"Better Armor For Our Soldiers"

As much as I am excited by First Person Shooters, the month of November 2007 was ridiculously laden with them to the point where I am almost sick to my stomach of hunting aliens, Arabs, Russians and any other digital enemy that turns my crosshair red with anger.

First we had Bioshock released by the end of August which revived the gameplay pioneered by System Shock way back in the 90’s – an RPG Shooter.
Then soon after, Halo 3 was released where I would finally find out how Master Chief would “finish the fight” and also why Cortana received a sexy makeover.
Not long after that Call of Duty was released which kept me extremely busy online – ranking up to 5 Star General. Soldier of Fortune oddly was released on the exact same day and now I had yet another FPS where the focus was on turning the enemy into amputees.

Not to mention Time Shift, Half Life: Orange Box or the life still left in Rainbow 6: Vegas



Now, we have CRYSIS.

In this new FPS developed by German company, Crytek, you basically star as an American special forces operative codenamed “Nomad”, who must trek through the jungles of North Korea to find out the origin of an alien ship which has crash landed there. You don a powered exoskeleton called the Nano Muscle Suit which offers you special abilities in the field so long as you use it wisely.


GRAPHICS

Crysis is the first game that justifies the purchase of a spanking new desktop computer, complete with Windows Vista, a mountain of Ram and the best video card you can buy.
Unfortunately, the game falls into the trap of being a technology demonstrator much like its predecessor, FarCry. It is a game designed solely to show you what you paid for when you ordered your custom PC online and forked over thousands of dollars.

Owning a gaming rig powerful enough to run this beast of a game offers boasting rights all in its own. The game has been so over-designed that its system requirements are steeper than most graphic design programs.

The game requires:

No less than a Intel Core Duo 2 (or equivalent) in the CPU department is recommended. You could get away with an older Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading but unless its in the high 2 GHZ or the 3’s, you’re gonna suffer performance. I would recommend a Hewlett Packard Quad-core Unmatched since it will come with adequate RAM for around $1500, but, you'll still need to fork over $400 for a good GPU on a video card with more than 256 MB of Video RAM.

You need no less than 2 GB of RAM – preferably DDR2 – less you won’t be able to run the game with volumetric shading, shadows, smoke and color preferences as the game was intended to be played.

You’ll need no less than the best Graphics Accelerator on the market – this means either the best Geforce (probably a 8000 series) or the best Radeon (Likely the 9800 Pro).
The game will function at its minimal system requirement mode on a Pentium 4 3.0 GhZ Cpu with a Geforce card and Direct X9 but you can’t play it anywhere near its mid resolutions and the game hiccups, chugs and burps with pixels and “artifacts” randomly showing their ugly heads every now and then.

Make no mistake - CRYSIS will take your computer for everything its worth !

Every part of your system that isn’t giving 110% becomes a bottleneck. Even older hard drives can be a problem if they don’t have 7200 RPM access times or better. Crysis lets you know when you see or hear buggy glitches that its time for 200GB NAND drives to come to the consumer market in force.

In order to play with friends, I checked how this game ran on a few different systems but I was terribly disappointed by the fact that it required such a powerful machine that most likely, you wouldn’t be able to get for under $2000. A Dell XPS or Falcon Northwest fresh from the factory with the requirements I mentioned above is what you need to get the most out of this game (as well as a 20 inch monitor or better) but when you really start calculating the cost of such items, you are easily going to see that indulging this game will leave you taking bag lunches to work, nearly destitute, and plotting an untimely yard sale of your precious belongings for extra upgrade cash.


The Graphics of Crysis are the most important factor simply because they are the only factor which terribly redefines the rules of FPS games in regards to graphics affecting gameplay.

For Example, in most games, shooting trees or wooden houses typically has no major effect. In Crysis however, shooting wooden houses might bring the entire house down on the heads of whoever is inside. Shooting trees tears them apart and can cause branches and limbs to fall off, killing those underneath.

Shooting the tires of enemy vehicles even keeps enemies from using them to pursue you.

The graphics make the game, but they are not without their faults. Sometimes enemies will prove that Z-buffer problems still exist when their bodies permeate solid 3d structures.




GAMEPLAY

Enemies seek to adapt to their surroundings by changing their camouflage and regrouping or outflanking you.
The AI is pretty intelligent and when you are engaged in a battle the enemy will try to outwit you. Of course, when you aren’t attacking them, they can be spotted doing regular stuff: waxing cars, chatting, on the lookout, etc.

The graphics also play a huge role in the game because the entire 3d World you are placed in is rendered similar to FarCry with multiple paths and multiple choices to make in order to approach an objective. In fact, this is the bread& butter of Crysis’ appeal. Its not like linear Gears of War or Halo 3. You are dropped into a battlefield which can become as violent as you potentialy want to make it. Rather than holding your hand and keeping you on paths, you must choose exactly how you want to go about completing each objective. The only point at which this gets annoying is during one particular escort mission but, for the most part, having freedom is enjoyable.

Rather than just being another Master Chief clone with a “super suit” that only enhances your durability, the Nano Muscle Suit offers you variety in gameplay by allowing you to choose modes: maximum power, maximum armor, maximum speed or stealth.
Stealth mode allows you to become nearly invisible and stalk enemies as if you were “The Predator”.
Maximum strength gives you the ability to lift heavy things – including North Koreans which you can throw around like WWF.
Maximum Speed lets you run around like a cocaine addict while the enemy tries to keep a bead on you and Maximum armor – well – allows you to absorb more gunfire.

Weapons are standard FPS fair. Guns such as AK-47’s and Heckler&Koch models are there as well as Sci Fi weapons such as Gauss cannons and the TAC – which launches a tactical nuclear RPG. The explosions look fabulous.

There are Vehicles similar to FarCry (the latest FPS craze since Halo popularized them) such as trucks, cars, boats, hovercrafts and even a VTOL American fighter.

Unfortunately, with all the technological power armaments and gameplay tweaks CRYSIS offers, its major downfall isn't its steep requirements, but, its story - which falls on being a Halo 2 retread - where buying one game isn’t enough to “finish the fight”.
The all-to-familiar "aliens" are nearly unstoppable but once you've learned what it takes to stop them - It's off to that cliffhanger ending and you're left waiting for the next installment.

Similar to FarCry and Halo, Nomad does have a voice but the voice acting is nothing spectacular and in many ways Master Chief’s gravelly low pitched growling is more interesting (did Master Chief ever raise his voice? Did he ever yell?)

Multiplayer isn't very innovative. The main game mode is deathmatch. Team Deathmatch is here but, Crysis’ signature edition TDM is called “Powerstruggle” - a mode in which you are either a North Korean or American - equipped with a Nanosuit – and battling to control a large map.
Powerstruggle matches are controlled host-side and can take many hours (possibly 10) to actually finish simply because with the new technology, the game can experience day or night cycles that realistically last for hours at a time.

There is an opportunity for gamers who are well experienced in level design to use Crysis’ included “sandbox” editor to create new maps. “The Forge” this is not – unless you know what you are doing, you will quickly be frustrated trying to even start building a map. Sandbox requires a large amount of virtual memory according to the much-too-short readme file included so you are basically locked into using either a 64-bit Win XP or Windows Vista. (Professional X64 is supported but most gamers aren’t likely to have it).


THE BOTTOM LINE is that CRYSIS is a fantastic game and a tremendous technological achievement. That is…if you have the technology to run it. If your computer is older than 3 years, don’t even bother looking in this game’s direction. If your video card is older than 3years, get ready to take out $400 for the newest Radeon.
If you’ve only got 1GB of RAM, its time to make that trip to Circuit City.

Crysis forces you into costly upgrades and that factor is ultimately going to be what isolates it from "financialy challenged" gamers.
I don’t see this game coming complete - in all its graphical goodness - to either the PS3 or the 360, but because it features downscaling, it might happen.
A huge number of American homes still lack HDTV's so even if CRYSIS did manage its way into the living rooms of console owners, you wouldn't get the most out of it on anything less than a 1080pHDTV.

So long as you are playing on the most sophisticated PC rig out there – you’ll LOVE this game, but, if you’ve got less than stellar technology, Crysis won’t look much better than FarCry.




FIRST PERSON SHOOTER MANIA


TIME SHIFT http://www.epinions.com/content_407002386052

CALL OF DUTY 4 http://www.epinions.com/content_407506947716

GEARS OF WAR http://www.epinions.com/content_342670413444

RAINBOW 6: Vegas http://www.epinions.com/content_345550261892

QUAKE 4 http://www.epinions.com/content_338301259396

BIOSHOCK http://www.epinions.com/content_401237511812

HALO 3http://www.epinions.com/content_404667207300

SOLDIER OF FORTUNE: PAYBACK http://www.epinions.com/content_407904554628