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. Of course, the two questions that revolved around Crysis
since its announcement were whether it would deliver on those visuals
and whether it would deliver a game worthy of those fancy graphics. It
turns out that the answer to both those questions is a resounding yes,
as Germany's Crytek has proven that its 2004 hit Far Cry was no fluke.
In fact, it was just the beginning from this studio. With its sophomore
effort, Crytek has managed to deliver an incredibly advanced and
exciting first-person shooter that practically rewrites the rules for
the entire genre.
Crysis is an alien invasion game set in the year 2020. An archeological
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.
Like Far Cry, the first half of Crysis is essentially a
"sandbox" game where you're put in the middle of incredibly large
levels and tasked with an objective. How you get the job done is pretty
much entirely up to you, which is part of the brilliance of the game's
design. For instance, the environments are big enough to give you a
wide range of latitude. Do you have to get to a certain point on the
map? You can take a meandering route that avoids patrols and go
stealthy, or try the up-front approach and try to blast your way
through, with the danger of enemy reinforcements showing up. Need to
infiltrate a North Korean-held village? You can try the front gate, or
maybe explore and find a quieter way in.
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 speed and 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 heartbeat 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.
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