Suit up and take the fight to the Koreans in this sci-fi shooter.
You play as Nomad, a special ops soldier wearing the latest in nano suit technology. You are apart of a 5 man squad sent to an unkown tropical island that the North Koreans are using as a base of operations and unkown research. As you play further through the game you will begin to realise that it's not just the Koreans you will have to worry about as the island hold much more sinister secrets. In the way story goes it progresses well and playing through it the first time will have you guessing and keep you going right to the end of the campaign.
Crysis is a fast paced FPS but what sets it apart from other shooters is the nanosuit Nomad wears. The nano suit has four special modes to use, Strength, speed, armour and cloak. What this suit brings to a gameplay point of view is different ways of approaching an objective. This game can quite easily become a stealth game and because this is a FPS that's quite a feat to pull off when so many others fail. However you may choose to go full on assault in a Korean enemy camp which will add to the difficulty but should please veterans of the genre.
While there's not too much choice in the way of weapons you have the cool abiltiy of modding the weapons. You can add silences, grenade launcher attachments, scopes with different magnigification and even different ammo that packs more of a punch. It's quite fun to grab enemies by the throat and throw them in the air all the while shooting them as they fall. Of course you could go into strength mode and throw them as far as you can which will kill them instantly. There are vehicles to drive such as jeeps and a cool section in the game where it's a full on tank assault. The size of the map definately offers more ways to approach a target whether it's by vehicle or foot or swimming so there definately will be some openess to combat rather than linear corridor shooting.
The visuals would have to be Crysis's strongest aspect. Nowhere in a PC game would you see such draw dropping visuals from the shadows on the ground to the lightings through the trees. All the lighting and shaders and texture really come together to bring this game as close to realism as possible. This is of course the greatest weakness to Crysis aswell as it demand the latest in video card technology. Ignore what the specs say on the back of the case, you wil need atleast a card with 1 gb vram otherwise you will have to keep tweaking the settings till you get a balance of good framerate and pleasing visuals. It's a shame really that there is too big of a noticable difference between medium and high settings but the 1.1 patch will help improve the performance of the game and the natural mod to give a better appearance to the game without sacrifice to performance.
Sound wise this game has alot to offer for you 5.1 setup. Explosions and gunfire all sound appropriate and loud and the voice acting is top notch. I'm pleased at the fact that Nomad has a voice and is not just another mute hero. The Koreans all speak in English mixed with Korean. Actually it's quite funny some of the things they say as they hunt you like 'hanky yanky' but of course what they say will eventually get old but never too repetitive.
Crysis definately has got a lot of action that should satisfy any fan of the genre. This game should suck you in for multiple play throughs on harder difficulties. If you think your hardware is the best then pick this game up as it will be the bench mark all PC enthusiasts use to show of their specs.
