Crysis (PC)

Developer:

Crytek

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Release Date:

2007

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Systems:

PC, PS3, Xbox 360

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting around to the notorious Crysis!

I thought about buying the game a while back, but I was put off by its pain-in-the-ass DRM and I just didn't think about it again until now. These days though it's a non-issue, with the DRM-free GOG release and the Steam version getting patched. Also, there's that Remastered edition... that I won't be playing. I want to play the legit original experience! Though just getting it to run at all would be nice.

Crysis is infamous for two reasons and the main one is its system requirements. Back in 2007 it was supposed to be the prettiest game ever made, and I can believe that. The catch was that people had to wait until PC hardware had caught up to it before they could put the graphics settings up.

There will be SPOILERS here for a significant amount of the game's story and they start right now. That's because the second thing that the game's infamous for is the twist that the gameplay takes in the second half. I'm usually happy to show off the first hour or so of a game and then quit, but it doesn't seem right for me to write about Crisis and not bitch about the alien levels.

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Step one: put all the graphics settings on full. I love living in the future sometimes. I'm pretty hopeful this will actually work as well!

I've also remapped my controls or tried to anyway. There are a few mysterious keys here like 'Customization menu' and 'Utilities toggle' that I'm not sure about, but I'll figure it all out as I go. I can also switch my suit voice, which is unexpected but a nice touch.

There are four difficulty modes and I'll be playing on Normal, where the Koreans speak English for my benefit.

The game began with a pre-rendered cutscene showing off the game's iconic Nanosuit in action, then I got a bit of a radio message from Dr Helena Rosenthal on the Lingshan Islands talking about how their research team found something buried in the rock that could change the planet. Unfortunately, the North Koreans have invaded and are rounding up civilians.

1 - CONTACT

Now it's August 14th 2020 and I'm sitting in a plane on the way to the islands, along with four other dudes in Nanosuits. I'm Nomad, we're Raptor Team, and we're on a covert mission to locate and evacuate Dr Rosenthal's team of archaeologists.

These graphics were absolutely mind-blowing back in 2007, 16 years lately they're merely pretty good. I like the suits though. Sure they look like someone forgot to put the skin on them, so they're all just muscles, but if you want to give the user extra strength that seems like a smart way to do it!

The team jumped out the back of the plane and a HUD appeared on my screen.

Well that's really helpful: telling me to hold and press [Start Button] to use my night vision when I'm playing with the keyboard. I've gotten spoiled by all the games that switch the on-screen controls depending on what I pressed last, instead of assuming that because there's a controller plugged in I must want to use it. My controller's plugged in because why would I ever unplug it?

Anyway, a thing happens while they're parachuting down and Nomad plummets down without a parachute. It's fine, he hits the water and the super suit breaks his fall, though it does need to do a bit of a reboot afterwards.

Damn, now I'm thinking I should've put the resolution down lower, to give you a fighting chance to read anything. You can at least tell that I'm able to bring up a list of objectives along with a strategic map of the level. Maps stopped being a standard feature in first-person shooters around the mid-90s, so this is a rare blessing and I will treasure it.

Alright, I've ticked 'Get to the beach' off my to-do list, now I need to 'Rendezvous with Jester'. He's one of my teammates. There's also Aztec, Psycho and Prophet.

This is basically the tutorial, so Prophet called up on the suit's radio to remind me to put my silencer on. Fortunately, it didn't take me long to figure out what button I'd mapped gun customisation to.

I can click each of these four options to toggle between my choices, so I decided to switch 'silencer' on and leave the flashlight off. I mean there's no point making my gun harder to hear if I also make it easier to see.

Oh, I reached a checkpoint by the way, so that's cool. I'll never have to fall out of that plane again. The game also has quicksaves, which is very kind of it. That's a feature that Far Cry did not have on launch, which was notable because quicksaves were just expected in PC games at the time, and these are very much PC games.

 

I was supposed to be creeping up on the enemy, but I went and messed that up. That's fine though as now I can show off the little bit of a damage indicator circle that comes up to indicate I'm taking damage. If the screen juddering wasn't enough of a clue.

If this was Far Cry I'd have to go look for a health kit, but Nomad has a super suit with regenerating armour, so I didn't lose any health. Also, my health regenerates as well now. I just need to hide for a moment and then I'm back in the fight. I'm actually fine with having to collect health kits, but this is good as well, I can live with this.

Alright, I've successfully rendezvoused with Jester. But now he's standing up on top of a cliff with his 'strength mode' activated and I can't climb, so I'll have to activate my own strength to super-jump up there before I can continue. It's a fairly innocuous tutorial.

This power wheel is a bit awkward though. I have four suit modes and switching between them is as simple as bringing up the wheel, then hitting a direction. Left for armour, right for strength etc. The trouble is that there's no comfortable alternative to using the wheel. There are suit shortcuts that let you double-tap down for armour or jump for strength, but I'd rather just have one button for each. 

Anyway, there have been sounds of gunfire and Aztec has been screaming, so we're in a bit of a hurry here.

Well Aztec died screaming. That's not great, seeing as he had the same super suit we're all wearing and it didn't save him. This is definitely a Predator situation, where a team of the biggest special forces badasses learn that they're actually in a horror movie.

Prophet presses a button and incinerates Aztec's suit remotely. Which is pretty horrifying as well. Good thing he pressed the right button and didn't kill one of us by mistake.

Two things that are worth pointing out about this cutscene: first, it's skippable, second, it didn't break from the first-person view. I got to see Jack Carver all the time in Far Cry, but this time I'm seeing everything from Nomad's eyes. The guy still talks to people though, he's not a Gordon Freeman.

Hey the sun's coming up! This reminds me of when you come out of the old World War II bunker at the star of Far Cry and see the island stretching out ahead of you, covered in a ridiculous amount of rendered vegetation. Only this time I've got a cloak mode to make me invisible and I had the sense to turn it on before scoping out the area to find this jamming station I've been told to shut down.

Cloak mode doesn't use up much energy as long as you're perfectly still. If I sneak around crouched I might make it as far as the buildings down there before it runs out. If I sprint it'll probably disappear faster, and if I fire a weapon it's gone instantly. Then I'd have to wait there for a few seconds in armour mode for my energy to come back. Somewhere out of sight of the boat.

I see you there you little bastard. There's no way I'll hit you from here but you'll use that mounted gun and cut through my health in a heartbeat if you get the chance.

These binoculars are really handy as they automatically mark enemies. Trouble is, like Far Cry they only mark them on the minimap radar. Later Far Cry games put an icon above marked enemies' heads, which really helps.

Anyway, the boat's going now and I can see three enemies roaming around, so I'm going to sneak down behind one of them, uncloak, get a silenced headshot, and then cloak again to go after the next one. As long as no one screams I think I'll get away with it.

 

Not much going on in this picture, I just wanted to show off the inside of one of the buildings. The lighting isn't all that impressive, but it seems like there's a bit of ambient occlusion going on around objects to put a bit of shadow around them.

Well, the good news is that I shut down the GPS jamming device and completed my secondary objective. The other good news is that I made a bit of a noise and they brought in reinforcements. This works out for me because they brought me a truck.

Man, I wish I could find some grenades though. I want to show off the destruction physics. Hang on, there was an explosive barrel out on the pier.

I used two barrels just to be safe. Look at those pieces fly! And yeah it did make the trees next to it wobble a bit, it's awesome.

It's definitely getting brighter out now. I need to stop screwing around and get on with my mission already. Except, I actually don't, as there's no time limit and I can do whatever I bloody want. Now where did they leave that truck?

Damn, I can cut through trees with this turret. You could mess up the vegetation in the Far Cry games as well for a bit, until it quietly disappeared when the developer's priorities changed. It disappeared from Crysis Remastered as well I've heard, which is a shame.

I can switch between first person and third person, but only inside vehicles. Nomad does have visible legs and a very nice shadow however.

Sorry guys, I'm not doing stealth right now. I've got a mounted gun with infinite ammo and I can aim it with my brain while I'm driving, so you're all going to die. B'wahaha! The turret does have a heat mechanic though so I do have to take breaks to let it cool down a bit.

Oh shit, I think one of them just threw a grenade on my roof.

The good news is that they had another jeep for me to steal, the bad news is that soon blew up as well. I couldn't even get a good shot of the explosion as it was too blurry. It looked fantastic in action though.

Speaking of things that look fantastic, man this is some picturesque scenery. It's definitely more fun playing around in the woods when I'm the one hidden in the grass and the enemies are the ones plainly visible in the open. Especially as I have to pick up their weapons manually to get the ammo. I gotta go looking for enemy guns in the grass and the bushes, and in this game that's an actual challenge.

Far Cry (PC)

Here's the original Far Cry from 2004 for comparison. You might take a look at that tropical setting, the coloured bars on the right, and the minimap with its enemy awareness meters on it, and assume that they're similar games. Well... yes, they are actually. They're similar even down to the voice in my ear giving me advice and the enemy boat patrolling up and down the coast, harassing me.

I could've shown a shot of Far Cry 3 as well, seeing as that's very sunny and tropical too. But it also has herbs to grab and animals to hunt, which is something neither of Crytek's games have. There's no crafting gear, containers full of junk or upgrades to be found in Crysis's sandbox. No towers to climb either.

Hey, this seems like a good time to drag out that old 'Far Cry Family Tree' image I made for my Far Cry article.

Here's where Crysis fits in the grand scheme of things. The green line is the Ubisoft Far Cry series and the red line shows the Crytek Crysis series.

I was wondering if Crytek had switched to making Crysis games because Ubisoft owned the rights to Far Cry, so I did a little research and it turns out that it's the other way around. Crytek felt that Far Cry was too restrictive and wanted to make a new IP with EA as their publisher, so they sold the Far Cry IP to Ubisoft because money is good.

In hindsight, Crytek could've probably gotten away with calling this Far Cry 2 and keeping their IP, it's not like the game's any weirder than Blood Dragon. But I like the Ubisoft Far Cry sequels so I'm glad things worked out the way they did.

Alright, there's another bit of an outpost down the road, so I'm going to go in and swipe all the ammo I can. There's not much else to grab really, now that they've taken out Far Cry 1's health kits and armour.

Oh crap. This is not what I expected to see on the other side of the bush.

Okay, I don't know how, but none of them heard me creeping out of the foliage and my cloak works even at this range, so I still have the element of surprise. I also have one of their rifles and 199 bullets, so screw it, I'm going to decloak and just spray into them point blank.

And I am... alive! It worked, the poor suckers were too surprised to even get a shot off. I didn't really have time to aim for the head, but they're not bullet sponges so a few bullets on target got the job done.

Trouble is that there are other enemies around and I'm barely any tougher than they are, so if they catch me not paying attention they will punish me for it. Don't think for a second that armour mode turns you into RoboCop, they'll strip that armour away in a second.

I did survive though! And I managed to get enough shots on target despite all of this incoming fire. You're really not encouraged to run into enemy bullets; they'll mess with your vision and your aim, and they're also hazardous to your health.

Okay, what the hell, there are no grenades here either? There are some more explosive barrels though...

That was just beautiful to watch. Man, why did it take me this long to buy this game? Oh right, bullshit DRM.

Well, I won't be driving that car anywhere anymore. Fortunately the enemies left a boat parked right behind me.

This is what I like: sailing around the outside of the island, getting a nice view of the level. It reminds me of the TV series Lost. The game came out in 2007, so I think that would've been between seasons 3 and 4 at this point. That was a good series, I don't care what anyone else says.

Well, it doesn't seem like anyone's around to attack me in the water right now, so this turning out to be a nice uneventful voyage. But I've reached my second secondary objective, so I'm going to have to cut my trip short here. It's time for me to sneak into another outpost and do a thing.

I have a little trouble parking when it comes to boats. I tend to stop too late and let them drift right up onto the land, but that's fine as I don't think I'll be needing this one again.

There are some displacement-mapped stones for you there. Look at all the geometry!

I hope no one can see me under this walkway as I'm going to have to decloak and let my energy recharge for a second. I haven't quite figured out the rules for stealth yet; there's no indicator to let me know I'm out of sight. Only one that's telling me that enemies are currently 50% aware of my presence. I could really use that enemy awareness meter from the Far Cry sequels and Phantom Pain that starts filling up when someone gets a glimpse of you.

I peeked out, decloaked, got a headshot, crept back, and repeated until everyone I could see was dead. So that worked out. These enemies are carrying shotguns though, so now I've got a difficult decision to make: do I drop the FY71 rifle I acquired or my original SCAR rifle to pick one up? Bloody two-weapon limits. Well, three-weapon as I can have a pistol too. Far Cry was stingy about what I could carry as well, so this is all as expected.

Screw it, I'm keeping both of my rifles. I don't care that there's no ammo for the SCAR anywhere on this island, it's my rifle and I'm not about to throw it away.

Another secondary objective is done! I don't even know if I have to do these, or if I can just walk right by. They're certainly not getting me any XP or anything like that.

You know what I did get though? Grenades! The game's got a dedicated throw grenade button so I'm going to be having some fun with them. Also if you throw them through the foliage they'll push the leaves aside as they sail through, which is an effect almost as impressive as the bang that happens when they go off.

Okay, I'm done here. Time to go follow the green quest marker and find out where that takes me.

See what I mean about parking boats. They're tricky.

I met up with the rest of my squad up in the snowy hills just off the beach and now Psycho's bitching about missing out on some crucial information. Something dropped the archaeologists' research vessel on a hill and then froze it, and that wasn't in the mission briefing.

But he's also found a map with an area on it circled, so we're presuming that's the excavation site where Dr Rosenthal and the others made their discovery.

Just then an alien smashes through the boat and grabs Jester! So the game's not keeping the aliens a secret then. Also their freezing technology was hinted at in the title of the game. Crysis... cryos is the Greek for 'cold'. Okay, maybe that's a bit of a stretch.

That's the first level finished though. The next section of the game is its own area, so despite appearances, this is not an open-world game. It's just got huge-ass open levels like Far Cry.

2 - RECOVERY

Well Jester didn't survive, so now it's just Prophet, Psycho and Nomad... and Prophet and Psycho are busy, so it's up to me to get down to that village and rescue one of Dr. Rosenthal's crew who's being held hostage by the KPA.

First though, I'm going to do a bit of recon with my binoculars and see what I'm up against.

Lots and lots of machine gun nests. I can't see the other sides of the village from here, but charging in from the west is probably going to end badly for me, and that's a lot of open ground to try to cover in cloak mode.

So I can either turn left and head north to the beach or I can turn right and go to the hills to the south. The hills will definitely give me more cover, lots of foliage over there, but... I wanna go to the beach.

I took two steps forward and fell off a cliff I didn't see. So things are going well so far. Let's see how much worse they can get.

Some might argue that using a rocket launcher while sneaking into a village is unwise because the gun nests will start shooting at you. I'd argue that the gun nests will be harmless if you blow them all up with a rocket launcher. Sadly this thing only came with three rockets.

Okay, new approach, I'm going to make a run for the wall, where the machine guns presumably can't see me. Then I'll just cloak and sneak behind them, easy!

The plan went well until I just exploded for no reason.

Well, it seems that I've wandered into the mysterious instant death zone, as whenever I take a few steps I explode. You might be thinking 'You're in a minefield you idiot,' and yeah that is a possibility, but I'm used to video game mines being very slightly visible if you look carefully, and I can't see anything.

Wait, is that a claymore on the right? I could detonate it from here and run through the gap!

Okay, it turns out that I am well within the lethal range of the mine right now, so I will not be doing that. I'll be loading my last save, very carefully moving back and then shooting the mines from a distance. While also trying not to be shot by those two guns over there. These KPA guys really don't like visitors.

Alright, I have made it into the village and now I'm waiting in this room for the enemies to line up at the door and get shot. Or explode, I've got some grenades with me.

The trouble is that they're not. The enemies may be tenacious and unforgiving once they're aware of you, but they're also too smart to do something so blatantly suicidal. Also, a few of them have figured out that they can shoot me through the other windows at the back.

Fine, I'll go out there and get into fun and exciting firefights, whatever.

Hey look who showed up once I'd finished clearing out all the KPA and found the hostage all by myself. It's my buddy Psycho and he's doing a lot more of the talking in this cutscene than Nomad is.

We've located one of the archaeologists but she tells us that the others are still at the excavation site. They found evidence of a dead civilisation, and judging by the earthquakes whatever the Koreans are doing is waking something of theirs up. You think that's bad, now I have to escort this bloody hostage out.

Fortunately Psycho's volunteered to deal with the hostage while I clear out the tanks. On foot. Honestly, I'd much rather fight multiple tanks than escort someone through a level. I really hate it when I have to worry about someone else's health bar.

I'm starting to realise now why I came across a room full of rocket launchers while looking for the hostage. Weird how they come with three shots and you can't store ammo separately.

The rocket launcher takes up its own slot in the inventory so I got to keep my two rifles, but there's also a sniper rifle here so now I have to make a difficult choice. Do I continue to drag my own personal SCAR rifle along with me or do I abandon it so that I can snipe people instantly from hundreds of metres away?

The answer is yes, yes I do throw it away for a sniper rifle.

Anyway, I blew up the tanks, jumped into a truck, drove up to a waterfall and got out.

Oh crap, I honestly didn't expect to run into enemies. I thought this was a nice scenic interlude between shooting zones! The only awareness indicator I get is that tiny red meter on the bottom left so I didn't realise I'd been spotted until it was too late. It's fine, restarts are lightning fast.

On my second attempt, I relocated my ass into the bushes and used the cloak to move between hiding spots. I could just let them walk by, there's no need to escalate this to violence and risk getting the attention of other patrols. But they shot me and I don't like that, so I'm going to make this personal and do a bit of the old predator stealth.

Also, I've switched to full auto fire now. Taking my time and getting headshots was nice, but this is a less accurate gun and while I'm standing there failing to hit them, they're taking aim at me. I mean I am hitting them, the game plays a 'thud' sound to let me know that my bullets are on target, it's just that they're not hitting the bit above their neck that kills them instantly. I shot one of their hats off once though, which was cool. Very GoldenEye.

I don't think I've mentioned yet that you can grab enemies by the throat to use as human shields.

There's no one else left though so I guess I'll just launch this guy into the sun. That'll teach him an important lesson about ruining someone's walk through the woods.

I met up with Prophet at the end of the level and we headed inside a cave. Oh, are we doing a cave level next? All the levels have been outdoors so far.

3 - RELIC

Nope, this wasn't a cave level. Also, Prophet got swiped by an alien so now I'm taking orders from a guy called Strickland instead.

I found Dr Rosenthal, things went badly. He's frozen now and I'm in a graveyard fighting super soldiers with their own Nanosuits. It's also pitch black dark all of a sudden. How long has Nomad been awake?

Fighting regular soldiers is one thing, but fighting enemies who have my own abilities is scary. Or at least it was until I realised that my armour only protects me from a couple of seconds of machine gun fire. I just put the pressure on them and they went down without much trouble.

4 - ASSAULT

Damn, there's a full-on assault going on in level 4! There are a lots of blue triangles on the map, showing my allies. They'll just be holding back for a while until I've dealt with the AA Guns on my own.

I can't hurt allies as my gun won't fire and an X appears over the crosshair. This is fantastic for me, as I've got a real problem with telling friends and foes apart in these kinds of games and I've got little tolerance left for "Friendly fire will not be tolerated" messages. They make me rage.

Alright, the AA guns are both near the water, so I can just sail my boat over, plant my C4, and sort them out. Easy.

I've been seeing a few helicopters around, but they're not a huge concern. They take two rocket hits however, and I can only carry three shots per rocket launcher, so every time I blow one up I have to go off to restock. Fortunately, there are often rooms just piled high with weapons and ammo. The game's like Half-Life 2 in how there are always rockets around when a helicopter or tank is about to make an appearance. I haven't been hurting for ammo.

Man, I'm loving this level. It just keeps going. Now I'm at the docks clearing out the enemies around this cruiser. I can go anywhere here by the way, I've even been up on top of that crane on the right. I tried to make a running jump to the boat, but I couldn't decide whether to use my speed or my strength power, and whatever I ended up using wasn't enough to get me over the gap. I ended up super-jumping onto the deck from the dock instead.

Anyway, now that the AA guns are out I can paint the cruiser with my binoculars so Strickland can send in the aircraft to blow it up. Did I mention that I love this level? Strickland was very impressed as well; gave me a lot of positive feedback.

5 - ONSLAUGHT

Now the game has me driving a tank I guess!

The best part about this level is that if you leave the tank the game doesn't care. You can get it blown up, go find an enemy tank to climb in, or do without it entirely. Man, where are all the frustrations? Why is this game giving me nothing to complain about?

I mean it's not perfect, but this is definitely my kind of gameplay. Though I didn't like the bit where I got sniped in two hits and the game gave me a tip saying "You can alter the difficulty level from the options menu". C'mon, just because I forgot to switch back to armour mode doesn't mean I need the training wheels put on!

6 - AWAKENING

Okay, that's a bit of a concern. I don't like how that giant mountain is collapsing and revealing alien technology underneath. The developers have done a good job of making it feel like this is somewhere you don't want to be standing right now, with the way the ground's shaking and the wind is blowing. I gotta keep going forward and shooting people though. We're still in onslaught mode, the war hasn't been postponed due to bad weather.

With a title like 'Awakening' I was worried I'd be fighting the aliens here, but nope, regular dudes. In fact, it's a pretty good level. Enemies have started carrying miniguns, but so have I so it's all good. Despite my weapon limits, I'm putting together a pretty good arsenal.

SOON

This son of a bitch took all my weapons away! Man, I hope I didn't lose all my gun attachments as well, I'm sure I was close to a full set.

General Kyong has clearly studied the Megalomaniac's Guide to Being a Stock Villain, as he's going through the whole checklist, starting with keeping his nemesis alive so that he can monologue to him. Though he doesn't hesitate to kill his subordinate for trying to talk him out of doing something immensely dangerous and stupid. That's Dr. Helena Rosenthal back there by the way, she's the daughter of the other Dr. Rosenthal that died. I've come to the dig site to rescue her!

Anyway, some stuff happened and I had to fight General Kyong one on one. My first actual boss fight! It was pretty straightforward. I ran around, grabbed some guns and ammo, and then shot him until he died. He's just a dude in a Nanosuit with some extra armour on top so he didn't last too long.

7 - CORE

A daring VTOL pilot was able to save Helena but I'm going to have to find my own way out of the dig site. I guess I finally got my cave level.

The gravity shut off, leaving me floating around using the Nanosuit's thrusters. I don't know why the suit has thrusters, but they're being very handy right now as I slowly navigate these creepy alien tunnels. Things are going a bit Prey (2006) or Duke Nukem Forever. Actually, I know what this reminds me of: the USS Enterprise travelling through V'Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It's similarly slow. I'm not really enjoying this, to be honest.

Well look who finally turned up, and he's doing the Predator thing with his mouth to look tough. Far Cry is infamous for introducing mutants halfway through and ruining the gameplay, and now Crytek's gone and done the same again! Though actually, this is more like two-thirds of the way through.

So I'm still floating through alien tunnels, except now I have to fight a few of these guys every now and then. I've been just been grabbing them as they fly by and then throwing them into walls. There are no ammo caches inside the alien lair so I need to conserve my shotgun rounds.

Oh man, can I please be done with the floaty alien cave zone now? I just keep floating through different chambers, shooting the occasional giant fuse thing in the hopes that'll get me close to the exit.

I think I'm trapped here now though. I've reached the point where it wants me to do something and I don't know what that is. Shoot something? Find a hidden exit? Survive for 5 minutes? I'm not going to check a walkthrough, I'm sure I won't need it, but there'll be no joy in leaving this place, only relief.

When I read that people didn't like the alien levels I wasn't expecting anything like this.

8 - PARADISE LOST

I wasn't expecting to have to escort Prophet between burning wrecks to stop his suit from freezing either.

Hey Prophet's back for some reason and now he's continually whining about being cold. I don't know if he can actually get killed by any of these flying aliens that keep swooping around, but he can certainly get killed by me losing my patience and running ahead because that keeps happening. Quicksaves take some of the sting out of it, thankfully.

Adding aliens into the mix hasn't helped the game's lack of enemy variety one bit as they're all that I'm fighting now. The few humans in the ice zone have all been frozen and are now just statues for me to grab guns from. But hey I got my SCAR rifle back at least.

9 - EXODUS

Well I just finished one turret sequence, with Prophet driving the car, and now I'm doing it again, defendng a crash site with this AA gun.

I was all set to praise the game by listing all the annoying things it doesn't do, escort missions, turret sequences, 'defend the X against several waves' levels etc. but it turns out that it was just saving them until the end. At least these levels are shorter than the good ones. Plus it's not that bad. In fact, it'd be fine if I thought there was anything better coming up to look forward to.

10 - ASCENSION

Man, is it getting dark again? How many hours has Nomad been awake now?

You know a situation's getting bad when the super soldier ends up flying one of the evacuation VTOLs. Not really my area of expertise. In fact, the first few attempts I ended up flying into a tornado and getting stuck, which looked kind of ridiculous and really spoiled the 'action movie climax' feel they were going for.

I'm not really loving this VTOL level either to be honest, though it's fine. It's alright. I definitely appreciate that it has slowly regenerating health. I'm not going to hit a checkpoint at low health and get stuck one hit away from blowing up.

11 - RECKONING

And I haven't played the final level yet, because I need to get this written up and I'm in a hurry. Sorry. Maybe I'll edit another screenshot in later when I'm less rushed.

I'm currently seven and a half hours into the game. Six of those hours were the good bit.



CONCLUSION

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It's weird that the world ended up with two Far Cry 2s, but I'm not complaining.

Crysis isn't exactly like Far Cry, however. For one thing, you've got a Nanosuit on, that's a pretty big difference, even if it's a bit awkward to switch modes so I often left it set to 'armour'. Also, the cutscenes are in first-person view.

Honestly though, the two games are more similar than they are different, with you playing as a one-man army on a tropical island traversing semi-open levels to carry out the instructions given by a voice on the radio. There's more to the island than it seems, leading to a mid-game enemy switch that no one liked. Plus the jeeps are back, the enemy boats spraying you with machine gun fire from the ocean are still a pain in the ass, you still locate enemies with the binoculars, and you still hide in the bushes.

And like Far Cry, the game was sold on its incredible graphics technology. The visuals were so ahead of their time that they didn't actually look this impressive back in 2007. Unfortunately, they don't look so impressive in 2023 either, not compared to games like Far Cry 6. But it's set on a beautiful island paradise, so even if it's not cutting edge anymore, it's still pretty. In fact, it's downright picturesque a lot of the time and that Nanosuit design is iconic.

Crysis also shows off some clever physics technology, with buildings getting obliterated by explosions and foliage getting shredded by machine gun fire. I was fascinated by the way leaves were pushed aside by thrown objects. This kind of tech hasn't been a priority for developers lately, with it being absent from the latest Far Cry games and even disappearing from Crysis Remastered, so it's one way that the game shines even now.

It also shines in its gameplay I reckon. I'm sure some people would consider the AI dated, but the enemies were smart enough to give me trouble. Just enough trouble though, so that I only had myself to blame for things going badly. They may have impressive aim and range, but they play fair. In fact, I'd say the game is actually a lot easier than Far Cry on Normal difficulty, thanks to the regenerating health and quicksaves. Death comes fast, but that just encourages you to play with your toys and use the level to your advantage. I mean that's the only reason the levels are so open really, to give you choices. There's no point to exploration, no loot to collect, no suit upgrades to equip, no secrets to find.

In some ways, it offers more freedom than actual open-world games as I never once got warned that I was straying outside the mission area. The whole level is the mission area. It certainly gives you more freedom than the Call of Dutys and Battlefields that treat the player like they're just another scripted element and just stop if you do anything unexpected like turn left instead of right during an exciting escape sequence. Crysis is the opposite of that.

One flaw the game has is that it can get a bit repetitive as it doesn't have a whole lot of variety in weapons or enemy types. And it's all about fighting, there's never anything else to think about. I certainly wasn't thinking much about the plot or characters, but that's fine. The story gives context and motivation to the combat, so it does its job. Plus cutscenes are skippable!

But the game's biggest flaw is the turn it takes two-thirds of the way through to become about floating through tunnels, escort missions, turret sequences etc. There are no forced stealth sequences though... no stealth at all in fact, as that entire aspect of the game stops being a thing! You just shoot the floating squid monsters. On the plus side, I was expecting it to come halfway through the game, so I got a lot more of the good gameplay than I thought I would.

In fact, I'm far from disappointed with what I got out of Crysis. Six hours of quality combat with minimal frustrations. A story-driven RPG like Mass Effect can be ruined by a bad ending, and it's not ideal here either, but I'm not invested enough in the plot to really care all that much that there are some bad levels at the end. Game's good.

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The last 'next game' clue was a little hard, so I've decided to go easy on you this time.

You're also welcome to leave a comment about Crysis if you feel like it. Tell the world how much you love it, or hate it, or are utterly indifferent toward it.