Crysis

excellent
key review info
  • Game: Crysis
  • Platform: PC
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: N/a
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The hype surrounding Crysis has reached massive proportions prior to the launch and it probably reached the same level like the ones we've seen in the case of Stalker and Bioshock. This was to be expected as Crytek is responsible for one of the best first person shooters that saw the light of day and it manages to make a statement in a top ten list.

Crytek studio was founded by the Yerli brothers, Cevat, Avni and Faruk in 2000 and since then it has only produced two games: Fay Cry and Crysis. They've started out by developing some demos for Nvidia and slowly but surely managed to create their own engine called CryENGINE in 2002. In 2004 the Far Cry game emerged and took the world by surprise; no one could believe that such a level of detail could be squeezed into a game that utilized the present technology. Since then, their name has become synonymous with technological advancement and Crysis needed to be that extra step the gaming industry required. Because of their proficiency, all other games that will come after this title will be instantly compared to it ?and they will be underestimated for a long time. The technology leap is so large that even the next gen consoles are no longer next gen, making Crysis the first game to become unportable to other platforms (although the CryENGINE is compatible with the PS3 and Xbox 360).

Concept If you remember Far Cry, then you know that one of its main attractions was the ridiculously abundant vegetation that covered large islands, offering a beautiful open world experience. Well, to be honest, it was almost an open world, as the game would stop from time to time in order to load various levels. The feeling of freedom was provided by the numerous ways of dealing with an objective. Even if the story was a little too similar with The Island of Doctor Moreau and not on par with other more profound games at the time, it still offered the perfect setting for such a daring initiative

Crysis has deviated a little bit from that recipe and even if the game has a huge environment and large open spaces boasted by spectacular visuals, I felt pushed on a single trail through the jungle far too often. I can understand the story's requirement for a specific path but there are times when I can see from the distance all of the access points to a certain objective, ruining all the fun of future attempts.

All games today need something special to impress the teenage gamers, either it's time bending abilities, hunky dudes that look good on screen (Gears of War) or a cool suit that can enhance certain abilities. For some strange reason that I can't grasp, there are a lot of games coming out this winter (and spring) that involve the use of a special suit that does the trick. In the case of Crysis, the suit or should I say the Nanosuit has the power to regenerate the player's health, increase his speed, power and make him completely invisible for a limited amount of time. I wish I could say that this concept is new, but I have seen something similar in an older game called Chrome, developed by Techland back in 2003. Nonetheless, the effects are quite spectacular and give Crysis a certain unique flavor.

Story As usual, humans tend to meddle in stuff that is beyond their comprehension. We've seen it before in tons of other games and it appears to be a human trait. It's only a matter of time before it's done in real life. The story begins like this: on a remote island in the Philippine Sea, a team of scientists stumble upon the remains of an extraterrestrial structure hidden inside an asteroid. The North Koreans get on top of the situation ASAP and take control over the island, forcing all of the remaining personnel to work for them. The archeological dig is resumed and soon after, they discover that the awakened alien structure is sending a signal to a distant galaxy. Unfortunately, the scriptwriters have missed something rather important. The alien structure is said to be approximately 2 million years old. If we take into account what progress the human kind has made in the last hundred years and if we consider that technological advancements are on an exponential rise, you can only imagine what kind of technology the incoming aliens possess. We might just as well stick our heads in the sand and hope it's going to be real quick.

If you get past this little bump in storytelling, the rest is a pack standard features for everyday shooters: the aliens are pretty pissed off because they were awaken by some pesky mosquitoes and decide that it's time to take over the planet. They start by projecting a field that has its own climate and a cold one as the temperature is -200 degrees below Celsius (if you need a reference than you should know that -273,15 degrees Celsius is the absolute freezing point). At this point the humans enter the nuclear stage of thinking. We start to imagine that the bigger the bomb the better... Aliens are evil and it's a well known fact that evil feeds itself with the energy of weapons you're trying to use on it. All seven graders know this simple fact, but the United States Government doesn't. They order a strike in spite of numerous warnings and the bomb is ineffective, feeding the shield. One of the scientists (and a hot one) saved from the island manages to conveniently retrofit an alien weapon for human use. The action shifts from the island to a US carrier where you'll finish the game and get a glimpse of Crysis 2 in the end.

Many people had a problem with the introduction of aliens because it seems to be a bland theme that's been overused in gaming history. Horde after horde has attacked Earth from prehistoric times to the contemporary era. They came from the future, from the past and from alternate dimensions but we've managed to somehow hold our own ground. Either we're very lucky or we are very good. It's said that our strength is drawn from our unity but I've noticed it usually takes one QWERTY proficient guy to take down any armada. Crysis is no different.

Gameplay We have been saturated with pictures and trailers right until the launch and even after it. By the time I actually started playing, I already knew what the game should feel like and what to expect from Crytek. They were worried that a too big hype would ultimately lead to a PR disaster like the one id Software suffered with Doom 3. The gaming community had really high expectations and the hype surrounding the game was so big that no developer would have been able to fulfill it. By bombarding us with tons of press materials they have insured themselves that every gamer that picks up Crysis knows exactly what to expect, leaving no much room for surprises.

If you think the game will blow your mind than you're in for a disappointment. Right from the start it feels old and it resembles way too much the old Far Cry. The crucial moment is coming up a ridge, maybe 15 minutes into the game and watching the most beautiful sunrise you've ever seen. Things that you haven't noticed before begin to emerge, like small rocks that you can see sticking out of the ground and you can actually feel them when the character passes over. The suit becomes a second nature in a matter of minutes and you can only think that your days as a Peeping Tom are starting to get interesting. You start remembering all those trailers you've seen, where a guy is jumping on a roof and starts firing bullets towards the unfortunate Korean soldiers below. You start to think at stuff that you haven't really done in a game before, like sneaking up to a guy holding a turret? you can imagine the rest; or you only tease them from the safety of your cloak, hunting them like a predator, taking them out one by one until the last soldier is just terrified. He knows he's going to die, so, while gripping his neck, over the edge of a very high cliff, look into his eyes and using the suits power throw him as far as possible. If you're feeling a little merciful maybe you'll put a couple of bullets in his chest before he hits the ground. On the other hand, it's kind of funny to watch him get squashed like a bug when he's hitting the water or some pointy rock at 70 miles per hour. This scenario is quite sick and I wouldn't dare to put it in practice, but hey? you can always try.

If you're not the violent type, maybe you'll steal a Humvee or a truck or even better, a helicopter. The choice is yours and in most cases the choices are going to be quite obvious but Crysis does a little more than that. You can try to find routes that the developers haven't thought of or just try some of them just for fun. The point is that even if the story is quite linear, the player is not obliged to take one path or another, as he can make his own way through the universe the developer has so kindly provided. There is even one huge level that you can choose to finish with the aid of a tank, if that's your thing and you even get to fight enemies wearing similar nanosuits. But hey, no need to spoil all the fun. Every player should be a little frustrated and hit the quick load button after one of those fights. The AI is not exactly stupid but it hasn't surprised me with new tactics. I can't figure out if it's better than the one from Far Cry, but I have just got used to encountering great AI.

This freedom is lost in the alien levels. After being forced by circumstances to enter the alien ship, we are faced with the most hostile environment I have ever seen in a game. Every time humans try to picture aliens we need to make them completely out of this world in order to achieve the extra scary factor. I don't know if you've noticed but in nine cases out of ten the aliens are some slimy, greasy creatures with some bio-mechanical armor. Guess what? They're as slimy as it gets and their ship is something no man has ever thought about before and the design is so fantastic and out of this world that you'll even start to admire it.

Inside the ship there is zero gravity, so the gameplay changes a bit. You'll still be shooting aliens but you'll have to do it in their own environment. Firing a weapon will push the player backwards, just like would expect and the aliens bleed just like the Koreans. It's not much different from outside the ship with the single major difference of the speed factor. You be traveling very slowly unlike your enemies that seem to be swimming. They might be fast but they can't see you when cloaked so it's quite fun to get really close and start chocking.

The gameplay in Crysis relies on variety and finding more that one way to waste soldiers and aliens. It's about freedom of choice but not the one we would expect from an RPG, more like freedom of movement and action. You can't choose the story but you can decide how it's going to unravel: the easy way or the hard way.

Graphics What can be said about the way Crysis looks? It's terrible and I haven't seen such washed up textures in all my life. The lightning effects are terrible and the physics are just absurd. There is not parallax mapping, antialising or any of that other stuff you usually see in the menus. The game can only be played in the lowest resolution possible and it will run on any system on this planet. It doesn't even come on a disk, it's just copied on a floppy and in that small space they've also squeezed the game protection. Now you can take all I've said and reverse it.

Simply put, Crysis has the best graphics we've seen so far. The technological leap is huge and I can't see any game in the near future reaching this kind of visuals. The game will shock you eventually but it's not doing so right from the beginning; it's more like a cumulative shock. You'll find yourself with the jaws open at the end of the game, drooling and only thinking that it's the best looking game you've ever seen.

All this eye candy comes with a price and it usually surmounts to a few hundred dollars. That's the price of a graphics card that will provide a reasonable framerate and if you're still making investments than you will also need some additional RAM and even a much more powerful processor. This means you'll also need a new power source because the one you had is no longer capable of sustaining all that new hardware. At this point we're getting way over a few hundred bucks so any reasonably intelligent human being starts to think "console". That would be fine too except that Crysis has only been developed for PC and there are no plans for a console version. Let's face it, in spite of all that computing power with 3 cores and God knows what else, the consoles are still standing and the PC is evolving as I type. I have actually read somewhere that Crytek hasn't developed the game with current generation hardware in mind and that only the future will show us the true might of Crysis. The consoles are stuck in time, so maybe Xbox 720 and PS4 will get it.

Multiplayer You can imagine the mayhem in a Crysis multiplayer game with all the players wearing nanosuits and imbued with such great abilities. Crytek has spared no effort to make this part of the game as attractive as the single player campaign. For those of you who need some quick action, a deathmatch mode for 32 players is available and it plays pretty much the same any other game does. Every multiplayer game has to be different somehow in order to attract as many people as possible and the developers have gone overboard to make Power Struggle one of the most original modes out there. The principle is quite simple: there are two teams, one represented by Delta Force soldiers and the other one by the North Koreans. Both parties are equipped with nanosuits and have only one goal: to destroy the opposite headquarter. Even if the goal seems simple, one multiplayer game can take ages and if you're not really set for the long run on your computer, you'll find yourself wanting to quit. The reason why this simple objective is so hard to achieve is because the headquarters can only be destroyed by alien weaponry (or nuclear) and the player needs to capture certain locations and buildings to gain access to that particular technology. Those technologies also need power and power stations are scattered throughout the map. The buildings constantly change landlords so you can only imagine the chaos after four or five hours of intense fighting.

Sound For the first time I find it hard to think at something that would put a dent on the sound department. I haven't had one single problem with Crysis and everything seemed to be just right. The weapons sound just the way they should (not that I'm some great expert) and they feel like they're actually doing some damage. The voices are top notch and even if the story is not so dramatic, the actors do their jobs flawlessly. If this was the Opera I would give a standing ovation at the end.

Conclusion It's so difficult to sum up a great game. What more can be said about an almost perfect game. Earlier this year we were struck by the Bioshock phenomenon and a lot of people have uttered "perfect" when the game was over. The game had some serious problems but the gamers ignored them because everything else was fabulous. Well, Crysis doesn't have any problems and there are little to none issues that I can think of. I can even say it out loud: the game is almost perfect. I'm saying "almost" because I consider it delivers a short campaign and that the story is rather predictable. The main thing that really troubled me was the really weird ending. I can understand the need to leave some room for a sequel but this is ridiculous. Crysis is definitely going to be one of those games that will be installed every time we change a hardware component, just to see if we can get it to be even more beautiful. It's been a long time since I had to choose a FPS that I liked the most. Nonetheless, Crysis is in the top three titles this year but what's more interesting is that it could even be in a top three at the end of 2008.

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story 8
gameplay 10
concept 10
graphics 10
audio 10
multiplayer 9
final rating 9.5
Editor's review
excellent
 

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