Ah Crysis, my beautiful shiny
brand new toy which, doesn't work very well.
At it's release regarded as the best graphics
in a game ever. For this review I should state
the I played Crysis (for the first time) with
everything set to Very High and with the Natural
Mod added for that extra eye candy. So this
is Crysis at it's very optimum.
Firstly I'm not sure how much
of a difference the Natural Mod makes. But loading
the first level without it looked good, then
reloading with Natural Mod looked absolutely
awful. All colour was gone, there was little
contrast and it was quite hard to see. However
the first level starts at night and, apparently,
Natural Mod works best during day. I'm sure
it does, because once the day finally shone
bright ten minutes later it indeed looked fantastic.
But enough about the Natural
Mod. Being that it's only been a few months
since my first playthrough of FarCry, I'll be
heavily comparing the two. Sure they're three
years of development time apart, but Crysis
could quite easily be considered FarCry2. The
settings and gameplay are the same.
FarCry took outdoor design
to whole new level. The island paradise setting
was fantastic. But FarCry had it's flaws. The
first of which was that for a game famous for
it's beautiful scenery, there were far too many
bland, ugly indoor levels. The outdoors levels
were more memorable because there simply weren't
enough. Crysis fixes this problem with only
2 out of 11 levels taking place indoors. The
first of which, Core, is the inside of an alien
mountain where a spanner is thrown in the works
by making it zero gravity. And the indoor areas
are quite huge anyway. The other is Reckoning,
the final level on a ship with it's claustrophobic
corridors. But at least it also has an epic
battle on the deck. Ignore the brief but painful
flying level Ascension and you've got 8 sprawling,
unique, scenic adventures around this huge island.
Beaches, jungles, a military
port, a mining complex (with just a little indoor
action), snowy winter lands; it all combines
to make one fantastic gaming setting. The problem
is there are fewer set pieces here that in FarCry.
Or fewer moments of awe. What I believe is the
cause is that Crysis is much flatter than FarCry.
There's not enough height to the game. In the
predecessor there were moments where you'd be
standing mountaintop gazing upon valleys and
beaches below. The rope bridge, the hand glider,
the lighthouse. Crysis just doesn't have this.
Sure there's a few scenes such as Awakening,
where a giant distant mountain is falling apart
before your eyes. Or Assault where you're looking
out across a bay to an enemy base under assault.
Sure the graphics in Crysis are a big step up
from FarCry, but these moments of awe, the truly
memorable levels are lacking. Instead there's
a lot of flat battles from village to village.
But that's only one small nitpick
on a game that looks utterly amazing. This engine
is capable of breathtaking scale as well as
extraordinary detail on every piece of plant
life.
Crytek have sensibly added
quicksave to Crysis, another bad decision in
FarCry. And the one thing that nearly ruined
FarCry for me was the difficulty by the end
of the game. Crysis isn't so bad. It does still
have issues with it's final battle as it can
be very frustrating when projectiles are constantly
raining down on you and you can't even see where
it's all coming from. But that's more an issue
of a certain enemy in the game, the aliens,
which I'll get into next.
Gameplay. And this is what
I'm talking about when I say my shiny new toy
doesn't work very well, at least at first. This
isn't the kind of game like Painkiller: Overdose
or Timeshift where you can run through blasting
those Korean bastards back to... Korea (Koreans
are your human enemy in Crysis). Crysis is strategic.
Typical gameplay scenario: creep around in the
bushes until you get close enough to the next
enemy village. Draw their attention, perhaps
spray a few bullets then run like hell back
to some cover and wait for said enemy to wander
over. Kill a couple, then sprint further away
to more cover before you're ass up in blood.
Crysis human enemies take you down VERY fast,
and you're usually outnumbered. It's not so
much a hugely difficult game, you've just got
to play very carefully and strategically. Sorry
Crytek, but that just isn't that fun. And to
poke a stick further into the wound, you're
weapons are lackluster. The machine guns, even
with zoom scope pointing directly at a Koreans
head, are extremely unreliable at doing a proper
headshot. No headshots in a strategy game? Bad
call.
However the more you play,
the more enjoyable the combat gets. And I don't
mean a single playthrough. It wasn't until I
started tapping into the hours and hours of
custom free releases my mappers and modders.
Basically the game is tough, but once you've
played it enough to get used to the guns, enemies
and more importantly your suit, it becomes a
lot more fun. A second playthough is likely
to be much more enjoyable that first.
Back to the weapons... the
shotgun is decent, but not always useful since
these are outdoor levels. Apart from handguns
and rocket launchers saved for blowing up vehicles
and 'copters, that's really all you get for
fighting humans - both ridiculously bound to
the same god damn key of which you can only
carry two weapons at a time! You get to some
cooler weapons later on such as the minigun,
gauss gun (a big ass shotgun) and the infinite
ammo alien weapon - but again they're all bound
to the same key so you have to get rid of your
fall back weapons the shotty and machine gun.
Now to the alien section of
the game. I know this review is getting long,
but it's an important game in the history shooters
so I want to go in-depth. The Core takes you
to an alien base built within the mountain and
earth. It looks amazing. In fact it's the creepiest,
most unique alien level I think i've ever played.
Then the aliens turn up and ruin it. They look
good - large floating octopus type aliens. But
their attacks can be a little annoying. I do
give Crytek props for changing it up though.
It was a great twist to the game to give it
some variety and differentiate from all the
other realistic war shooters ala MOH and COD...
neither of which come close the visual feast
of Crysis. The snow level that came next was
brilliant, and scary. However fighting octo-aliens
inside a cramped battleship was not good. And
the octo-alien is what i'm talking about in
the last battle as I'm trying to concentrate
on shooting the fat mothership while these bastard
aliens just keep shooting at me and I can barely
follow them in the sky since they move so fast.
Nevertheless, I'm glad the
aliens did make their presence known because
it did make the game more memorable; both from
a storyline and gameplay perspective because
another few levels of insane-strategy play against
human enemies would not have won me over. Still,
it's a love hate thing with the aliens for most
players.
Okay so let's wrap this up.
Crysis is a fantastic looking game. The Crytek
engine is one of the best around, and certainly
the best i've seen at doing outdoor scenery.
There are players around who think this games'
graphics are overrated. But for 2007, at least
with everything maxed out, Crysis looks at the
top of it's game. It's a shame that, just like
FarCry, the gameplay isn't as polished and takes
a while before you'll begin to enjoy it. This
is a game for the players that eat up beautiful
environments and graphics. At least for a while
because Crysis is quite a short game.
