Crysis

Alright everyone, time to strap into your nanosuits, lock and load your Gauss Rifles and set your suit to Maximum Bulge because it is time to review Crysis. As you may know Crysis is a FPS (First Person Shooter for all you n00bs) on the PC that takes place on a beautiful tropical island off the coast of . You play a Special Forces agent named Nomad who is air dropped in on the island along with your other Special Forces buddies so you can hand those evil North Koreans their asses……their evil, evil asses.

 Now first thing you might notice is how amazing the graphics are. The water looks great, the trees look realistic, and there are even animals you can totally mess around with on the island. As far as atmosphere goes you will easily get lost in beautiful vistas and awe inspiring scenery. The only down side of all these beautiful visuals is that you need a pretty beefy PC to run this bad boy. The game has been out for a while now, so video cards and CPU’s have dropped in price, but even still it will cost you some money. That being said even on the best PC you will have noticed slowdowns and choppiness when the game is put on high detail. Do not worry though because even when putting the detail down a bit the game still looks good enough to sleep with….and trust me, Crysis will put out.

The environments in the game are fantastic. The island is pretty much a giant sandbox that you can play in all day and still not get bored. Trees break and shatter as massive gun fights break out between you and the enemy. Boulders and logs can be pushed on enemies. You can even pick up animals and throw them around to your hearts content. I even grabbed a tortoise that was innocently walking on the beach and carried him all around the island just for fun. Eventually I threw the tortoise at an evil North Korean soldier and he fell off of a cliff to his death. The tortoise died as well, but it was for American Freedom so his death was not in vain. Pretty much everything is destructible, even the shanty towns on the island. You can throw a grenade and watch with glee as sharp pieces of metal crash down upon your enemy like bugs…..…MUAHAHAHAHAHAH! Be warned though because the environment can be your enemy as well. I learned this the hard way when I got attack by a shark while swimming offshore. Nature – 1 Nomad -0

Although the island is a giant sandbox your objectives don’t vary much. You do the usual rescue hostages, hack into computers, and level towns with your missile launcher. The story is very linear but the game play is not. What pretty much makes the game different and unique is the nanosuit you are equipped with. You can change what your suit does for you depending on your game play. It Increases your strength, speed, armor, and even cloaks you. You can go about completing your objectives in any fashion. From run and gun, to stealth, to playing with tortoises the suit allows you to do it all. I will be honest there were times when killing people never seemed like so much fun. You really start to see what kind of style you like to kill people with. Me, I cloak, and then I shoot them in the back and then punch them in the crotch constantly while maximum strength is equipped.

The game veers in an odd direction at the end, both story wise as well as game play. The last 3 hours of the game become very linear and repetitive. It’s a shame that a game with an original idea fell into a very typical category of game play. Crysis is a good shooter, but it could have been so much more. All in all a well done game with a good attempt at originality but just falls short of something completely new. Crysis get 3.5 stars out of 5.