Played time: 20+ hours (Completed single-player on Normal, Hard, and Delta)
Developer: Crytek
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Players: 1 (1-32 online)
Crysis is a Sci-Fi First Person Shooter (FPS) for the PC. Developed by Crytek and published by everyone’s favourite company, Electronic Arts (EA). Known far and wide as the most graphics-intensive game available, Crysis is certainly infamous these days. For those of you who know what a FPS is, here is a review of the highly acclaimed, Crysis.
Story:
Crysis places you in the shoes of Nomad, a highly trained and top secret military marine. Of course the most advanced technology is available to you in the form of a nano-suit. You and several other nano-suit wearing soldiers are sent to a remote island to rescue a group of scientists who have been captured by Koreans. You soon find out that is not the real reason you are there (Obviously). The story is by the books, a textbook classic sci-fi story. Go kill *insert enemy name here*, rescue *insert name here*, find out *enemy name here* have discovered something, kill some more *insert enemy name here*, find out they have woken up a mysterious force and *gasp* surprise! *insert alien name here*! The majority of the game focuses on you discovering what the enemy is up to, and killing lots of them while you are at it. The last bit of the game or so changes focus from the Koreans to the aliens. After the aliens have woken, it is your job to make it off the island alive.
The story is nothing new and fairly straight forward. The game?s story doesn?t try to expand or enhance the genre. It plays the field safe and sticks to a working formula. After all, it?s a first person shooter, not a book. What do shooters do best? They let you kill and blow stuff up!
Gameplay:
Are you looking for a game with shooting, explosions and over the top action? If yes, you have found the perfect game. The action sequences are phenomenal but could have been paced a little better. I found after tearing an enemy camp apart, I would want to continue doing so but it would be a while before I encountered a large cluster of enemies again. There are quite a few weapons to pick from, and each weapon is very well balanced making it hard at times to pick which ones you would like. There is everything from pistols to assault rifles to missile launchers to alien ice shard cannons. Atop of the variety of weapons you are allowed to customize each weapon to an extent, such as equipping rifles with a grenade attachment and sniper scope. You can even change the ammunition on a few weapons to a fire based type.
Did I mention the high tech nano-suits which give you command of four combat enhancing abilities? The nano-suit is fully equipped with super human strength to grab and throw enemies into each other, or throw them over cliffs, bridges, trees or whatever you like. The cloak mode turns you invisible, draining energy from the suit. The suits energy will slowly drain if standing still, the faster you move, the faster your energy will deplete. I had tons of fun with this mode. Countless times I would sneak up on enemies and either blast them point-blank range with a shotgun or bash their skulls in with the suits, maximum strength mode. The third setting is enhanced speed. With it, you are able to blaze past all the enemies? defenses to destroy them from behind. Lastly, the default setting is enhanced armor. With this setting on, all of the suits energy will be changed to protect you, basically adding another bar of life.
The AI is fairly smart, I?ve found they can either be really smart or extremely stupid and just stand around on rare occasions. The controls are fantastic, shooters where meant to be played on a computer. Nothing else can give that precision and control like a mouse and keyboard can.
The only complaint I have here is the online play. My experience online has not been up to snuff for me. I found the game to not be nearly as responsive as in single player, making it very unsatisfying to play online. Lag was an issue I had in a few matches making it nearly impossible for me to kill anyone, although people where able to kill me as I died quiet a number of times! There is also no team deathmatch, which hurts the online play a lot.
Sound:
The voices of characters are top notch! Explosions, gun fire, even the enemies are incredible. At lower difficulty settings the enemies will speak English, but once you hit the Delta difficulty (hardest difficulty) they will be speaking Korean. Everything sounds as it should, I have nothing to complain or pick apart here.
Graphics:
This is why the game is so great; this mixed with the open world gameplay is just simply mind-blowing. If, and this is a big if, you can afford a computer to run this game, you will love and cherish its beauty. Although you will probably living in your parent?s basement because you spent your child?s college fund in order to own a computer that can play this game. That being said, there is no game out there that looks as stunning and breath-taking as this game can. The water looks so realistic I?ve caught myself changing into swimming trunks to go for a refreshing swim before I realized I was still playing Crysis. The trees actually react as if there is real wind, the sun gazing down through the jungle is a site that must been seen. Everything and I mean everything in this game looks gorgeous, the characters, vehicles, explosions and landscape.
Bottom Line:
If you can afford a computer that can run this game, and don?t already have it, get it now! You will not be disappointed. The familiar story and gameplay surprisingly do not hold this game back. Mix in some of the most beautiful graphics to date and we have ourselves a phenomenal game. Cancel your summer vacation to the Bahamas for your next vacation, instead apply sun block, grab a refreshing drink and play Crysis, you won’t regret it!
9.5
