"Crysis" is a good game.
I have to say this in advance because it's true. It's a very good game. It's hard to stop playing once you start, but what stands out once you're done are the flaws. The game is not perfect and while the good parts may be mostly subtle, the problems are definitely obvious.
The first major problem, oddly enough, is the graphics. Before its release "Crysis" was anticipated for its cutting edge, photo-realistic imagery. And I'm sure it has that ... if you've paid more than $5,000 for your computer in the past couple months. For the rest of us, we'll have to settle for the graphical settings turned down to a mix of medium and high and a lower resolution, which seems like a waste.
However, even on medium, the graphics, while not quite what we were promised, are much better than many other games. Individual leaves and blades of grass are rendered and lit. From a high enough point you can see most of the island on which the game takes place. Everything from the buildings to the trees are destructible and can be used for cover. Wildlife crawls and flies around, and the sun rises and sets. But in order to see all the flora and fauna on my 2.4 GHz Intel Core2 Quad and my Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS, the texture detail has to be turned down and anti-aliasing turned off. It's disappointing since all the promotional screen shots were apparently taken on the very high setting so that's what one expects it to look like.
The story is good by shooter standards,but there's a reason I didn't mention it before the graphics. A few years ago it would be more than you would expect, but in the age of "Bioshock" it feels like a tacked on excuse to shoot people. You're a Special Forces soldier sent to a remote island to rescue an archeology team from North Koreans who accidentally unleash an alien invasion. It does the job but isn't the genre's new high water mark by any means.
Crysis takes the best parts from several different shooters. The recharging health and energy are very reminiscent of Halo's health and shield, but rather than always providing protection the energy also powers your suit's other abilities. These abilities -- speed, strength, armor and cloak, all of which behave just like they sound -- are all very useful depending on the situation so switching them on the fly becomes crucial. The vehicle system isn't just reminiscent of the Battlefield series, it appears to be lifted directly from it. The handling and physics feel almost identical.
This brings us to the second problem. The game tries to be too many things at once. It mixes too many different styles and doesn't do any of them really well. The scarcity of ammo, the cloak and the Far Cry style ability to hide in the bushes suggest it should be a stealth game. At the same time, the sheer quantity of enemies, the annoyingly short life of the cloak and the focus on very noisy vehicles make it resemble a trigger-happy action shooter.
What this results in is an occasionally frustrating experience as you desperately try to sneak away from a dozen enemies because the stealth aspects of the game make it nearly impossible to take them all on. The action aspects of the game make it nearly impossible to get around them.
The reason they're so hard to avoid is because they use remarkable teamwork. They talk to each other intelligently and call for help, going so far as to flank you and lay down suppression fire. (Ironically, while they interact with each other very well, they often fail to notice getting shot in the back when you're using a silencer unless someone else sees it and tells them. The developers must have spent so much time on communication they forgot self-preservation.)
The other gameplay flaw is that the mild puzzle aspects inserted in the otherwise freeform gameplay, either through poor level design or poor planning, turn into desperate scavenger hunts. For example one assignment is to take out two tanks. (I promise that while this may seem like a spoiler now you'll thank me when you get there.) It's impossible to do so with the gear you have, a fact you only figure out after trying. The secret -- and this took me some time -- is to go across town to find a rocket launcher hidden behind a counter. With two tanks and what seems like half the North Korean army after you. That's really not a lot of fun when you don't even know what you're looking for or even that there is something to look for.
The final problem and probably the most severe is that "Crysis" has a midgame identity crisis. The first part is a rare sandbox shooter. You're given a goal and, aforementioned scavenger hunts aside, many methods of handling it. Not just predetermined routes which you can choose from either, for the most part the destructible environments really let you use your creativity to solve problems.
Then, for reasons I still don't understand, it becomes more of a traditional corridor shooter. Just when you're getting used to the freeform, wide open gameplay, it throws you into tunnels and hallways. Then it switches again to what amounts to a long escort mission before finishing with a rail shooter. Why does it give up on the core aspect of its gameplay as soon as the player gets into it in favor of the least popular of all mission types? I couldn't even begin to guess.
For all its flaws, "Crysis" is a good game. It's not the next "Half-Life" or "Halo." but it's well above average for the genre. It's a jack of all trades complete with the traditional lack of mastery. If you have the computer to handle it, there's no reason that you shouldn't pick it up. You'll be impressed by the visuals and satisfied by the first segment of the gameplay, and the freeform aspects mean you'll want to replay it just to see what you can do differently. But if your processor is anything less than dual-core, you're better off passing until affordable hardware catches up.
Source: Contra Costa Times
