Crysis Review

Crysis: Warhead

A sequel to Crysis has been announced - check out the Crysis: Warhead Review.

Game Synopsis

Earth, 2019: A colossal asteroid crashes down to Earth.

The North Korean Government quickly seals off the island chain, claiming the mysteries of the asteroid for themselves. The United States responds by dispatching an elite team of Delta Force Operators to recon the situation and report back to the Pentagon. Amid rising tensions between the US and North Koreans, the asteroid suddenly bursts open, revealing a massive, 2km high alien ship. The ship generates an immense force sphere, freezing a vast portion of the island and drastically altering the global weather system. The invasion of Earth has begun.

The two rival nations unite to stop the aliens and save mankind. The newly formed alliance fights epic battles against the marauding Aliens. With hope rapidly fading, the player must lead a crack squad through lush tropical jungle, harsh frozen landscapes, and finally into the heart of the alien ship itself for the ultimate Zero G encounter with the aliens.

Crysis offers players a highly immersive FPS experience in which they will have to adapt their tactics, weaponry, armour and gameplay style to survive and defeat the alien invasion.

Crysis Beta Review

From Wombycat -

"Crysis is absolutely awesome. The diverse ability of the individuals interaction with the surrounds is amazing. No longer are you restricted to hiding behind a wall or walking crouched so you are silent. Now you can literally be invisible, super fast, super strong and super durable (not at the same time). You can customize your character to suit your style in a FPS instead of adapting your style to suit the FPS. This is only the game play, the graphics are something else. No DirectX 10 in the multi-player beta but you can run DirectX 9 graphics through DirectX 10 which gives a considerable performance boost."

From NovaPrime -

The physics are prodigious, I still can not get over how unreal shooting through foliage is, something that other games can only dream of. I've seen some people have trouble with the vehicles, I think mostly just driving in dumb places, but combined with the amazingly realistic environment and graphics, driving a pick-up truck around the map feels very real (until you hit the booster and run up a dirt ramp to jump over base defences).

The tanks are also very sweet, not many players have really experienced tanks much but in a recent game I got myself a battle tank, it's roughly a medium conventional tank, a good all-rounder. I was driving back to the tank depo to get some more ammo when down the road I saw a pick-up speeding towards me. I wasn't sure if it was friend or foe, so I lined him up until he was within range of the player icon to appear on him. When the icon didn't show up he must have realised I wasn't friendly and started turning away. I fired, and missed because he changed course, my tank shell hit the ridge beside him and the shockwave blasted his truck up in the air into a spiralling trajectory into the fence on the other side of the road. Now, not only is that fun as hell to watch, but it's just as fun to be the driver when that happens. I almost feel compelled to run my vehicles as fast as I can towards an enemy base just so their rapid fire rocket launchers send me spinning as my screen is filled with a blurred vision of realistic explosions as my HUD is covered with dirt, and soon blood.

 

Of course, this also means that players are going to do some of the obvious things - come running at you with max strength enabled and go for the punch, use the cloak to hide in the bushes with a precision rifle, and my favourite - run at you with a light vehicle. I'm a big fan of the last one, I love people who try it. If I see it coming I just stand there and wait for them to get me nicely lined up. I suppose at this point there are a few things I could do. Cloak, step to the side. Put max speed on and run for it, but my favourite has got to be enable max strength then jump over them just before they run me over. The next part is fun, run up to the baffled driver and smash his vehicle onto it's side with a max-strength punch.

Crysis won't be the best deathmatch game around. I'll leave that to UT3, Crysis will take the place of Battlefield and Quake Wars style play but for the first time do it properly. Quake Wars took Battlefield 2/2142 and duplicated it, just in a better engine. Well Crysis made it's own damn play mode and removed all the flaws from the existing game style. No longer is running across the map to the objective a hassle. Fighting is all over the map, and you have a series of good ways to get to near by objectives quickly, max speed or grab one of the plentiful vehicles at every spawn. Often you wont even want to go far, you can choose where to spawn and what location to attack, so many times you will spawn, grab your gear (either buy each item or select a template you can make), customise it - put a scope, silencer, grenade underslug, etc on your rife and off you go. I'll generally do a quick sprint and jump in the bush, get a feel for where the action is going on then go jump on a roof or something, where I can jump down a sky-light onto my (hopefully) unsuspecting enemy.

Also unlike BF2/ETQW combat doesn't mean insta-dead when the first person shoots. Your suit gives you a variety of different ways to fight, you can use the suits energy to give you armour, when you get low (generally around half a clip from the enemy will deplete your suits energy on armour mode, depending on the weapon) you could make a run for it, jump out of line of suit or hide (cloak, bush, etc). There are plenty of ways of staying alive, if you have the creativity to think of one. Health regenerates when you are out of combat.

Something I haven't heard anyone speak of, probably because it seems so insignificant compared to the rest, is the cool amount of toys you get. I'll also explain that you get "Prestige" by accomplishing objectives and killing people and you always spawn with a minimum amount based on your rank I think. You rank up like ETQW. So, with your prestige you can buy your weapons, add-ons, nades, ammo, etc. You can also buy "equipment" (pfft, "toys"), such as anti-tank mines, directional proximity claymores, armour repair tools, remote detonation explosives, scanners,.. parachutes.. No need to be a specific class to get any, you just buy what you want. Not many people set up traps, but placing a claymore in the right place can be very helpful.

In "power struggle" mode, the map has two special locations you can fight for, I'll start with the tank depo. A good point to fight for, when your in control of it you can build heavy vehicles. From technicals (pickups with guns on em) to infantry combat tanks (one of my favourites) to good ol' fashion heavy tanks. Getting yourself a tank is a good thing, normal weapons cant do squat to em. And no, max-strength cant knock over a tank (else there would be little point to them). Tanks have area damage, but can be repaired simply by pointing a welding torch at them for a little. To counter tanks, you need either a bigger tank, which you are not likely to have, since there is only 1 tank depo (in the beta) or fight manly, set up land mines or buy disposable rocket launchers.  The RL's come with 3 rockets, you can guide them and you cant buy more. They are good against infantry at range, but a costly option. 2 rockets will take out light armour but you need about 4 to get the bigger tanks. The disposable RL's cost half as much as a medium tank.

Next is the research facility, and the whole point to the power struggle mode. Also on the map are a bunch of power locations. When you take control of these they do nothing except charge up the research facility when you are in control of the facility. When the research facility reaches 50% power you can start buying high-tech weapons, such as mini guns, an alien version shard heavy machine gun (like a better minigun) and a really cool freeze gun, which can literately freeze you in spot. I've been frozen by it but haven't figured out how to use it myself. Once the power reaches 100% a cute female voice says "Reactor power at 100 percent".. wait for it.. "weapons of mass destruction are now available". Now how can that not make you smile? Now you can buy tanks with similar guns, a black hole thingy which makes anything in it's path cease to exist or my favourite - the TAC tank. The TAC tank I have already shown you. It's much a heavy tank that, well, shoots nukes. You need either a TAC tank, a handheld TAC launcher or the singularity tank to destroy the enemy base with, once you do that, you win the round.

So even know I'm thinking of cool new ways I can approach things. The other day I realised I could just "jump" out of the US submarine instead of climbing up the ladder, things I'm not used to being able to do. I also realised that on one side of the sub there are boats much like the ones in FarCry, the boats on the other side aren't actually boats, they are hovercraft! Woo!

Download Crysis Trailers

A full selection of videos and trailers are available on the Crysis Videos page.

E3 2007 Gameplay Trailers

In FarCry we fought cloaked enemies, now we get to be the ghost. This video shows the return and revamped spirit of FarCry in Crysis.

• E3 2007 Gameplay Trailer (87.6mb)
• E3 2007 Gameplay Trailer - High Def (288mb)

DirectX 9 vs DirectX 10 Trailers

• Jungle (21.2mb)
• Hunter (16.0mb)

Alien World Trailer

• Crysis Alien World Trailer (45.7mb)

Older

This video really shows off the new elements CryTek have put into Crysis to make the game even more enjoyable, as well as of course, the unreal graphics and physics.

• Crysis Gameplay Video (95.2mb) (NEW!)

These videos just show off the graphics in Crysis, they arn't official trailers.

• 2x Crysis Videos (95.6mb)