Crysis is a lot of things to a lot of people. As early as two years ago, some of the gaming press that saw it called Crysis
the first truly photorealistic 3D game. Eventually it has become one of
the main motivating factors for people to buy a new video card and get
Windows Vista and get those hot new DirectX 10 graphics. After all, the
eye candy seemed to be the biggest draw for this first person shooter
from the creators of Far Cry, which itself had some very impressive visuals when it was released in 2004. But with the release of Crysis
comes a lot of questions - is this what DX10 gaming truly is? Is this
where first person shooters are going? Where am I going to get the
money to build a computer that can actually play this damn game?
If you've got the machine to play Crysis, then you're in for a
real treat. The game takes place in 2020 and you're a member of the US
Army Special Forces, equipped with a super-powerful nanosuit that gives
you abilities like a superhero. Switch on the strength mode and you can
throw or punch with amazing force or jump 15 feet into the air. Speed
mode lets you sprint at blinding speed for short bursts. Cloaking
allows you to sneak around undetected for a while, and Armor mode lets
you use your suit as a regenerating armor shield (not unlike another
supersoldier whose name begins with "Master" and ends in "Chief"). Your
mission will be to head quietly into North Korea to rescue a team of
researchers who have unearthed some kind of world-changing secret that
the Koreans are in the process of hijacking for themselves.
If you just slog through this game in Armor mode without ever trying the other nanosuit functions, then you might find Crysis to be a bit dull. The enemy AI is about as good as it was in Far Cry
- which is to say, it's better than in most shooters - but it doesn't
really come into its own unless you've jacked up the difficulty or you
use the different suit modes. And that's an interesting thing here; the
difficulty levels in Crysis don't fiddle with the amount of
damage you or your enemies take like most shooters. Instead, the game
removes some of the conveniences of your suit and the world around you.
On the highest difficulty, Delta, enemies will be speaking Korean
rather than English and your suit doesn't regenerate its energy store
(or your health) nearly as quickly. The suit also stops putting a red
glow around enemies firing at you on Delta, which can be tough to deal
with when you're in the middle of the jungle without enough energy to
cloak and you're taking fire from all sides.
With an excellent intro level seen in the public demo, and tons of open gameplay with secondary objectives, you can choose
many ways to tackle your objectives. Sure, the objectives themselves
aren't exactly original - download data off of a computer, clear out a
KPA outpost of enemy soldiers, hoof it to some location, destroy
anti-air guns (didn't we see enough of this one in WW2 shooters?) and
the like. But it's the way you can do all these that makes Crysis
unique. Go stealth and sneak around people to finish some objectives or
just silently take out your enemies. Go armor and play it like a
classic FPS with tons of action and some fine AI from your opponents.
Or try and just play like a superhero, jumping onto buildings to avoid
enemy fire and throwing stuff at people. Or throw people at people, if
you feel you must.
Moving on - Crysis does include a multiplayer mode for up to 32
people to get together in either plain old free-for-all deathmatch or a
team-based game called Power Struggle. Your objective is to blow up the
opponent's base, but to do so you've got to control a research facility
to put together a nuke. Capture and hold bunkers for forward spawn
points, and capture the other stations to help speed up your weapons
research. Killing enemies gives you money which allows you to buy
better weapons and such, adding a slight Counter-Strike component, and the number of advanced vehicles you can buy or use also adds some Battlefield-style elements to the game. Throw in the fact that everyone's got a nanosuit and all of its abilities, and overall, the Crysis
multiplayer mode is excellent with lots of tactical options. The game
ships with few maps and there are of course the extreme system
requirements, though, which generally are not good for the longevity of
a multiplayer action game.
While Crysis has little to no technical problems like bugs or
crashes, the brutal system requirements mean that computers not built
for gaming have no chance, and that really kills a lot of the game's
mass appeal. Still, this game looks fantastic and is plenty of fun to
play, and a dedicated community will surely be be adding new mods and
maps over the coming months and years. I won't tell you to rush out and
buy a new computer just so you can play Crysis, but if you're a
dedicated PC gamer then there are also plenty of recently-released
games that will take advantage of whatever new hardware you can give
them. And when you are ready to show off your shiny new gaming PC to
your buddies, Crysis is the first thing you will want to start up.
Pros
Best looking game made to date
Satisfying combat
Nanosuit powers add depth
Solid multiplayer mode
Cons
Your computer will kill you for trying to run this
You have to finally retire that Radeon 9800
Same goes for the single-core CPU
Hope you have a couple grand for a new machine!