[1/15/2008] Crysis

[Wizard]

Game: Crysis

System: PC - DVD9

 

Requirements:

* Windows XP/Vista

* 2.8 GHz or faster (XP) or 3.2 GHz or faster (Vista) Processor

* 1.0 GB RAM (XP) or 1.5 GB RAM (Vista)

* 256MB Video Card

* 12GB Free Hard Drive space

* DirectX 9.0c compatible Sound Card

 

Reviewer specs:

* Intel® Core2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz

* 2046MB RAM DDR2 400.0MHz

* SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio (2.09.0016)

* nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB 585MHz@900MHz (ForceWare Release 169)

* Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.070227-2300)

* Seagate 300 GB SATA-II 7200 RPM

** Updated game version to 1.1 after installation

Played on Medium (frist play through), High, Hacked High (XP) @ 1024x768 75Hz

 

The spiritual successor to Crytek's previous effort, Far Cry. Crysis pushes the limits of current GPUs and CPUs alike with it's high end graphic capabilities. Months ago, when I first heard about the title, I was stunned at it's very impressive visuals, but brushed it off because the game simply felt like a glorified tech demo. Boy was I wrong.

 

CG or in game? You be the judge.

 

It took me two run through the game to get a good grip around it's story. While cheesy for the most part, it does offer a great experience similar to Activision's Call of Duty series. It's intuitive, easy to get into and as all typical FPS games, a sweet action experience. Complete with it's sandbox nature, it's replayability is great on how you can do each objective very differently on each play through. Sporting four different play difficulties as well. From the very Easy to the barely survivalable Delta Force. Which in Delta Force, makes everything infinately harder. Retardedly harder.

 

Raptor Team. On screen: Prophet and Jester

 

You control Nomad (Lieutenant Jake Dunn), a U.S. Army Delta Force operative sent to an island in the South Pacific with Raptor Team to recover and extract a team of American archaeologists trapped on the island by North Korea People's Army. Equipped with a very expensive suit that Tony Stark would be proud of, you para-drop towards the island, the beginning of a series of unfortuned events begin to happen as you get knocked down and seperated from the rest of the crew. After getting to your senses, you begin your trek on the island to regroup with your seperated comrads. It goes deeper then that, beyond it's simple story, you'll be suddenly thrown into something that makes Prey's story enjoyable (well Prey's story is enjoyable). Aliens, anti-gravity to make you motion sicken and retardedly huge walking crab. Epic battles ahead, I garuntee it.

Damn!

How do you go about this is totally up to you. You can ninja your way through picking off guys with your silenced weaponary, or go Rambo on their ass (Not recommended in Delta Force difficulty). With your suit's Speed, Strength and Cloaking devices will help you, run, choke, punch, throw and ninja your way throught the game. The suit also has built in armor and is rechargable, ala Halo. But you have to choose and decide which power to use during the coarse of the game. As you can only use one at a time, that includes deciding should you keep the armor on? Or use the strength setting. Each setting has it's uses and garunteed you'll be using them all through out the game and experiminting with each result. Such as grabbing a KPA and using him as a shield while shooting other soliders up, or just throwing him off a cliff. You decide how climactic (or-anti-climactic) you should be. Want to throw a barrel to kill everyone? Go for it. Want to stab someone in the face with a bottle, SURE! Possbilities are endless to what you can do with your power ups. The only limitation would be your mind (and maybe the engine, I didn't really give it a go since everything runs so SMOOTHLY).

KPA. Meat shields and potentional projectile!

The A.I. in the game is also impressive. Not on a massive revolutionairy scale of course, but it plays well to your advantage when using your stealth power. They hold no remorse towards you killing their comrads, but also exhibit qualities only found in the Konami's Metal Gear Solid series. They'll be confused, they'll be scared, they'll be cautious and they'll work in groups, also in some cases do something complete random when you aren't around. Weather it's fighting aliens or fighting soldiers, bullets to the head make em dead.

 

Weee! LASERS!

 

Which leads me to weaponary. Your basic assault rifle, AK47, rocket launcher, shotgun, pistolas, submachine gun and 2 flavors of sharpshooting weapons. Sure it doesn't sound fabulous, but the fun comes in with each weapon's customizability. Nearly each weapon is customizable with silencers, a varity of scopes, grenade launcher, tranqulizer dart, optical aiming or flash light. Each weapon is also capable of a melee attack (with the exceptions of the Minigun and Alien Gun I believe). Each addon has it's pros and cons, such as the silencer will kill, well silently, but at the cost of lowering the weapon's overall range, similarly the flash light will help you in dark places, but it risks the chance of exposing you, including when your in cloak mode. While limited, I did find myself mixing and matching addons per weapon enjoyable. Experimiting weather or not to equip certain addons is a challenge for maximum efficency into killing people, preferably en masses.

 

Nothing says 'AWESOME' like a AK47 with a Assault Scope, Grenade Launcher, Targeting Laster and Silencer!

 

In addition to the weapons, you are able to drive vehicles, such as pickup trucks, jeeps and for a few levels, tanks and a VTOL. Sadly the KPA's HIND helicopter and various alien vehicles aren't playable.

BOOM HEADSHOT

 

But after all that nifty stuff, it wouldn't be possible without it's engine. Bluring the lines between CG and in game, it offers a very cinematic experience. The island is lush, vibriant and feels full of life when looked upon. The vegatation is also very expendable and for the most part can be shot up and knocked down

 

As dark as it maybe, it's visually impressive none the less.

 

Character models themselves are very impressive. Detailed down the rinkle on an old man's face. So enjoy these pictures.

 

 

Oops, I guess forgot to mention the hud. In certain levels, the hud will some times freeze up, as in the moisture on the screen will freeze and you'll see ice on it, and moving to a heat source will usually melt it. Which you can enjoy watching as well. Even your scopes will have the same frozen moisture effect! As seen in the screenshot above, even rain effects your hud with the drops hitting your mask. This plus gives an effect of how intuitive it can get.

 

All in all. The game is pretty sweet. It sets a new graphical standard for FPS games and shows that it can go above and beyond the cliche FPS gameplay. Offering very impressive close to/nearto /picture perfect photorealistic graphics, excellent voice acting & sound production and a very intuitive, cinematic storyline feel. While only lasting eight hours, it offers replayability with it's online play and as previously mentioned, open world-do-it-how-you-want-too single player missions, while still keeping it's very linear path.

 

Although problems arise as sometimes the ally A.I. goes funky making you have to restart the level or load a previous save. Probably the most common problem being, not everyone can run the game. You need a pretty beefy machine to run this, espeically at higher settings. I don't mind higher settings, as long as I have 1024x768, I'm set for life, I don't need to go any higher.

 

Additional screens;

 

]Controls: 10 - Solid. Responsive.

Gameplay: 10 - It goes hand in hand with sandbox and customizable guns

Graphics: 10 - Picture perfect, even on a somewhat top tier machine such as mine. Since I hacked my config to play on "Very High" DX9, a couple of frame rate drops, but still enjoyable and very much playable.

Sound: 9 - Excellent soundtrack, voice overs and ambiant sounds. My main complaint is there isn't enough ambiance in the game. Espeically in such a big setting of a tropical island, you'd expect more nature sounds, such as animals and insects. I'm a nut when it comes to sound.

 

Overall Score: 9.75/10

 

Grade: A

 

Final Say: I'm glad I didn't pass this up. Espeically since I hated Far Cry (I liked the engine, I hated the game), Crytek showed off more developer powress in their latest effort and I cannot wait for Crysis 2. My concern for Crysis 2 is that it won't come out in the next few years until DX11 or DX10.1. They left us hanging on a cliffhanger here!

[Agozer]

My current rig will never play this.

[Gryph]

This game is completely awesome in almost every field.

[Devia Eleven]

Wow, great review.

 

One thing that surprised me, in the last picture it looks so real. I was actually grossed out by the women with that piercing on her eye brow.

[Gryph]

That's no piercing. It's a rain drop.

[Smilee]

I really really want to play this on max graphics. Just gotta find a friend that has the rig to play it.

[Gryph]

I really really want to play this on max graphics. Just gotta find a friend that has the rig to play it.

That friend won't have such a rig for a few months at the least. I wonder if the new 9800s will play the game at max. Those are supposedly 2 die shrunk 8800GTXs on one board.

[Ahmad89]

WOW, i gotta say the difference between playing on medium settings and on whatever settings you had them on is a difference. The people look so real in yours compared to when i played it. Nonetheless, a very nice game, i just hated the alien parts.

[Wizard]

Well I forgot to mention. The quality I used for the screen shots was on High and Very High (XP Hack). I don't have any shots when I played on meidum.

[Gryph]

Did the very high setting hack have a bit FPS hit? I never got around to trying it.

[Shibathedog]

That tank with the nuke cannon thing on it is flocking INSANE, the TAC launcher blew my mind and then I found that thing!