Crysis

Crysis. That name should say so much.... anxiety, disappointment, fascination, disgust, and so on and so forth. You all know it, and if you don't, suffice to say it is one of the most controversial games of the year 2007 and 2008. And at the same time, THE most graphically advanced game ever made. A review to it is pretty much beating a dead horse, since i don't think there's a magazine on the planet which hasn't reviewed this thing. But at the same time, not reviewing it would be like saying Doom never existed. So here's my review to probably the most anticipated game of 2007.
I said before that i got a brand new pc, and it didn't let me down when i tried to run crysis on it: basically, 64bit, vista, directx10, all settings to very high, 30 fps. Playing the game like this got me a pretty nice experience with the game, so apart for a few words at the beginning, i'll try to review this thing without saying a single word about the graphics. Now, to get them out of the way:
This game is absolutely STUNNING, the graphics often causing you to stop and just STARE at the thing for like 2 minutes before moving on. They really make you forget about the game entirely and just see it like the closest thing to a CG movie you've ever seen. I swear, not even Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (cg movie if you never seen it) looked THIS good. Incredible. Wow.

AHEM. Now that that's out of the way, let's get on with the real review. The story is pretty thin and nothing spectacular, predictable, but not so shallow. Not shallow because it at least manages to explain why you end up being the single person who kills 2394287423458 korean troops single-handedly (something that few FPS games actually care to explain, it's usually because you rock so much or something like that). Basically, there's a new thing in town, and it's called the nano-suit. This prototype nanotech exoskeleton is the one you and your squad will wear during an operation in one of the (unknown) islands in the... i forgot what ocean it was. The operation involves saving some researchers from the mean korean army guys who now have control of that island. But of course, something goes wrong. Your squad starts to get horribly butchered as your team-mates get killed and/or kidnapped by some huge weird alien ship things, and in the end there's only you and your fellow scottish nanosuit-wearing bloke who happens to have better luck than the others and not get himself killed, or disappear. Meanwhile, you fight half of the korean armada. Fun!
Of course, that's only until about halfway through the game, when you accidentally stumble upon an alien spaceship (or whatever it was, seemed more like a base to me) buried deep within the mountain, which was awakened by the idiot archeologists and the koreans who were poking their noses where they shouldn't have. From this point on, bye-bye koreans, hello aliens. The spaceship itself is a brief encounter (about one level), you get thrown out of it pretty fast, then the fun begins. Basically, that's where the game turns from tactical, headshot-filled shooter to "give'em all you got and then some" as you can't possibly headshot the aliens' ships.
But i'm getting ahead of myself. Your suit is a flexible thing, having several "modes" you can switch between (sharing its regenerative energy between each of them) such as having your suit's energy act as armor, battery for a cloaking device (i.e. you can turn invisible, predator-like), increased strength or speed. This basically gives you several options to go through the game with, as the increased strength function makes it easy to kill enemies in melee and jump about 3 times as high, the cloak function makes getting near enemies or getting to better positions easier, and if it's too hard for you, you can always switch to speed and run through them. Switching to another mode is instant and doesn't cost anything, but uses the same energy, so your cloak will be pretty short if you're low. Normally, energy recharges pretty fast (unless it's draining), and the suit also recharges your health, meaning the game has no ways to restore hp other than the natural way. Weapons are also customisable, supporting many enhancements such as a grenade launcher or various types of scopes. You can also carry only 2 weapons besides the pistol, the rocket launcher and grenades (and another special weapon in the last level). Those weapons are conventional, such as assault rifles, shotguns, SMGs, a minigun, and there's an alien weapon in the later levels with unlimited ammo. What i liked about this game was the diverse ways you can finish it: for instance, i can skip about half of the first level by swimming (although that doesn't really happen later on) and just killing the guys in the boats (which may also be harder than killing the enemies, since the boats have miniguns attached). You can enter any vehicle and drive it, there's even a tank level later on which i really hated (i mean, i'm supposed to kill 10 tanks with one which is exactly as good as they are). Most buildings are destroyable, the physics in the game behaving very life-like (especially if you're running with the settings on very high), making you want to throw another grenade inside a house just to see how it blows up again. You have a map and a radar (you can use the binoculars to "tag" the enemies so they appear on it), the primary objectives being a green dot, secondary are yellow dots. All in all, great liberty in playing it, basically no matter how much you play it, you'll never do everything exactly the same thanks to the wonderful physics and the many ways you can kill your enemies. Now what i didn't like about the game was that those damn koreans need about half of my cartridge to die if i don't get a headshot in... which isn't very realistic since that's about the same amount of bullets I need to die, and i'm the one wearing the fucking exoskeleton. So the enemies die painfully slow if you don't headshot them... that isn't SO bad, until you find the koreans wearing nanosuits (yes, you'll find those too). Those motherfuckers are so freakin' hard to kill that after i wasted my entire minigun clip on them, i just quit and punched them to death with maximum strength (for some reason, they're awfully slow). At least the aliens aren't so hard... you know you're gonna need about half a clip, or even a full clip to kill them (i found it awfully easy to miss in this game), but at least you don't get pissed when you missed the headshot. So the game is basically headshot hunt until the alien level (yes, you do have a sniper rifle, but there's about 3 times as many enemies as bullets for it). Still, a well-placed grenade will usually give you a measure of satisfaction... sometimes. Oh, and another thing - how come a guy with a fucking machinegun emplacement can shoot and HIT me from a mile away? Aren't those things supposed to be inaccurate from that distance? I can say the same for the enemies, who must have went to Legolas's School of Heavenly Sharpshooting or something, since whenever they see you, they start firing those assault rifles in burst mode and ALWAYS hit no matter what distance there is between you and them. Gets frustrating after a while, but if you do it right, you probably shouldn't get hit at all.
So, to sum it up: good gameplay, great physics (occasional bug here and there, but that can't be helped i guess), average storyline (major cliffhanger at the end, has potential for the second game of the intended trilogy). Not the best game, once you take out the graphics. But even so, it's a game to be played, even if only for the freedom given by the modes you can choose from. Add the graphics and it becomes a must-have. Almost.
Multiplayer's already hot and running, and has promise. Won't beat counter-strike, but i find it a lot better than Halo's, for instance. Good game, all in all. A must-play if you're a gamer, since it's a staple of next generation hardware.
Until next time, i bid you farewell.