shotgun and that is what you hear, shoot a sniper rifle, guess what? Sounds like it is supposed to. The one thing that does stand out is the voice acting. This is the one part I really thought shined. Even though you can't skip the damn cut scenes, they are really well done. Even though I didn't give a damn about what was being said, I really liked the cut scenes. That is enough of that.

We shall move on to gameplay now. When you first enter the game, you will be on a plane with some team mates. You get a cut scene (that you can't skip) which tells you basically what you are doing there and then you jump out of the plane. Once you are falling, you get a tutorial on how to move, not that it matters much as you can't really do anything. Your parachute breaks and you fall into the water and have to make your way out yadda yadda. Once you are on land and your nano suit comes back online, you have a set direction in which to follow. This basically tells you your controls which is nice the first time you play. You will run into a few enemies along the way until you get to yet another cut scene you can't skip. This one is because one of your team mates has been mutalated and is hanging upside down in a tree. After they burn his ass because they don't want the North Koreans to have the nano suit, you are free to leave. After going through your basic tutorial, you will finally get to a secondary objective. You don't really have to do this part but, it is always nice to do them.

This is where the game basically stops directing you in the way they want you to go and lets you go it as you wish. You are over looking a NK base of sorts. There are guards and boat patrols that will shoot you on sight! Time to choose what you want to do. You can go in guns ablazing, be more stealthy, or screw the secondary altogether! Your choice! You will not be rewarded for being stealthy or outright violent. This can be taken as a good or bad thing. The good thing is no matter what you do, the game remains the same. You can start shooting at will and the most that will happen is they call in more people. You can go in and not alarm anyone and still, you get what is there! This gives it a realistic feel and it is nice. On the other hand, if you bust your balls not to be seen, there is no special weapon waiting for you. The point being here is that you can go though the entire game basically as you wish! After you get to this secondary mission, you are free to do the missions as you want. Beit by boat or land. The nice little mini map shows you where the main mission is, in green, and the secondaries, in yellow. Almost all of the missions have someone or something guarding them. How you get by them is entirely up to you. I tend to like this in a game! After this initial mission, you are directed towards a main mission which while you are on the way gives you another secondary and as I mentioned before, you don't have to do it. You can go right for the main objective and as far as I can tell, it makes no difference in the game. It would have been nice if it did though. I will stop here to explain a few things.

As you are playing, you can, and most definately will, pick up the bad guys weapons. Your ammo is not unlimited! Picking up bad guy guns is a necessity! They will drop what ever they are shooting with, usually. There are times that they will drop weapons that they were not firing at you with and there are times that they will drop a handgun even though they were putting bullets in your ass with what you know was a machine gun! I still have yet to figure that out! At any rate, start picking up the enemies weapons! You will always have ammo this way. Another thing about the weapons is how much you can carry at a time. In the single player mode, you can hold two machine guns or a sniper rifle and gauss rifle, rocket launcher, multiple types of grenades and two hand guns. This is something I reallllly like. Carrying a lot of weapons but, not an excessive amount. You can also carry ammo for guns you don't have! This comes in handy if you run out of sub machine gun ammo and switch it out for a shotgun of which you have plenty of ammo for. Also, you can carry different types of ammo! Incendiary ammo for example. These are lethal! How does one switch to the different ammo? Good question! Nano suit coming up

Aside from the graphics, one of the main draws of Crysis is the nano suit. This is basically body armor that is genetically engineered and can be suited to your needs on the fly. There are five options with the nano suit: Sheild, strength, speed, invisibility, and altering your weapon. Although the latter is not really a nano suit thing, it comes up when you hit the middle mouse button (nano control) The sheild part does just what you think it would. Protect you! Strength not only give you more power when you punch, it allows you to jump higher, speed does just what you would think as well, gives you a burst of speed, the cloak makes you invisible in SP but in Mp, not so much as you have a blue aura around you, and the weapon thing lets you customize the weapon you have. I am not going to go into speed, strength, and sheild as they pretty much do what they imply. I will go into the other two though. First, the cloak. When you do use this, you are basically invisible. In single player this works great as the AI is one fry short of a happy meal. In MP however, this doesn't work as well as you have a blue lightning thing going around you. This can easily be seen by anyone that is paying attention. I shouldnt have to mention that if you shoot, cloak goes away. The modding of the gun is a wonderful thing. You can be running and add or subtract things from your weapon, as long as you have the parts. Say you are on a hill and have a machine gun. Say there is a guard in a tower that you want to take out quietly. All ya have to do is hit the middle mouse button and add a scope! Now, you can also add other things, assuming you have picked them up, like grenade launchers, laser sites, sniper scopes, etc.. All of which you can add and delete at will.

Ok back to the game play. After you do your initial island mission, you will be back on the island to do more missions. Ok, it's not the same island but, it is pretty close. Sure the missions are sometimes a tad diffrent but over all basically the same thing. I am going to stop the review here yet again. Why? I need to explain something. Although I don't go into great detail after the first mission does not mean I don't like the game. It really is fun but, one: I don't want to spoil it for you and two: no matter how open ended it can be, it still is things we have seen before. On that note, we shall move to the mp.

The multi player part for me is not that great. Sure, I love playing it but, I don't see anything special about it. There is only two modes first off! Instant action which is basically small maps with guns lying around and it is every man for them selves. Which is ok I guess but there is barely anything around. No vehicles or anything! I was expecting something like Battlefield where I could jump into any vehicle and go kick ass! This is nothing like that. You are lucky to find a pick up to drive! And the nano camo might as well not exist as I can see anyone that is using it due to the blue lightning that surrounds them! Then there is the power struggle. These are the bigger maps! You start out with 100 prestige points. Which is basically your money. As you kill and takeover different points, you get more which allow you to buy better things. I should explain the 'flag' system on struggle. When you pull up your map, you will see different flags. Ones with a flag on them are usually a bunker and you can spawn there, ones that have a lightning bolt are alien flags and holding these allow your team to harness the power of alien technology, ones with tanks let you buy tanks and other ground based vehicles, ones with helos let you buy helos and whatever that other flying thing is, etc.. At any rate, controlling the alien flags are your key to success as they will allow you to buy prototype weapons and vehicles and the game winning nukes! You mission is to blow the everloving hell out of the other players base and to do that, you will need the nukes! If you so much as get near the enemies main base, you will get your ass torn apart by turrets! Seriously, stay away from the main base until you can destroy it! MP is really fun once you get the hang of it and as long as your team mates don't steal the vehicles you buy!

Over all Crysis is not bad. The graphics are top notch but the gameplay is not revolutionary. I was really pissed that in both game modes in mp, I couldn't just jump in any vehicle I wanted to and have fun! With that kinda open space, I thought this would be the new BF1942 for me. I was wrong. As long as you are not expecting a BF type game, it is good, not great, but good. If you were expecting a BF type game, then you will be disappointed. Sure, I have fun punching my cousin while he is climbing a ladder but, I still miss the good ole days where I could jump in a plane and go bomb the shit out of his base while he is still wondering what the hell happened.

What could have made this game better? More mp modes for one. Two modes and four or so maps for each one really blows especially considering how vast Crysis can be! For the love of all that is Holy, don't stick me in an instant action map and have a tiny map! I want planes, helos, and vehicles to kick the ever loving crap out of everyone! Don't limit me! Put some air vehicles in the SP! Isn't Crysis supposed to be open? If I remember correctly, I got to fly one time in the entire Sp mode! What the hell is that about? If I can buy a parachute, for the love of God, put some places in there I can use it effectively not just in the start! The MP is ok but, it needs to have more options and ones that work. When I tell it to spawn in ten seconds and it still spawns at 20, I am not happy! Also, let there be an option for more prestige points. Sometimes, I just want to start with a buttload of weaponry instead of having to earn points for a half hour to go kick ass! One last thing, make sure there is ALWAYS an option to skip the cut scenes! ALWAYS! Not everyone wants to sit through them everytime!


Side note: I really do like Crysis even though it may not seem like it after reading the review. Just keep in mind that it is much easier to point out the bad than it is the good!

Score:
Graphics: 10 Nothing can beat it! It is just damn pretty
Sound: Ill say 8. I didn't really pay that much attention
Gameplay: 7 Not much we haven't seen before
MP: 7 Same as above
Overall: 7.5 Sure, it is pretty but in the end, it Crysis is basically something everyone has played before with a few things left out

That was a good review mate :thumbup: And yeah the multiplayer portion of the game does feel a bit washed-out.

Great review, thanks for that..

But the suit/armour you wear is too much like the HL2 Hazard suit ability wise.

that was pretty impressive you should do more reviews :thumbup: