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

 

Left 4 Dead 2 Review

Left 4 Dead 2
Developed By: Valve Software
Available on: Xbox 360 and PC/MAC
Reviewed on the PC

BRAAAAAAAAINS….

Everyone loves zombies. How could you not, they’re cute and cuddly and want nothing more then to rip you limp from limp whilst sucking the sinew from your bones. Ok well maybe not the former but everyone loves them for the later, so what can Valve Software bring to the zombie table that hasn’t been done time and time again?

Those familiar with the first game wont be socked the second time around. Outside of four new characters, new locations, some new weapons and a few new modes, the game is, for all intensive purposes, the same. Run forward and shoot zombies in the face. Some may see this as bad but hey, if it’s not broke… For the uninitiated, what Left 4 Dead is, is a four player co-op zombie slaughter fest that takes place over five “films” or campaigns. Each campaign, about 45 to 75 minutes in length depending on difficulty setting and teamwork, it‘s presented as a movie with the ending showing your stats in a film credit style. Each film is broken up into four to five levels, depending on the campaign, each ending in a stand off where you have to wait for a rescue vehicle. The director system, which Valve instituted brilliantly in the first game, is back in full effect. This time, not only will it randomly generate zombies and re-arrange items, it will also rearrange your path so that you don’t take the same route every time you play a level. It works better then the first, adding more lulls in the action, building tension for when the horde is going to strike, while also adding flood moments that will throw endless amounts of zombies at you until you perform a specific action. One level has you running across a roller coaster to get to the end and turn it off while another has you racing through several levels of a mall to cut power to the alarm system. Each “panic” event is extremely intense and satisfying as you hack off zombie heads with the new melee weapons.

One of the simplest yet most satisfying additions to the game are hand held weapons, like baseball bats, police batons, or the ever trusty chainsaw. Combine this with the amazing freeform zombie destruction system and it’s a treat seeing your weapons rip chunks out of the undead to expose their gory innards. This isn’t like Dead Space where you can only hack of limbs; you can blow specific chunks out of each zombie to a level never before seen in games. Each ghoul this time around is fitted with an internal skeleton, so when you wind up and swing for the fences or unload your new shiny AK-47 into them, they splinter apart like rotten fruit exposing their goods; similar to the dynamic destruction to the environment seen in John Woo’s Stranglehold, or Red Faction Guerrilla. I myself, am a gore hound, growing up on horror films and Mortal Kombat will do that to you, and L4D2 delivers 110% in that department.

The extra beef Valve added to the Source Engine, with their dynamic body destruction to their AI directed level generator is great, but being that it is six years old now, it’s starting to show its age a bit. Although the game does look good with its spooky dark lighting and some the best character models in the biz, the environments can get a little drab in spots. There are some cool overlay effects like when you get hit with boomer bile, or are an inch from death and are seeing nothing but grey, but L4D2 doesn’t do anything that every other games doesn’t already do. The plus side is it runs great on a wide variety of systems, but the down side is it’s not going toe to toe with games like Crysis or Dead Space any time soon. Also in classic Valve fashion, there are no cut scenes. This can be looked at as both good and bad. I like that they weave the story into the environments, from the survivor notes in the safe rooms to the lone body covered in a sheet just out side of it, but in 2009 I expect a little more in the cinematic department. Outside of the great opening movie there is none of this in the game. Seeing how they present this to be a “movie” experience I would like to of had at least one at the end of each chapter; sometime at the end to give you a reward for surviving the brutal creatures would have been nice.

This time around they have the same boss creatures from the first, the hunter, witch, boomer, smoker and tank but they added a few more to break up the flow of the game, as well as add a new layer of challenge. The new jockey is a little shit that jumps on your back and rides you around, removing all control until a team mate shoots it off of you. This can be extremely deadly when combined with the new spitter who shoots out a toxic green slime that burns anyone who touches it. Add in the charger who rams and pounds anything in its path, and that’s one nasty bunch that’ll fuck up your party. The classic boss infected work the same way as before but have a new look to match the New Orleans setting.

There is one thing that all Valve games do great, and with no exception here, and that is the setting. You feel like you’re in the south. From the Bourbon Street inspired streets to the mucky swamps, this is “Naw-lins.” No two environments feel the same yet they all mesh so well to give you this authentic southern feel like no other game. A lot of games do great atmosphere, but the variety is always a problem; that’s not the case here. Also with Valves amazing community support there are tons of user maps as well as great, free, dlc maps to pick up.

Aside from the story, there is also a ton of competitive multiplayer modes. There is your, not so standard, verses mode where four people play as the survivors and four play as the special infected and you see who can last the longest on each level of a campaign. In survival you have to hold out as long as you can against the never ending horde of flesh eaters. In the new scavenge mode you have to collect gas to fill generators. Each is a new experience and new challenge that is very different from your standard fps online experience. Throw in the ability to control the infected and you have yourself something that never gets old.

If you loved the first one, you will love this one. Yeah, some may see it as a glorified map pack, but it’s not. They add a lot of new features, modes and game tweaks that it feels fresh. Also after spending just five minutes with this, it’s hard to go back to the first one. The characters are funny and engaging, it’s a great co-op experience, and even playing by yourself is a blast, even though the AI bots aren’t the smartest. For zombie fans or just horror fans in general this is a no brain… nope, not going there, it’s a must buy.

Story: 6 -- Gameplay: 9.5 -- Graphics: 8
Sound: 9 -- Replay: 9 -- Fun factor: 10

Overall (not an average): 9.0 out of 10

-TuxedoKatsJoe

Two Guys on a Couch - The Walking Dead Pilot Review

It's Halloween, well almost, so this week we bring you our review of the pilot episode of AMCs new show, The Walking Dead. Does this show live up to the Eisner award winning graphic novel or is it all dead inside?
This video contains MATURE CONTENT: Language and clips of Violence. Viewer Discretion is Advised.

Two Guys on a Couch - RED Movie Review

We are back after a short hiatus with a review of the new Bruce Willis comic book movie, RED. Also we talk a little about Medal of Honor, Castlevania and Enslaved.
This video contains MATURE CONTENT: Language and clips of Violence. Viewer Discretion is Advised.