A Far Better Game- A Great Experience
Crysis Warhead is a far, far better game than Crysis. Even if you didn't like Crysis, you should give Warhead a go. The storyline is tremendously good, and it actually makes you care about the characters and the outcome of the game. Shockingly, Psycho's voice becomes endearing, rather than being totally annoying as it was in Crysis. The action is plentiful, well executed and hugely entertaining. The supposed performance boosts were nonexistent for me. I have an 8800 GTS and I could only get the game to run at about 25 fps in the leafy levels and 5 in the ice levels with a mix of gamer/enthusiast settings. I could run the original crysis at nearer to 35-40 and 15 fps respectively. Mind you that this is on a system with 4 gigs of ram and an overclocked e8400 at 3.6ghz. That's pathetic performance. Evidently the Crytek team did some poor coding and made the game actually run worse on the 8800 series, which is quite silly since that is probably the most popular card right now. The game also chokes on 64 bit windows, apparently. The game also suffers from TERRIBLE level design in several levels. I found myself completely and utterly lost 4 times during the course of the short 4 hours of gameplay, requiring me to wander aimlessly for a half hour or more, quit the game, and then come back to it again with renewed patience to find my way out. In one level you are asked to get to the opposite side of a ship, when in reality you are apparently asked to kill everyone on the ship and exit the same way you came in. In another level you are asked to "get to the train", when in reality the only train in the yard is not the objective at all, but rather the control room at the opposite side of the level. I am aware that the design team is German, but vague mission objectives without an accurate marker on the map is a great way to cause massive frustration.
My verdict- Buy Crysis Warhead if you treasure a good action experience. It does the job that so many FPS have done in the past (with the same format; action level, stealth level, action level, train level, final action level) but it does it all so incredibly well that it deserves commendation.