Fixing Crysis

Crysis: Warhead fixes every single complaint that I had with the original game while bringing even more to the table.  The game begin's roughly 3 quarters of the way through Crysis' story, Nomad is nowhere to be found and you never even hear Prophet.  Almost straight away you're thrown into the action, sent to clear out beach resorts and save downed pilots.  Of course it's not too long before the icy sphere appears on the island, freezing the uninsulated to the spot and unleashing an army of small Matrix style robots.  This is the point where the original Crysis fell apart, your supersuit became next to useless against the cold, calculating robots and it started to feel like a lot of other shooters.  They fix a lot of this in Warhead by making them a lot smarter but also a lot easier to kill, no longer will you be forced to empty entire clips into single enemies who can spot you around rocks, now the aliens stalk you and react to your movements making a far more interesting, enjoyable experience.

The pacing in Warhead seems a lot more fluid too, you can move from open plan assault on huge, well defended enemy installations to creeping through a mineshaft being stalked by the silent alien killers.  This is a game that actually manages to do both pretty well, there are enough options and variety in the open sections of the game to allow you the freedom to do almost anything you could want while the highly scripted, linear sections of the game stay tense.  One of the most memorable moments in the game is when you're asked to search a frozen aircraft carrier, American and Korean forces are frozen in an eternal, fruitless firefight.  An observant player may notice that some of these icy statues aren't as frozen as the others and are in fact Korean nanosuits, waiting in ambush.

Probably the most unique aspects of Crysis over other shooters are the sheer number of options available to the player at any one time.  Firstly, the belle of the ball, the suit remains largely unchanged from the original Crysis, it allows you to switch instantly to one of 4 different modes ranging from incredible speed to invisibility, it gives the player a desperately needed advantage of the hoards of enemies who, if underestimated, can take you down within a second or two.  Also, each of the dozen or so weapon is customisable, putting a silencer and better scope on your assault rifle can give you a better rifle for infiltrating bases undetected while putting a red dot sight onto your sniper rifle gives you a weapon great for taking down enemies quickly in mid-ranged combat.  Individually these features are pretty unremarkable but the result of using them both effectively is both deadly and satisfying.

You're probably wondering right about now why I havrn't mentioned the Crysis's infamous graphics, the reason is simple.  I have no idea what they look like.  My system currently uses a Geforce 8600 GS which, to be honest isn't exactly a top of the line card.  Under the colossal weight of Crysis's Medium settings (or "mainstream" as Crytek insists on calling it my system) my system can manage 15 frames per second if there's not much happening.  During the 8 hours I took to complete Warhead (yea, it's pretty short) the framerate and lowish quality graphics never bothered me as I found myself enjoying the gameplay so much.

Crysis: Warhead may be a much shorter game than the original Crysis so the length to cost ratio is much lower (both are £16.99 on Steam UK right now) but the quality is so much higher that I feel the compromise is well worth it.  If you're willing to take a chance and risk paying for the world nicest slideshow then you can do much better than Crysis: Warhead.

[If for any reason you didn't like this review, please drop me a PM, I have next to no idea what I'm doing I just felt compelled to write about a game I enjoyed.  If you criticise I will welcome it, but be gentle, it's my first time]