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Sunday 13 January, 2008
SUMMARY:
In Crysis, you play in the future as a US soldier, Nomad, equipped with a "Nano Muscle Suit" that allows you to have superhuman strength, a cloaking ability, increased speed and enhanced armor. Your primary mission involves rescuing a scientist who is trapped somewhere on an island. She sent out a distress signal so that someone could find her and stop the Koreans from opening an artifact that was discovered underneath Earth.
GAMEPLAY (Session 1):
Right off the bat, the graphics are incredible. I played it on the "High" setting and I'm amazed at how well they look. It does lag in certain areas, but other than that, some of the best graphics I've seen to date. So they start you off by jumping out of an airplane to a island. All you know is that someone is alive and they want to be rescued. Then something attacks you and you fall into the water below. This is (of course) the training level as you can do whatever you want before finding some enemy to kill. The suit has different modes and I enjoyed using those modes, especially the cloaking ability although it doesn't last long.
Nomad isn't the only one who was separated so you have to go find everyone else. The voice-over acting is really well done in this game. It feels real. The chattering, the jokes, it all sounds as if it was really happening in the real world. As the game continued, it was fun sneaking up on someone while cloaked, grabbing them, then beating on them until they died.
I really enjoyed playing Crysis for the hour that I played it. The story is interesting, but it feels familiar like other games that have something hidden underneath Earth's crust. It's really fun just turning on Strength mode and punching everyone to death, but that will get you killed if there are many soldiers around. Modifying the weapon you are using is pretty cool too but you tend to forget about it after a while because all you are really doing is shooting the same looking enemies over and over. The game does give you good training over the first level because it tells you what you could use each mode of the suit for, but throughout the game that's everything your suit can do...nothing else. They're fun to use (like cloaking) but if you don't want to use them, all you have is a FPS and it's just like other titles only with prettier graphics. It's just funny how they always send you to do missions and not any of the other teammates (although they might have some as well. We just might not see it.) Even with some little gripes (it's really just the training level so there isn't much there), it's a fun game.
GAMEPLAY (Session 2):
Continuing where I left off, I'm still in a forest on an island. It all looks pretty much the same except for some houses that you need to enter. This time I have to go rescue another one of my teammates...and complete mission objectives, of course. Mostly I was using the cloak to get past any enemies that I saw. But the AI isn't dumb. Even though you're cloaked, they can still hear you so if you're not careful, they'll start shooting randomly in your direction. It wasn't any different than the last time I played. The only difference was that I killed more enemies this time around...and I died once for being a bit careless...anyway, it was repetitive, but fun.
Now, I think that the main characters are really well done. The voice acting is great and the graphics make them look lifelike. Right from the beginning you can see that every character has a history together. They are friends and they've been through a lot together, probably training or other missions. There are only four other people who go along with you to the mission, so you feel important. It does move the story along, but only because YOU have to do most of the missions. Pretty much every game does that because you are the main character so I don't think anyone is bothered by it...I'm not really.
DESIGN:
Crysis is not the best game out there, but it is really good. The modes on the suit add some changes to the gameplay, which makes it fun because with Strength, you can punch down buildings and kill anyone who is inside (always fun!), or become faster (kind of fun, but never really use it...). If you're like me you might cloak yourself a lot to sneak up on enemies. It's fun to through them at a wall.
The levels of Crysis are not very different. You're in a forest for most of the game up until the alien species gets release (toward the end of the game). Don't get me wrong, the forest looks really, really good. Some nice foliage, trees, vehicles, houses, and the water looks incredible. All of this is really well done (even inside the alien territory, although it does look the same and I got confused a couple of times). This is one of the downsides of Crysis. I know that it IS set on an island and there is so much you can do with forests so I can see why they couldn't do so much.
One of the things I enjoyed about Crysis were the cutscenes. The characters looked really well. DirectX 10 was suppose to be an improvement in gaming and although still new, Crysis looks really good while running in DX10. They have a DX9 version as well, but I haven't tried it. The textures on the faces and the suit look incredible. The details give the characters a realistic feel to them. Crysis is pretty much a system killer because you need a really good PC to play it on the high setting. My computer lagged somewhat during the cutscenes, but only when there was snow. Other than that they were smooth and the emotions on the characters' faces were in sync with the voice acting. Really well done cutscenes in my opinion.
The game is really good. I would recommend it to a friend and I'm pretty sure that playing online gives more replayability to the game. I haven't tried it online though. Overall, really good game.
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