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Crysis Review

Crysis is visually stunning, packed with intelligent,thrilling gameplay, and easily one of the greatest shooters ever made.

It was hard not to be completely impressed when the first images and videos of Crysis appeared about 18 months ago. Scenes of lush jungles and towering alien war machines looked light-years beyond what seemed possible. Ofcourse, the two questions that revolved around Crysis since its announcement were whether it would deliver on those visuals and whether it would deliver agame worthy of those fancy graphics.

It turns out that the answer to both thosequestions is a resounding yes, as Germany’s Crytek has proven that its 2004 hitFar Cry was no fluke. In fact, it was just the beginning from this studio. Withits sophomore effort, Crytek has managed to deliver an incredibly advanced and exciting first-person shooter that practically rewrites the rules for theentire genre.

Crysis is an alien invasion game set in the year 2020. Anarcheological team on a remote Pacific island is captured by an invasion force of North Koreans, and your US Special Forces team is dispatched to investigate and rescue the scientists.

Clad in high-tech nanosuits capable of boosting your strength, speed, and armor, as well as cloaking you temporarily to the enemy, you’re parachuted into a tropical paradise that’s crawling with intelligent enemies and something else that’s tearing both the North Koreans and US forces to shreds.

Couple these huge environments with the powers of the nanosuit, and you have a ton more options. You can play like the eponymous character from the movie Predator and use your cloaking abilities to stalk North Korean patrols, picking them off one by one and watching the survivors react in confusion.

That could be via a silenced rifle, or simply coming up from behind a guard and grabbing him by the throat and hurling him off a cliff, or through the roof of a building, or against a tree, or whatever catches your fancy. Enhanced speedand strength give you an amazing amount of mobility, so you can vault atop buildings and come down behind someone, or run up against a North Korean vehicle next to a cliff and push it over the side.

In a heart beat you can switch between different roles, from stealthy assassin to seemingly unstoppable death dealer. It’s a game that makes you feel like a superhero, though not an invincible one, because you simply can’t run roughshod over the enemy. Crysis rewards smart, fast thinking.

Meanwhile, the gunplay and ballistics modeling make this shooter feel as if you’re handling real weapons. Trying to hit a target at long engagement ranges is challenging thanks to weapon recoil and other factors. The NorthKoreans are encased in body armor, so they take some time to gun down, unlessyou aim for the head, which usually puts them on the ground.

At your disposalis a variety of firearms, like shotguns and assault rifles. One of the neat aspects of the game is that you can fix up your weapons on the fly, addingscopes, silencers, and grenade launchers, provided you’ve found them. There are trade-offs for each add-on. Silencers let you take down guys quietly, though they reduce bullet damage, meaning you’ve got to make every shot count. Or flashlights mounted on your weapons might help you out in dark levels, but will give you away.

The game also sounds fantastic, from the primordial “moans” that this land periodically releases, the soft crunch of dirt and branches under yourfeet, and all the background sounds that you’d expect in the middle of thejungle. The music, by composer Inon Zur, feels inspired by the scores from epic Hollywood action movies, while the voice acting is also excellent, helping to deliver some distinct characters and even a little humor.

Picture on the Left: It’s not just infantry combat, as you can hop into almost every vehicle in the game, and take part in an incredible tank battle.