Fixing Crysis
After playing Crysis I can honestly say that I was disappointed. While the nanosuit and the weapons were pretty cool, the poor AI and the annoying introduction of the un-named, uninteresting and near unkillable alien species made me want to cry. Throw in some sub-par vehicle sections and the endlessly frustrating zero-gravity maze and you have one of the first games that I uninstaled before even finishing, but that was Crysis
The pacing in Warhead seems a lot more fluid too, you can move from open plan assault on huge, well defended enemy installations to creeping through a mineshaft being stalked by the silent alien killers. This is a game that actually manages to do both pretty well, there are enough options and variety in the open sections of the game to allow you the freedom to do almost anything you could want while the highly scripted, linear sections of the game stay tense. One of the most memorable moments in the game is when you're asked to search a frozen aircraft carrier, American and Korean forces are frozen in an eternal, fruitless firefight. An observant player may notice that some of these icy statues aren't as frozen as the others and are in fact Korean nanosuits, waiting in ambush.
You're probably wondering right about now why I havrn't mentioned the Crysis's infamous graphics, the reason is simple. I have no idea what they look like. My system currently uses a Geforce 8600 GS which, to be honest isn't exactly a top of the line card. Under the colossal weight of Crysis's Medium settings (or "mainstream" as Crytek insists on calling it my system) my system can manage 15 frames per second if there's not much happening. During the 8 hours I took to complete Warhead (yea, it's pretty short) the framerate and lowish quality graphics never bothered me as I found myself enjoying the gameplay so much.
Crysis: Warhead may be a much shorter game than the original Crysis so the length to cost ratio is much lower (both are £16.99 on Steam UK right now) but the quality is so much higher that I feel the compromise is well worth it. If you're willing to take a chance and risk paying for the world nicest slideshow then you can do much better than Crysis: Warhead.
[If for any reason you didn't like this review, please drop me a PM, I have next to no idea what I'm doing I just felt compelled to write about a game I enjoyed. If you criticise I will welcome it, but be gentle, it's my first time]
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