Yes, that one game. Can you recall it? Probably not. In the sweep of games that are, you know, notable and worthwhile (MGS4, GTAIV, Brawl, etc.), Crysis is forgotten.
Well, with good reason.
I'll make this brief; Crysis is your usual first person shooter. It gives you an unrealistic skew on guns, unresponsive and unintelligent AI, unremarkable storyline. But what's Crysis' catch? If the game weren't easy enough, those bad boys at Crytek throw you a nanotechnological mess of prototype armor and expect you to take on a few regiments of North Koreans. Sounds good, right?
Well, 'course it does. Synopses always do.
But, with many overconfident games like Oblivion (6/10) and MGS4, it struggles to do too much. Struggles, and fails in the end.
Allow me to provide you an example; the AI, on the hardest difficulty. In an attempt to make the NPCs 'realistic', Crytek thought it'd be great to make them, you know, totally irrational. Because that'd throw players off, right? Well... not quite the case. All of the time, you will see bad guys throwing grenades from five feet away, running over allies in vehicles (bad scripting most of the time), acting completely unperturbed by piles of corpses, and, oh yeah- never taking cover. Ever. Instead, the AI is basically a bundle of completely random actions. "What? I'm under fire? Why, I'll leap over this nearby fence and find myself in a field desolate of cover! Great idea!"
But I guess this can be explained, right? "Nanotechnology! You're so good, everyone should therefore suck!" Except... well, the North Koreans use nanotechnology also. Huh. Yet seeing someone else prance around in nano-tights completely flabberghasts them.
But the suit, the suit. Oh the suit. Absolutely flawed. For one, in normal-human mode, you have the AWESOME UNEXPLAINED ABILITY to grab people by the throat and carry or throw them around.
Right. Can you see an SAS guy just lifting a six-foot-tall two-hundredy-fifty pound guy with more than fifty pounds of gear in the air- with ONE hand, which happens to be the LEFT one?
Yeah, so you have four basic modes. Armor, speed, strength, and cloak. Armor is the default. The rest are basically tacked on to give a point to the inclusion of nanotechnology in the story at all. Oh, right, and to explain how the player can magically regenerate health after falling off a sixty metre cliff. The only time strength is ever purposely used is when you're faced by obvious and mandatory terraces which you must scale. Oh, don't worry. A little prompt will appear to comfortingly assure you that yes, that mean terrace over there isn't too tall for you.
Then there is cloak. Or maybe I should say godmode. Throw it on, and you become completely invisible. Your enemies will stare into the space ten feet away that was once you, then go about patrolling. Amazing, right? And broken!
What else now? Oh, right right. Multiplayer. You have deathmatch, which is actually enjoyable seeing as you're up against actual people as opposed to three lines of incoherent code, and then you have power struggle, where your team struggles (hur hur) to recapture key locations to nuke each other to atoms. Oh, wait, that's all completely nullified seeing as 70% of all players hack. There is zero hacking prevention, so most of the time you spawn only to be frozen solid and beaten to pieces at some nerd's leisure.
Hm, vehicles. Okay, so, apparently by shooting a car door I can cause it to explode. Also by falling ten feet in a reinfornced humvee will cause it do explode. Armored tanks are- who would've guessed- instantly destroyed by twenty-year-old greandes and small packages of low-grade C4.
Oh, right, storyline. Yeah so you and your super duper cool American pals go off to save some random scientists or archaeologists or whatever from an island the Koreans felt like sitting around in. You've got your macho-veteran-token-black-guy-that-everyone-loves-for-being-awesome, you've got smartass-British-guy-who-likes-to-hit-on-Asians, and then two other guys who just die meaninglessly for the sake of making the player tense. Zero character development.Then suddenly, aliens. What a twist! Oh, wait, not really- seeing as there are aliens RIGHT ON THE FUCKING BACK COVER. Way to throw away your only interesting plot string. No, really, good job.
Graphics and sound. If you're packing over $700 of hardware and feel like putting it to use, well go ahead, and be blown away by the graphics that... aren't what everyone claims them to be. But hey, who cares right, I mean shit man I can see the pockmarks in everyone's face, that's all I need in a game. Well the Koreans sound like white guys with nasal infections, the black guy sounds like Crytek's low audio budget, and the girl sounds completely emotionless. Oh, the Brit sounds like a Brit. Good for him.
So, long story short. Crysis. Worth the buy? Nah, unless you hate yourself, the free-market economy, and Koreans. Worth the play so I could become wiser with my money? Sure, but I regret it all the same.
Moral? Don't buy this game. Go hang with friends at the beach, and afterward find some babes to party with. Congratulations, you have now had more fun in three-four hours than this game will give you in SIX LIFETIMES. And also, in BETTER GRAPHICS. Amazing right?
I stopped reading after you assumed we forget about the most graphically gorgeous game of all time and mentioned how a super suit was the hook of the game, and not the jaw droppeningly beautiful graphics.
After that, I realize you missed the point of the game entirely.
milskidasith: I stopped reading after you assumed we forget about the most graphically gorgeous game of all time and mentioned how a super suit was the hook of the game, and not the jaw droppeningly beautiful graphics.
After that, I realize you missed the point of the game entirely.
QFT. Crysis is like doom 3 in the fact that it is more of a marvel in a technical sense.
It was, from what I can tell, a decent shooter encased in the best graphics you will ever see. If you like technological marvels, it's great. If you like PC shooters, it isn't the worst thing to spend your money on (or so I've heard from everybody but you, anyway).
It's kind of like the virus somebody made that can be done just by viewing images. Sure, for people who love to know about computer virus's, it's probably like their theory of relativity, but it's impractical if you actually wanted to have a really great virus go and take the world by storm because it requires the image itself to be written in such a way that the image is actually code for the virus and the virus has to implant in that image and... It's a lot of really complicated stuff that makes it totally impractical. This game is similar, but not a totally awful shooter, it's just meant to say "Hey, look, we just kicked every other games graphics to the curb!"
Grindstone: Yes, that one game. Can you recall it? Probably not. In the sweep of games that are, you know, notable and worthwhile (MGS4, GTAIV, Brawl, etc.), Crysis is forgotten.
Well, with good reason.
I'll make this brief; Crysis is your usual first person shooter.
Crysis is the first game that I've ever played that made me sit there, stare at my monitor and say ".........wow..." Sure the gameplay had a few flaws but if you're the kind of person who considers video games art, then Crysis is a masterpiece.
Oo Rev oO: Crysis is the first game that I've ever played that made me sit there, stare at my monitor and say ".........wow..." Sure the gameplay had a few flaws but if you're the kind of person who considers video games art, then Crysis is a masterpiece.
I'm the kind of person who considers video games art.
However, you don't get into a museum just by drawing a landscape with really crisp lines and lots of attention to detail, do you?
There's much more to "art" than just technical excellence.
I think this is a very unfair synopsis of Crysis. I'll cover it in pieces:
Oh, right, storyline. Yeah so you and your super duper cool American pals go off to save some random scientists or archaeologists or whatever from an island the Koreans felt like sitting around in. You've got your macho-veteran-token-black-guy-that-everyone-loves-for-being-awesome, you've got smartass-British-guy-who-likes-to-hit-on-Asians, and then two other guys who just die meaninglessly for the sake of making the player tense. Zero character development.Then suddenly, aliens. What a twist! Oh, wait, not really- seeing as there are aliens RIGHT ON THE FUCKING BACK COVER. Way to throw away your only interesting plot string. No, really, good job.
Here's what I said about this:
So, this review will begin with a brief analysis of the plot. Let's be honest: It's not fantastic, is it? At the same time, it's hardly bad either. It is a typical action game plot, and the presentation of it sticks to the hallmark of a good action game by not attaching overbearing significance to it during the game. It does as a good action plot should do: it provides the impetus to progress through the game. What I mean to say is that nobody watches the likes of Die Hard for the plot, or for the storytelling, and the same applies to this sort of game. The plot is a means to an end, and when you consider that less than fifteen years before this game, an action computer game's plot would be no more elaborate than, "Demons killed your squad. Kill them, pick up arbitrary game items, get the hell out of Dodge. Occasionally fight significantly stronger-than-usual demons.", you can see just how far the medium has come in a few years.
You don't play this game for the plot. It's simplistic, meant only to provide enough substance for the player to feel that they're in a cohesive storyline. It doesn't have to be a good cohesive storyline, it just has to be there. If you're ripping the shit out of it for the story, you've got your priorities wrong.
Have you ever played Doom? If you have, you should set your memory back to when you were playing it. Did you rip the shit out of it for its story? If you haven't, then you're not qualified to really speak about the first-person genre in general.
Allow me to provide you an example; the AI, on the hardest difficulty. In an attempt to make the NPCs 'realistic', Crytek thought it'd be great to make them, you know, totally irrational. Because that'd throw players off, right? Well... not quite the case. All of the time, you will see bad guys throwing grenades from five feet away, running over allies in vehicles (bad scripting most of the time), acting completely unperturbed by piles of corpses, and, oh yeah- never taking cover. Ever. Instead, the AI is basically a bundle of completely random actions. "What? I'm under fire? Why, I'll leap over this nearby fence and find myself in a field desolate of cover! Great idea!"
I've played games that bill themselves as combat simulators, and they didn't have AI anywhere near as intelligent as that in Crysis. AI coding is one of the most difficult parts of computer game programming.
Hm, vehicles. Okay, so, apparently by shooting a car door I can cause it to explode. Also by falling ten feet in a reinfornced humvee will cause it do explode. Armored tanks are- who would've guessed- instantly destroyed by twenty-year-old greandes and small packages of low-grade C4.
Fair enough - the last time I'm going to say that about a part of your review. Here's what I said:
The vehicular sections in Crysis are superficially similar to those in Half-Life 2, in that they are rendered from a first-person perspective. That's something I like. It's the default way it was in Operation Flashpoint, a game which I found had spectacular vehicular sections, it's the way it should be in any driving simulator, and I strongly feel that first-person perspective increases suspension of disbelief in a vehicular section, because it's realistically the way that one would drive in reality. The handling is acceptable, but not excellent, which is not much of a problem either. Where it all starts to fall apart is the extreme sensitivity of the vehicles to any sort of shock.
In a computer game, I expect to be able to crash through a few small trees in my military-specification vehicle without accumulating enough damage to render the vehicle as a moving explosive device, a point which is sorely missed in Crysis. Even the slightest of scratches in a jeep or truck carries the possibility of irreparable and huge damage, which is just about believable by a stretch of the imagination in a jeep, but not so in a huge, several-ton ten-wheel military truck. It got to the stage in these games where I'd drive as far as I possibly could using a single vehicle before jumping out of it and ramming it into the enemy as the aforementioned improvised explosive device, the only task that many of the vehicles seemed capable of. I don't like to abandon any vehicle in any game, and I don't want to have to find a new vehicle every time I come up to a new settlement.
What was frustrating in a jeep or a truck becomes ridiculous when you realise that the same sensitivity occurs with a main battle tank, a 60-ton machine specifically designed to take scratches with impunity. That really destroyed any chance at redemption that the vehicle sections have, and the only mercy is that it is almost unnecessary to take any vehicle along the course of the game, something which many gamers will find a huge relief.
Until they realise that I used the qualifier, "almost". There is a point in the game where it forces you to get into the cockpit of some sort of futuristic VTOL aircraft. The sensitivity to attacks that the other vehicles suffer from is compounded with a frustrating and unintuitive control system. I bought a joystick for flying sections in games, and the game expects me to use the keyboard and mouse? Now, I'm not saying that the keyboard and mouse are incapable of being used for flying sections; I managed quite well flying helicopters in Operation Flashpoint with those sorts of controls. However, what I am saying is that it's very easy to mess up a flight control system when using keyboard and mouse, and that's exactly what they've done in Crysis. This section of the game suffers from quite a big logic problem as well - what the hell are these VTOL transports doing entering into dogfights? It's hardly like the United States are bereft of jet aircraft - they have a brand spanking new carrier just waiting off the coast, and that's got to have at least thirty F-35 Lightning IIs on board. They're much more capable of dogfighting than what they're making the player use in Crysis, for you don't really see AH-64 Apaches or Mi28 Hinds going into dogfights, do you?
Now, this is an illogical step which irritates me; I like using vehicles in first-person shooters.
Allow me to provide you an example; the AI, on the hardest difficulty. In an attempt to make the NPCs 'realistic', Crytek thought it'd be great to make them, you know, totally irrational. Because that'd throw players off, right? Well... not quite the case. All of the time, you will see bad guys throwing grenades from five feet away, running over allies in vehicles (bad scripting most of the time), acting completely unperturbed by piles of corpses, and, oh yeah- never taking cover. Ever. Instead, the AI is basically a bundle of completely random actions. "What? I'm under fire? Why, I'll leap over this nearby fence and find myself in a field desolate of cover! Great idea!"
But I guess this can be explained, right? "Nanotechnology! You're so good, everyone should therefore suck!" Except... well, the North Koreans use nanotechnology also. Huh. Yet seeing someone else prance around in nano-tights completely flabberghasts them.
But the suit, the suit. Oh the suit. Absolutely flawed. For one, in normal-human mode, you have the AWESOME UNEXPLAINED ABILITY to grab people by the throat and carry or throw them around.
Right. Can you see an SAS guy just lifting a six-foot-tall two-hundredy-fifty pound guy with more than fifty pounds of gear in the air- with ONE hand, which happens to be the LEFT one?
Yeah, so you have four basic modes. Armor, speed, strength, and cloak. Armor is the default. The rest are basically tacked on to give a point to the inclusion of nanotechnology in the story at all. Oh, right, and to explain how the player can magically regenerate health after falling off a sixty metre cliff. The only time strength is ever purposely used is when you're faced by obvious and mandatory terraces which you must scale. Oh, don't worry. A little prompt will appear to comfortingly assure you that yes, that mean terrace over there isn't too tall for you.
Then there is cloak. Or maybe I should say godmode. Throw it on, and you become completely invisible. Your enemies will stare into the space ten feet away that was once you, then go about patrolling. Amazing, right? And broken!
Too much covering of an issue which is not the main one in the game. The nanosuit is simply a means to an end; other games have provided nascent versions of the "switchable powers" system before. It's not the be-all and end-all of the gameplay either - this issue is a lot more important:
The gameplay, another strong suit of Crysis, maintains a certain degree of freedom in capturing objectives at any point. The game environments in Crysis are relatively large for the genre, which allows the realistic use of scoped weapons, for instance, and with rivers and streams running through the jungle environment as well, the landscapes feel natural and unforced, further allowing for freedom.
The gameplay in Crysis seems to me to be a relatively refined version of the first-person shooter action that the previous few years had been culminating towards, with the physics engine being one of the most developed of any game on the market, highly polished and rather satisfying weaponry which sticks mostly to the realistic angle which many modern shooters have aimed towards, and the ubiquitous vehicle sections, which I will discuss later. There is little innovation, but that's not the aim of Crysis.
The aim of the gameplay throughout at least the first half of Crysis is to allow you freedom in achieving your objectives. Your objectives are linear, the way you achieve them is free-form.
So, bottom line? Your review is incompetent. It focuses too much on unimportant issues while giving little time to the free-form gameplay which is a lot different than that of most first-person shooters. When you've covered the game properly, you can come back and talk to me. Until then, I'll be lining up my next comprehensive (in the true sense of the word) review.
Grindstone: Personally, i DID read the whole thing... but it seemed like you weren't trying to take a very diplomatic stance on the game :S
Most proffesionals at least Try to look at it from both sides... Even Yahtzee at least Tries to do this (to a point, sure, but he tries). You seemed to take a "right, i'll kick the sh*t out of this game without giving it a chance" point of view.
Especially your final paragraph made me lol :P All this crap about the game, yet you still give it a 5 out of 10 :P
Anyway, I'm in No way saying this was "bad", just not "good" either... Your points about why the game is "bad" Are Valid. Most of your points, at least... Just... Next time, please Try and look at Both sides of the game you're reviewing, even if you're biased to one side or another...
Hey Rak, please read the forum rules about quotes before using the quote feature again.
Sorry about that. I'm used to a political forum where you try to disassemble a post before tearing those individual pieces to shreds. Will comply in the future.
the review i agree with and take the opportunity to vent a little about crysis. the first time i played crysis i was all hooked to the suit and the omgwtf graphics, and since i could not go highest on my comp, i spent a lot of time tweaking it around to get it to look the best, even if it meant stuttering and lags. but now i haven't played the game in a long time and i don't really miss it too. i think in the end it doesn't matter how good the visuals are. crysis pays no attention to its replayability, every encounter plays out almost the same, like in the village level, you can supposedly infiltrate/blast your way through anyway you want, but actually the game puts minefields everywhere else except where it wants you to be. you can quicksave jump die quickload through them, just to be get to where you want to be, but that sort of defeats the whole purpose of playing a free-roam. and the aliens were just so wrong. i think the only reason they were included were so that the dev-team can show off some zero-g gameplay. if i remember correctly the story was in fact changed a few months before release from an alien ship crash landing to an alien ship that had always been there, which sort of shows how much work really went into the story, which felt like an afterthought at best, if not irrelevant. and i think too much hype killed the game.
RAKtheUndead: I think this is a very unfair synopsis of Crysis. I'll cover it in pieces:
*Miscellania*
So, bottom line? Your review is incompetent. It focuses too much on unimportant issues while giving little time to the free-form gameplay which is a lot different than that of most first-person shooters. When you've covered the game properly, you can come back and talk to me. Until then, I'll be lining up my next comprehensive (in the true sense of the word) review.
Ooh, an uppity one. For a game that stresses freedom, it approaches it the same way FPS games did in in 2001: you can sneak in, run in, whatever. Use vehicle, don't use vehicle. The game isn't free-form; you're given your objectives and given a beaten path. The game pulls the old-fashioned "oh, you don't have to do this" or "hey, you can do these objectives in any order" card. The one we've all seen before.
And your definition of 'unimportant issues' baffles me. So a gamebreaking 'means to an end' is not an important factor to the gameplay? Alright then.
Bottom line, enjoy your opinion, because honestly it disinterests me.
Why is the game not completely free-form? Because it's a game about members of the military? As far as I know, members of the military, particularly lieutenants like Nomad, aren't given a lot of autonomy when it comes to completing objectives, and of course, the squad was never meant to be divided; methinks that the objectives, etc., would be a lot more linear if the squad element had been retained.
You say that this game approaches the issue as if it were a first-person shooter from 2001. You say that like FPS games in 2001 were all the same. You forget that 2001 was also the year that Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was released. Operation Flashpoint is one of the most freedom-creating and free-form games ever made, and I don't say that lightly: It gives the player a staggering 164 square kilometres - ten times more than the likes of Oblivion, I think - and a complete sandbox environment to play with. Even the campaign, which has objectives (hey, just like Crysis, shock, horror), has the sort of freedom that makes even RPGs worry. Don't tar all games with the same brush.
(BTW, this is one of the combat simulators I was talking about when I discussed the AI issues.)
So a gamebreaking 'means to an end' is not an important factor to the gameplay?
The cloak saps energy like a Game Gear sucks the life out of batteries, particularly if you're moving. I don't see how it's gamebreaking. Illogical, perhaps - the way it works doesn't render you entirely invisible.
By the way, I believe I shall enjoy my opinion, thank you very much. It was not an opinion solely meant for your consumption, however, so others may well enjoy it also. I'd also be quite pleased if you were to go and rip one of my reviews to shreds - hell, it would be just about the only reply that I've got on some of them!
About freeform; I'm talking about the game layout itself. You're never given the option (aside from about... three, four times) to cut through the jungle itself. There are only a few extraneous military bases. What I'm saying is that despite boasting a sandbox-type environment, it still resorts to using cliffs to prevent you from wandering too far off. I mean, you're given a map, you'd think they'd let you use it.
As for the cloak; yes, sure, the batteries drain. But it comes back to the AI: enemies will shoot in the same place unless you sprint away, then they'll notice the dust you kick up and shoot at you. So yes, it is cheap, though it wasn't meant to be. Now if it could only be used while stationary...
And pardon me if I came across as an ass beforehand. Was impatient and in a rush.
About freeform; I'm talking about the game layout itself. You're never given the option (aside from about... three, four times) to cut through the jungle itself. There are only a few extraneous military bases. What I'm saying is that despite boasting a sandbox-type environment, it still resorts to using cliffs to prevent you from wandering too far off. I mean, you're given a map, you'd think they'd let you use it.
Fair enough, I suppose. That is an issue with most first-person shooters, and to be honest, Operation Flashpoint and ArmA: Armed Assault are the only first-person shooters that I've seen that allow you that sort of free-form movement between towns and objectives. That said, there are far more obvious targets for rage in this issue - the likes of Call of Duty 4.
However, when it comes to completing objectives themselves, Crysis does give a lot more options than most first-person shooters. The whole "sneak in, run in" thing doesn't factor into as many mainstream first-person shooters as you'd think, and the obvious target again in this generation is CoD4.
Pardon granted, I was being an ass as well. I think more balance between perceived positives and negatives is required in your reviews; even my favourite games have received the nitpicking criticisms like unit imbalance or poor gunplay, but all negatives unless the game is clearly broken beyond repair - see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Big Rigs, etc. - just seems like ranting, and it's not a compelling read unless you're one of the metaphorical choir. Numerical scores just seem like an unnecessary measure. We can tell how you feel if you use your words correctly; we can tell that you disliked this game, so a score is not necessary.
I'm not even the worst of the asses. God help you if Decoy Doctorpus finds something he objects with in your review!
Since many other people have picked apart most of the other flaws I found in your review I will add just one point.
You discuss how much the nano-suits powers are like "god-mode" and say that this is all crap. This makes me want to look at you and say "Well no fucking duh you retard, it's a super high-tech nano suit thats been put on an already elite soldier." God mode it kind of the point considering that its 5 people (4 if you count that Aztec never actually gets into the fight) vs. an entire fucking korean army.
Look at almost every other FPS where the player single handedly engages and destroys vast legions of enemies when he himself is supposed to just be a regular, or at least elite soldier. That scenario works so much better when you have a suit that gives you super-natural abilites!
So theres that. All in all I found your review to be nothing but flaming the game. Please try to examine all aspects of the game and the way it is presented before making another review. Or please just dont make another ;)
Abako, I follow you, but let's see here. Most FPS games give you some excuse to allow you to take multiple body shots. Half Life? Government-funded nuclear operation gear. TimeSplitters? Futuristic armor while everyone else uses dated weapons. 007? You use top-of-the-line gear while everyone else's gear sucks. Halo? Same. Gears of War? Same.
However, Crysis not only gives you that, but a whole armory of techniques- strength, cloak, speed, armor, binoculars, night vision, the grapple... the armor part is excusable. But the strength is a one-hit kill. The grapple is dead silent. Speed is actually balanced, because you can knock down enemies and it drains reasonably. But aside from that, well... eh.
However, Crysis not only gives you that, but a whole armory of techniques- strength, cloak, speed, armor, binoculars, night vision, the grapple... the armor part is excusable. But the strength is a one-hit kill. The grapple is dead silent. Speed is actually balanced, because you can knock down enemies and it drains reasonably. But aside from that, well... eh.
According to my research on the sort of stuff that they get up to in DARPA, these technological enhancements almost seem reasonable. In fact, I'm quite impressed that they finally modelled powered armour that does more than soak up damage. OK, I used the caveat, "almost", but I think that it's rational to have powered armour that increases strength; all of the prototype powered exoskeletons do that right now.
The whole nano-technology angle of it is ridiculous in certain scientific ways, but replace nano-suit with your average suit of powered infantry armour and it makes sense to have strength and speed enhancements, because of the developments that have gone into said suits in reality.
(BTW, I wasn't joking about the whole "please tear my reviews to shreds" thing.)
Meh, I never found a reason to ever want this game. My initial reaction:
So, what's this Crysis game about?......Oh, it's got great graphics? What else?......So wait, it's just a standard FPS then?......Oh. Hey look, Assassin's Creed is on PC. Let's grab that and Pokemon.
I have to wholly disagree with the review and to anyone who claims the game is a mere "tech demo".
I had many friends who laughed at me for getting Crysis and a PC to run it... that is until I setup my rig at a friends flat and they all played it for 2 days straight and now whine when I don't bring my PC with me so they can continue their fun.
It's all about learning to manipulate the suit and thinking outside the box and not just "RARRARARGH ME SHOOT #$*&! RARARH!". Crysis, CoD4, Orange Box, Bioshock, Halo 3. 2007 was the best year for Shooters, to date.
Sorry you couldn't wrap your mind around it, but next time, make a more intellectual review, as well. This was poorly written and sounds like a person whining because their PC can't adequately run it, thus condemning the game as garbage.
I have to agree that this review was biased and a more than a bit unfair towards the game but I agree with a lot of grindstone's points. But this is what really confused me.
TheKbob: I have to wholly disagree with the review and to anyone who claims the game is a mere "tech demo".
It's all about learning to manipulate the suit and thinking outside the box and not just "RARRARARGH ME SHOOT #$*&! RARARH!". Crysis, CoD4, Orange Box, Bioshock, Halo 3. 2007 was the best year for Shooters, to date.
Ummmm... well your right that Crysis isn't a tech demo but then again no full fledged game is actually a tech demo, i'm pretty sure that grindstone was trying to make the point that the gameplay itself is quite lacking and feels unfinished (like a tech demo) and that the game relies on graphics as its sole selling point.
I'm really getting tired of developers trying to trick people with fancy graphics, I like a good looking game as much as the next guy but, to make a bad analogy, graphics are like the icing on the cake(the gameplay and story), for me Crysis is like a bucket of icing on a tiny and not particularly tasty slice of cake.
Addressing your second point, Crysis isn't about manipulating the suit, you can pretty much get through the whole game on the stealth and armor modes, there isn't any thinking outside the box, its all fairly linear with a few different ways to complete an objective but with it all boiling down to "do you take the left or the right path?"
Yes, that one game. Can you recall it? Probably not. In the sweep of games that are, you know, notable and worthwhile (MGS4, GTAIV, Brawl, etc.), Crysis is forgotten.
Well, with good reason.
I'll make this brief; Crysis is your usual first person shooter. It gives you an unrealistic skew on guns, unresponsive and unintelligent AI, unremarkable storyline. But what's Crysis' catch? If the game weren't easy enough, those bad boys at Crytek throw you a nanotechnological mess of prototype armor and expect you to take on a few regiments of North Koreans. Sounds good, right?
Well, 'course it does. Synopses always do.
But, with many overconfident games like Oblivion (6/10) and MGS4, it struggles to do too much. Struggles, and fails in the end.
Allow me to provide you an example; the AI, on the hardest difficulty. In an attempt to make the NPCs 'realistic', Crytek thought it'd be great to make them, you know, totally irrational. Because that'd throw players off, right? Well... not quite the case. All of the time, you will see bad guys throwing grenades from five feet away, running over allies in vehicles (bad scripting most of the time), acting completely unperturbed by piles of corpses, and, oh yeah- never taking cover. Ever. Instead, the AI is basically a bundle of completely random actions. "What? I'm under fire? Why, I'll leap over this nearby fence and find myself in a field desolate of cover! Great idea!"
But I guess this can be explained, right? "Nanotechnology! You're so good, everyone should therefore suck!" Except... well, the North Koreans use nanotechnology also. Huh. Yet seeing someone else prance around in nano-tights completely flabberghasts them.
But the suit, the suit. Oh the suit. Absolutely flawed. For one, in normal-human mode, you have the AWESOME UNEXPLAINED ABILITY to grab people by the throat and carry or throw them around.
Right. Can you see an SAS guy just lifting a six-foot-tall two-hundredy-fifty pound guy with more than fifty pounds of gear in the air- with ONE hand, which happens to be the LEFT one?
Yeah, so you have four basic modes. Armor, speed, strength, and cloak. Armor is the default. The rest are basically tacked on to give a point to the inclusion of nanotechnology in the story at all. Oh, right, and to explain how the player can magically regenerate health after falling off a sixty metre cliff. The only time strength is ever purposely used is when you're faced by obvious and mandatory terraces which you must scale. Oh, don't worry. A little prompt will appear to comfortingly assure you that yes, that mean terrace over there isn't too tall for you.
Then there is cloak. Or maybe I should say godmode. Throw it on, and you become completely invisible. Your enemies will stare into the space ten feet away that was once you, then go about patrolling. Amazing, right? And broken!
What else now? Oh, right right. Multiplayer. You have deathmatch, which is actually enjoyable seeing as you're up against actual people as opposed to three lines of incoherent code, and then you have power struggle, where your team struggles (hur hur) to recapture key locations to nuke each other to atoms. Oh, wait, that's all completely nullified seeing as 70% of all players hack. There is zero hacking prevention, so most of the time you spawn only to be frozen solid and beaten to pieces at some nerd's leisure.
Hm, vehicles. Okay, so, apparently by shooting a car door I can cause it to explode. Also by falling ten feet in a reinfornced humvee will cause it do explode. Armored tanks are- who would've guessed- instantly destroyed by twenty-year-old greandes and small packages of low-grade C4.
Oh, right, storyline. Yeah so you and your super duper cool American pals go off to save some random scientists or archaeologists or whatever from an island the Koreans felt like sitting around in. You've got your macho-veteran-token-black-guy-that-everyone-loves-for-being-awesome, you've got smartass-British-guy-who-likes-to-hit-on-Asians, and then two other guys who just die meaninglessly for the sake of making the player tense. Zero character development.Then suddenly, aliens. What a twist! Oh, wait, not really- seeing as there are aliens RIGHT ON THE FUCKING BACK COVER. Way to throw away your only interesting plot string. No, really, good job.
Graphics and sound. If you're packing over $700 of hardware and feel like putting it to use, well go ahead, and be blown away by the graphics that... aren't what everyone claims them to be. But hey, who cares right, I mean shit man I can see the pockmarks in everyone's face, that's all I need in a game. Well the Koreans sound like white guys with nasal infections, the black guy sounds like Crytek's low audio budget, and the girl sounds completely emotionless. Oh, the Brit sounds like a Brit. Good for him.
So, long story short. Crysis. Worth the buy? Nah, unless you hate yourself, the free-market economy, and Koreans. Worth the play so I could become wiser with my money? Sure, but I regret it all the same.
Moral? Don't buy this game. Go hang with friends at the beach, and afterward find some babes to party with. Congratulations, you have now had more fun in three-four hours than this game will give you in SIX LIFETIMES. And also, in BETTER GRAPHICS. Amazing right?
5/10.