Crysis

The Good
I played it on hard difficulty and the gameplay was actually quite good and presented a decent challenge, at least in the beginning. You can pick a number of approaches to any of the open-ended areas. Things are sometimes spiced up by including enemies with suits similar to your own. The first time they appeared and surprise you, you're forced into a difficult close-combat battle, while in the rest of the encounters you can pick them off from afar.

The game feels very Hollywood-ish. Heck, it's better than Hollywood. You're the wearer of an exclusive "muscle nano suit" working for the US government and your squad consists of the typical action macho men and it really feels like a highly interactive movie that just lasts and lasts.

Oh right, and the graphics. Well, they're great. I had to play on low settings so I didn't get to appreciate them fully, but even I could see that there's tons of detail everywhere in houses, outside,... Crysis really takes things to a new level. It's a shame that the terrain isn't more destructible. Of course the super detail and huge levels means this will never run on consoles, but that's a small price to pay.

The Bad
The AI is not so great. Although they continue shooting if you turn cloak mode on in front of them, if you turn a corner and then turn it on they lose you easily. You can (as I have) take out entire bases like this; unhide-shoot-hide-cloak repeat until nobody comes out any more. Works best without the silencer so the entire base can hear you and come rushing. And no, they never learn. Similarly you can shoot someone at a machine-gun nest and another will man it, and they repeat this until they are all dead. They don't move in group or anything like that, unless you encounter a patrol, which is easy to get around since the areas are so open.

You can't move bodies or anything like that to avoid alerting others, and in fact the bodies themselves disappear after a minute or so. I suppose that's necessary since you're killing tons of Koreans and having a huge pile of them would be somehow absurd.

When you finally get to shoot aliens,... all your weapons and mods are taken away. Ugh. That meant I had hoarded all those granades, HE ammo etc just to have it disappear in the middle of the game? Wow, thanks for that wonderful game mechanic. They even take away my favourite gun, the Gauss rifle.

The game can be a bit too Hollywood-ish at times. Watch the opening scene in the demo and if you don't roll your eyes, you should be fine on the rest.

The Bottom Line
Crysis can be very fun if you enjoy the sanbox playstyle, or if you enjoy action movies. It manages to merge high quality productions with good if not revolutionary gameplay into a great cinematic experience.

The Good
This one of the few games where you don't start with a weak weapon and no armor, but an amazing nano-suit with five superpowers at your disposal, it's like having five X-Men mutants in one body (Quicksilver, Colossus, Blob, Mystique and Wolverine). You can comfortably switch between stealth and direct combat and never die easily if you don't get carried away. And the suit automatically switches to maximum armour so you won't suffer a cheap death.

There's so much attention to detail and atmosphere across the island and it's fun to explore. This game has a rare feature almost never seen in an FPS, which is the ability to see your feet, when the camera is angled downwards. Even the music really blends in, changing according to whether you remained undetected, arouse enemies' suspicions or get spotted by them, not unlike the way the music works in Manhunt.

The gameplay really works at its best if you have the right framerate. There's a decent variety of weapons with attachments to make them even more reliable. Secondary objectives to add to the flow of getting your primary objectives done. If the going gets tough, you can save anywhere at any time.

The plot has politics and science fiction put together in just the right spots. Just when you thought you were entering a Call of Duty-styled cold war, you soon find yourself plunged into an alien war almost reminiscent of the Scrin from Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. It would have been nice if the characters were fleshed out a bit more.

The Bad
The worst part of the game is the driving. Driving in jeeps, trucks and boats isn't so bad, even if you have to remember to switch seats to fire the machine gun. Where the frustration lies is the driving of a tank and a VTOL, both of which ruin the fun in the game.

With the tank you have limited shells, which means you have to rely on your partners to do a lot of the enemy tank busting. So many boulders on the ground hinder your movement (sometimes you get completely stuck) and you need a lot of momentum to trek up hills. And the tank is so wide, you can't tell if it can squeeze through a gap or get wedged in it. Driving the tank is like wading in quicksand. Unfortunately you need the tank to get far in the mission, but in a moment of frustration, you'd much rather exit the tank and go on foot, which gives you better control.

The VTOL is just as bad because of the way the flying works, with awkward angles and its hard to get a lock on enemy targets, you might crash before you know it. If you do land roughly, you'll have no chance of getting up again, so you'll need to fly in the sky in one go. With what limited missiles you have, you're not going to get all the secondary objectives easily if at all. Heat-seeking missiles would have been more helpful in this mission.

One other game physic that can ruin a game is that the bodies of your enemies are solid. If you're in prone mode, you can't crawl over a body. Worse if you're caught between a wall with a low ceiling and a body, you're stuck for good. And sometimes falls are a real problem, being as hateful an opponent as the ones you shoot, you'd be wishing the suit could protect you from fall damage.

The Bottom Line
Crysis is not an FPS for the inexperienced. Getting the hang of it would have gone smoother if only there was a proper tutorial guide for utilising the nano-suit's abilities as well as the awful driving and certain physics, which the creators made a bit more realistic than you would have liked. You have to appreciate every ounce of effort put into the game. That iconic nano-suit brought FPS gaming to a whole new level, you cannot say it's been done a hundred times before. The game's reputation earned it the remaster it deserves, but this is the title one must play at least once in a lifetime.

The Good
There is no doubt that Crysis was one of the most hyped games in the hobby. Even after it was released, between the media accolades and its use as the new technical benchmark throughout the industry kept it in the spotlight. The primary reason for this is clear the moment you enter the game. No game before this or since (as of this writing in November 2008) has achieved the level of graphical splendor found in Crysis. The visuals and environments are simply breathtaking. So much so that they tax even the most up-to-date gaming rigs.

Game physics are also impressive. The way that objects in the environment react to you and other elements of the world is a pleasure to see and helps immerse the player.

Then the artificial intelligence deserves kudos. While it is not at the level of F.E.A.R.'s eerily competent soldiers, the enemies you face in Crysis are a real challenge and can be relied upon not to fall for simple tricks. They also have a good sense of their own mortality and if you ever take on a soldier alone, be assured that he will try to bring in some reinforcements as soon as he can. This causes the player to take special care in tactics or else face a deadly barrage of bullets from all sides.

Sound is excellent and plays a great part in the gameplay itself, as sometimes it is the best way to determine where your enemies are. I definitely recommend playing with a good headset.

The Bad
As technically beautiful as Crysis may be, as a game it falls short. This is a game that I really wanted to love, especially since I bought it with my brand new gaming system. Even so, I found myself rather uninspired from the beginning.

The storyline is not terribly involving and verges into cliche. As well, I never found any of the characters - least of all my own - to be very appealing. I do wish that I could have played as the cocky British commando in the team instead of the incredibly bland American muscle slab that I was.

Gameplay is actually not as fun as you would think it could be. The idea of sneaking around in the jungles, using ambush tactics, and generally engaging in stealth badassery seems awesome - and it is awesome. But the inclusion of your super-powered suit with built in stealth capabilities spoils it. Once I began running circles around groups of enemies, repeatedly hiding and recloaking after each kill, I began to feel like I was shooting fish in a barrel. Try to play without cloaking, though, and it is like pushing boulders up the side of Mt. Fuji. The enemy suddenly knows exactly where you are and they somehow all have the accuracy of Navy SEAL snipers.

Weapon selection is pretty uninteresting. This is especially the case because you soon run out of ammunition for your cool high-tech assault rifle and have to pick up the aging Korean model instead.

Also, there seems to be little reason for stealth other than to keep from being filled with holes. I think that it would have been great to have missions in which you needed to infiltrate a base without raising the alarm, silently bypassing or removing guards as you go.

The Bottom Line
Crysis is an awesome technical achievement but a mediocre first-person shooter. I hope that someone takes this engine and makes the game that FPS fans have really all been awaiting.