Crysis Review

Crysis
Developed By: Crytek
Available on: PC
Reviewed on the PC

MAXIMUM REVIEW…

What’s that one game you wish you could pop in to make your PC cry out in pain trying to render every drop of its awesomeness… if you said Crysis, then no shit; everyone knows this game looks sick as hell, but is it good?

Crytek is a German game developer known for making the best looking games in the business after their breakout game Far Cry showed people how to render the most amazing jungles anyone has ever seen. The only problem with Far Cry is, it wasn’t good. It was like a B movie, where this time around Crytek wanted to do a first rate summer movie blockbuster and for the most part they delivered. On the surface Crysis is the most amazing looking game on the market. From its dynamically destructible jungle to its perfect normal mapped textures, to some of the highest poly counts you will ever see on screen, Crysis will be the benchmark for games for a good while. This game is great but it comes at a cost, you need one hell of a rig. My personal rig isn’t bad, a GeForce 8800, 3.0 Core 2 Duo and 4 gigs of ram, and I had some problems running it turned up. Now with just some minor tweaks it runs great but not everyone has a rig like mine and it’s on the low end of a “gamer” PC. Now that, that’s out of the way, how is the game itself? Well it’s actually a fairly good and unique shooter.

The Nano Suit give you the ability to go invisible, run fast, jump high, or take a lot of damage, and switching between the functions is as easy as holding the middle mouse button and dragging to one of the suit powers on the select ring. It’s fast, intuitive and easy to manipulate. Each suit function serves a specific purpose and you will find yourself jumping in and out of different ones often. Outside of the Nano Suit and amazing visuals this game doesn’t do too much else that is new. It has your standard weapons with a little bit of an advanced twist, that’s about it. Also once the aliens show up you don’t even get any cool alien weapons. Oh wait… yeah, we’ll get to the flying squids later.

The first part of this game has you infiltrating North Korea in search of some captured archeologists whom the North Koreans are using to dig up an alien artifact, while the second half has you fighting off the alien invasion you let out. Cool in concept, maybe not so much in execution. Fighting the humans is fine, even if their AI could have used a little more time in the oven. The pseudo open world feel that Crysis has gives you plenty of opportunity to play with your various suit functions to find the best way to attack your prey, while the tight shooting mechanics make picking them off fun as hell. The driving in the game, while not the best, is passable as long as it’s done in third person, but once you get into a flying vehicle it all falls apart. The flying controls feel broken and often I found that the V-Tol you pilot didn’t do what I wanted it to do. The cars on the other hand worked well and helped move you through the massive environments quickly. There are also some boats but I only found myself using them when I had to, just because you can’t really use your Nano suit on the high seas.

All the islands you hop through are well designed in a linear fashion that doesn’t seem like hand holding. You would think that looking at tree after tree would get old, but they throw in enough bases, ports or small villages to keep it fresh. It wasn’t until the alien spaceship where I felt the design went off the rails. The ship is a maze of zero-g tunnels with no rhyme or reason until you stumble out the other end. The only cool thing about it is the frozen jungle that happens after, but getting there is so poorly done it almost breaks the game. This is only one section and it only lasts about a half hour but it feels like it takes days.

The story itself about the North Koreans finding the aliens and the world Crytek built with the Nano Suit is cool but a little on the weak side. Nothing really gets to fleshed out and you never get much of an attachment to the other soldiers you’re with. It’s not the worst story I’ve seen, but not the best either. A lot of the sci-fi elements they weave into it could have been fleshed out more and more of a personal story could have been told. You do get a sense that they care for each other but you never get to know any of the characters so in the end you don’t care much for them. Although the characters themselves are a bit one dimensional the talent behind the voices is quite good.

From the Jason Statham inspired Joker, to the leader of the pack Prophet, each cast member has a great voice. All the sounds are top notch; it has nice bassy explosions and superb ambiance. One of my favorite things is the voice when you switch between your suit powers. In this robotic, beefy tone it shouts out MAXIMUM POWER or MAXIMUM SPEED, and makes you feel so bad ass. You would think after several hours of hearing this over and over it would get annoying but for me it didn’t. Thankfully Crytek gives you the ability to turn it off if you want, but why would you? My only gripe, and it’s not just this game, is the North Koreans don’t speak Korean! They do speak it if you’re playing on the hardest difficulty level but it shouldn’t be a difficulty option, it should be a sound option. I hate when you play a game and a foreign enemy is speaking English, it just takes you out of the setting a bit.

Overall, if you’ve got the rig, you owe it to yourself to get this game; its fun, unique, amazing to look at and solid all around.

Story: 6.0 -- Gameplay: 8.5 -- Graphics: 10
Sound: 9 -- Replay: 8 -- Fun factor: 8

Overall (not an average): 8.0 out of 10

 

-TuxedoKatsJoe