Crysis is the new first person shooter by Crytek. Here’s our take on it.



The Insane

The best thing about Crysis is the physics in the game. I don’t care what age you are or what your maturity level is, punching down walls and watching roofs cave in as a result of your action is fun. Crytek hit the nail on the head with this one. They made just about every building not only destructible, but destructible with your bare hands (and a strength enhancer provided by turning your futuristic suit to “Strength Mode”).

The Good

Right off the bat, I have to say that Crysis is the most beautiful game I’ve ever played. In fact, I would say that almost any screenshot taken in the game could be displayed in a photography gallery, it really is that beautiful. Water actually looks like water, trees look like real trees, and NPCs look as close to real people as I’ve ever seen. I would say it sets the standard for the entire gaming industry as far as realistic graphics are concerned.

Until the end of the game, I had a lot of fun playing Crysis, and as video games are nothing more than entertainment, having fun can’t be over stated. The developers seemed to pay very close attention to even the smallest aspects of the game, and it was worth it. There is something exciting about picking up almost any object in the game. You can pick up sticks in the jungles, machinery in shacks, even your enemies! The closest thing I’ve seen to this in any other FPS was Half-Life 2.x and quite frankly, this game blows any Half-Life game out of the water.

The Bad

While Crysis has beautiful scenery it also sucks up system resources like it’s going out of style. If I turned the resolution down to an almost embarrassing level, I could turn the quality up to high (if I turned it to “very-high” the game looked more like a slideshow than anything even attempting to mimic “liquid-gameplay”). This is bad for a lot of casual gamers who don’t have $1,500 to put down on a new computer, however, it also does seem to hint that Crysis will be pushing graphics limited for the next year and maybe longer.

Crytek stressed that Crysis would give true “non-linear” game play. And in a sense, I suppose it’s true. You aren’t forced to take one particular path to get from Point A to Point B. However, you still have to get from Point A to Point B and there is even minimaps that all but screams “go this direction.” The game doesn’t really give you options of what you have to do, it just lets you enter a city from any direction you choose, which is not my definition of true non-linear game play.

The Ugly

Crysis does pretty well of not having an outlandish (read ridiculous) plot until it gets to the end. In fact, I would say the game play and the plot degenerate to primate levels near the end of the game. I suppose the entire Far Cry series requires an outlandish monster to hype up the plot, but somehow when this “monster” debuted in Crysis, my first thought was “wow, that’s dumb” not “ooh, how exciting.” There were also long sections where it was next to impossible to navigate as every room/cave looked EXACTLY the same (not similar, EXACTLY the same. Exactly.). This changed my outlook from “wow, this location is cool” to “get me the hell out of here.” Need I say “mouse in a maze” complex? Thankfully, this was only an issue at the very end of the game but was still obnoxious enough to merit a “I Kept the Game from Being All it Could Be” award.