Review: Crysis

Crysis is like a good ‘ol fashion action movie.  I feel one of the main things Crysis is missing is Arnold Schwarzenegger and/or Jessie Ventura.  The story is roughly the same as an 80’s flick as well.  You’re part of a super awesome elite team that’s called in to do what others can’t.  You go around one-man-armying an army only to have aliens show up and a girl to save.  Classic good stuff here, you have to love it.  It does a lot of things well and brings back some fond memories of shooters that did things so well back in the day.  Without further dancing around the topic, let’s break it down.

The Good:

Crysis does a lot of things well and it kind of makes me wonder where we going with our more recent shooters in all honesty.  Controls are super tight, but not overly sensitive and to disorient you when you’re trying to frag either human or alien baddies.  It just works.  The weapons are fun… well all of them but one of them are fun.  The shotgun is a ton of fun with the humans and the smaller alien robot things.  It gets less useful later when the bad guys just get all large and uber mech on you.  That’s what the minigun and gauss rifle are for though so there’s not too much to complain about.  Recoil plays a small roll here, but I don’t feel it’s too realistic.  That’s fine with me, I’m in a super suit running around in a jungle punching aliens in the face with my super strength… I can deal with some fiction in my science fiction.

Not really an alien, but you can still grab him and punch him in his face.  Don't get me wrong here, he was trying to kill me first.
Not really an alien, but you can still grab him and punch him in his face. Don’t get me wrong here, he was trying to kill me first.

Switching between guns is less easy at times unless you have the numbers associated with them memorized.  I went through the whole game just frustrating myself with the scroll wheel on my mouse trying to stop or go back and forth as I fumbled around looking for the right gun.  That’s on me though because sometimes you just can’t help but be a dork.

The super suit is the OP factor in Crysis.  They say it allows for multiple ways of play.  You can go stealth or run-n-gun.  Stealth was kind of fun, but over all a lot more work than I feel it should have been.  I think it’s possible to play through most of this game with some form of stealth or another, but as soon as I switched to guns, the game felt better or more like this was how the game was intended to play.  This is coming from a person who loves his stealth games.  However, the guns were fun and I was having a blast right up to the end.  (Pun definitely intended.)

The suits simple menu.  It's basic and to the the point.  It's all you need and nothing more or less.  Kudo's to the guy/gal with this setup.
The suit’s simple menu. It’s basic and to the the point. It’s all you need and nothing more or less. Kudo’s to the guy/gal with this setup.

Scrolling through the suit was extremely easy with the help of holding down the middle mouse button/wheel.  Having played it this way, I would have a hard time believing that playing without a mouse with that option would be as easy/fun.

The attention to detail in the levels is also impressive.  Crysis is a beautiful game and I know why it was one of the best looking games out there at it’s time.  It’s still very awesome looking to this day.  It doesn’t grasp the awesomeness of some of the newer shooters out there, but if you expected it to, you were only fooling yourself.  Playing the game on a current gen computer also has its perks as there really wasn’t any slow down at all up to a certain point.  Even in the midst of fires and fire fights.

All this detail and no lag, I <3 my computer.
All this detail and no lag, I <3 my computer.

The Bad:

Dying.  I’m not complaining about lack of rag-doll, but why you die.  Even on the highest difficulty this game wasn’t too hard.  What killed me in the game is spontaneous enemy awareness and accuracy.  It didn’t happen all the time either, it was all kind of random.  Sometimes an enemy would detect you and you could silence them and none would be the wiser.  Other times his cry would be heard and the world would collapse around you.  If it was consistent one way or the other I think I wouldn’t have minded it so much.  Maybe the randomness is more realistic?

The other thing that would kill me is randomly getting stuck in/on things that would hold you into place or just burn you slowly.  All the while you’re trying to jump out or move and the game just says no.  The worst part is when it would auto-save in the middle of screwing you over.  I can remember that happening to me at least a few times.  One time was just bad luck on my end.  I had just finished clearing up a level while in a vehicle and it auto-saved and then a rocket took out my jeep and killed me.  Every time I loaded the game I would just die.  Once more though, that last time is just bad luck.

In the belly of the beast... or mountain as the case would be here.
In the belly of the beast… or mountain as the case would be here.

The last complaint I will lay down is the crashing problems I had on the last level.  Like I said before, I had no lag.  The last level would just drop frames like they were hot and the game would randomly crash.  Things that wouldn’t normally kill me would have their way with me and I would die over and over again and have the game give the suggestion “If it’s too hard for you, try changing the difficulty.”  How about you just stop crashing so I can beat the last boss will yah?!?!  It seems like I’m not the only one with that problem, but that doesn’t make me accept it any easier.  In the beginning of the game I’m in a lush jungle with trees I can mow over with my gun and bad guys, but when I’m on an aircraft carrier surrounded by water it lags?  What is that?  (Water OP!)

I tried to reduce the settings and that didn’t help either because touching the settings would also crash Crysis.  This brought some frustration because using the shift+tab options in Steam would disable full screen mode.  To turn full screen back on I would have to voluntarily crash my game just to restart it to take up the whole screen.  Why, I don’t know.  I hope the other Crysis games treat me better.

In the end I was able to conquer the lag monster and beat the final two bosses.  I was given an ending worthy of an old school action flick as well.  “What do you mean pull out, let’s go break some more skulls!”  I’m ok with that.  That’s not how it went, but I try not to do spoilers.

Bring a jacket, it's snowing outside.
Bring a jacket, it’s snowing outside.

If you love first person shooters, I would highly recommend picking this up.  If you own this and haven’t finished it yet, finish it.  It’s not that long of a game.  If you give it a few hours a day, you’ll have it done in a week.  With it being as old as it is, you don’t have to worry about the cost per time spent either, which is nice.  If you’re not the greatest at FPS’s, but wouldn’t mind trying one out, plop Crysis on easy and have a go.  I don’t feel you’ll be too disappointed   Unless you’re expecting a deep and twisting plot line, in which case, you’re looking in the wrong place.  Once more, that’s just fine with me and my science fiction.

Love it or hate it, let me know!