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Sunday 13 January, 2008
SUMMARY:
Crytek, the developing company of the Far Cry series, has made its latest foray into the video game design world with Crysis, an innovative first person shooters that has top of the line gaming rigs on their knees. It is set on a modern day island, ala Far Cry, that is inhabited by Koreans and...something else that I have yet to discover. The game has you assume the role of Nomad who is part of a team of elite soldiers that resemble what you would think Navy Seals are like except with more advanced technology.
GAMEPLAY:
For the hour that I played the game I solely explored the single player campaign and let the multiplayer sit for a later date.
One of the first things that I noticed when creating my profile and starting a character was the differences between difficulty levels of which there were four ranging from easy to delta. Instead of doing what most games have classically which is increasing the amount of hitpoints enemies have or the amount of damage they do when the difficulty is upped Crysis had the enemies literally changing. For example on the easier difficulties enemies would speak in English which would make the player aware of what they were doing such as searching for him or throwing a grenade. On the Delta difficulty the Koreans actually speak Korean, making trying to determine what they are doing much more difficult.
Immediately upon character creation I was sent diving into the storyline and game, both figuratively and literally. In order to prevent the normal boredom that comes from watching a cut-scene to learn mission details or reading something on the loading screen Crysis gives you an interactive briefing. While the player is sky diving at the start the details of your mission and thus the goal of the game are explained. Crysis is quick and to the point though and as soon as the briefing is over your chute fails and you are sent plummeting into the ocean.
After crash landing into the ocean you are finally introduced to the most unique aspect of Crysis. The nano-suit, the armor that the team of soldiers wears, is effective in providing a gameplay twist that makes Crysis feel like a completely different kind of shooter(not to mention give the player a god complex). The suit has four modes which are easily activated: armor, speed, strength, and cloak. Each of these settings, only one can be activated at a time, increases that characteristic to a superhuman level. The catch though is that you only have enough power to maintain these modes for a small duration of time before your nano-suit recharges, which happens quickly but the downtime is enough to add a serious strategic element to the game.
GAMEPLAY #2:
During my second session I was able to find more uses for the suit's four modies. First there is armor which has you eating bullets in a firefight and living, although it is the least interesting of the four in my opinion. Speed is more fun, while active if you put your character into sprint mode you accelerate, for a few moments, to the speed of what appears to be a formula 1 race car as terrain blurs past you, making closing distances between enemies or getting behind cover a supernatural experience. Cloak is pretty straight forward, while active you become invisible and you are allowed to move short distances, making you feel like you're playing a ghost when you sneak up behind an unwary enemy to stealthily take them out. However, the strength mode is definitely the one that I have the most fun with. While active you arms pulse a red glow and you are able to do some truly remarkable things and gain some subtle advantages. Immediately noticeable is how high you can jump with it active, press the spacebar with this mode on and watch your character fly twenty feet into the air. Next I noticed that while active strength mode reduced the amount of recoil that I experienced when firing my SCAR, the starting weapon of the game.
In the first hour though the most fun I had was due to two things-the sandbox style game and the suit's strength mode. While making my way around the island I found an outboard boat engine just laying on the ground. I picked it up easily enough with strength mode active and proceeded to run around. Shortly afterward I noticed that I was surrounded by what appeared to be an abandoned village, made up completely of rundown shacks. At this point I realized the serious carnage that could be had with the boat engine I was holding and the hopefully destructible houses around me. I tossed the engine like a fastball at one of the buildings and sure enough its walls came crashing down in a cascade of metal and shattered glass, I had yet to feel such elation in a game from something so simple yet amazingly fun as destroying buildings with boat engines and watching them collapse. There was no goal or apparent reason for doing so other than to watch the demolition of those buildings. I guess this just shows how fun random, pointless destruction is on occasion.
DESIGN:
After my second gaming session something else became even more apparent to me that it was before and it was how the sandbox style gameplay allows for nonlinear solutions to a linear storyline I.E. when I was tasked with destroying two tanks and could either take enemy rocket launchers to destroy them, lure them into a mine field, enter the top hatch in cloak mode and dispatch the soldiers inside, or do any other myriad of things to accomplish my objective.
The storyline is fast paced and to keep you involved your squad leader is giving orders enough so that you stay interested in the plot line without getting annoyed that this guy is talking to you the whole time.
Overall I was, for the most part, at the edge of my seat in anticipation of what was going to happen next and was very excited which led me to feel genuinely surprised when the unexpected happened instead of the general apathy that accompanies less involved games in the same situations. The games only downfall is its insane system requirements. Hardware wise it is a year ahead of its time and this fact extremely limits the number of people who can play it and experience all that it has to offer.
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