Crysis for Windows

Crysis represents something of a sequel to Far Cry, the groundbreaking shooter that placed you in the role of a lone gunman trying to survive on an island paradise infested with genetically modified creatures and bloodthirsty soldiers.  Like Far-Cry, Crysis stands out among other first-person shooting games due to its jaw-dropping graphics as well as its open level design.  It also manages to stretch the capabilities of your computer to the breaking point long before maxing out its graphic options.  The rewards of having a system to handle Crysis are considerable, but the game also manages to hamstring some of its wildly successful elements with a few poorly executed stages.

In Crysis, you are a special-operations soldier codenamed 'Nomad', who belongs to a small team of super-soldiers equipped with cutting edge nano-suits.  These armored suits not only protect you from bullets, but also give you the ability to run at superhuman speeds, jump over buildings, punch through walls, and even make yourself invisible.  It sounds like you would be unstoppable, but the suit has a limited amount of energy to work with.  Nearly all of your special powers drain energy rather quickly, and once your energy is gone it takes a short period of time to recharge.  Learning how to use your special powers at the right moments, as well as finding cover so you can recharge your batteries, is one of the first skills to master in the early stages of the game. 

Your team parachutes onto a tropical island where North Korean troops have taken control.  These troops are holding a team of scientists hostage who posess highly classified information about a mysterious archeological find.  It seems that the island contains evidence of an ancient alien technology, and the Koreans want to posess this information for their own nefarious ends.  Your job is to rescue the hostages.

Obviously, there are some additional twists and turns to the game, but the first half of the storyline is taken up by your hostage-rescue mission.  Here you typically work alone, sneaking around through the jungle and tangling with Korean soldiers at various checkpoints.  As you fight your way through objectives, members of your team are being steadily picked off by a mysterious robotic octopus who also has a taste for your Korean adversaries.  Clearly, this is related to the "archeological" dig, and you soon learn that the Koreans are rapidly losing control of the situation as more of these machines start to awake. 

The battles with the North Koreans are breathtaking exmples of how to make a first-class shooting title work with today's graphic technology.  Your nano-suit gives you a tremendous advanage over soldiers equipped with standard gear, but the Koreans outnumber you by a huge margin.  Running into the middle of an enemy outpost with your guns blazing will get you killed very quickly as your suit rapidly runs out of power.  You soon learn that a highly invigorating game of cat-and-mouse, using your suit's cloaking feature, is the best way to approach most combat situations.  Often you will sneak up on an unsuspecting guard post, shoot a guard or two, find cover while your suit recharges, and then sprint at superhuman speed into the jungle.  Your enemies will try to locate the source of their stealthy adversary, but you can usually find ways to get behind them and gain the element of surprise.  It is even more effective when you attack from within their perimeter using silenced weapons, which makes it much harder for your enemies to locate where you are. 

This method of blending stealthy tactics along with sudden bursts of massive firepower makes for a nail-biting and ultimately exhilerating experience.  You truly feel as though you could take on an army with your nano-suit as long as you play your cards right.  Get caught out in the open without power in your batteries, however, and you find yourself dead in a hurry.

Crysis integrates a number of vehicles during the course of the game with mixed success.  There are a large number of Korean army vehicles similar to humvees, as well as a few of the armed boats that fans of Far-Cry will remember.  Unlike Far-Cry, however, there is not nearly as much boating and island-hopping to be done here.  Instead, vehicles are a relatively minor part of the action during most of the game's stages.  There is one stage involving tanks which is done fairly well, although it seems to have been tacked on for the sake of having a "tank level" somewhere in the game.  There are a few "rail shooter" type levels where you have to use anti-aircraft weapons to shoot airbone enemies and eventually you get to fly one of the Navy's VTOL aircraft.  Where the ground-missions shine, the vehicle stages tend to sag.  They're not incompetently done by any means, but compared to the thrill of hunting Korean soldiers in the jungle they fall well short of the mark. 

The game takes a major turn once you enter the archeological dig site.  Here you discover that the center of the island is actually a huge structure of extra-terrestrial orgin.  It seems to be gaining power quickly, and there is a relatively interesting stage where you wander through its interior without the benefit of gravity.  The aliens, when you see them, are an interesting design and their technology is well conceived.  Unfortunately, the game designers seemed to lose their edge once the aliens arrive on the scene.  After escaping from the alien base, you no longer fight your Korean adversaries.  Instead, you engage in a long race for your own aircraft carrier as robotic squid chase.  The scenery, which at this pint has become arctic rather than tropical, is cool, but the fights become standard shooter fare very quickly.  This is where Crysis changes from an astoundingly good shooter into merely a very good one, and I found myself longing for the action present in the first half of the game.  The story ends with a promise of inevitable expansions and sequels, one of which has already been released. 

Crysis has gotten a lot of attention for its steep graphics requirements, and for good reason.  I use a 3GHz Pentium 4 processor with 2 gigs of RAM and a GeForce 9600GT video card.  With this group of hardware, I can run the game on medium detail levels.  At this detail level, the game looks wonderful but lacks some of the most innovative features that Crysis is capable of delivering.  For example, in order to use DrectX 10, you must have Vista running on your computer.  I, however, still use XP.  Despite the fact that I am missing some of the bells and whistles that Crysis can deliver, I am very impressed by the game's visuals.  The jungle setting is lovingly detailed, and the foliage truly seems real as you crawl through it.  The use of light and shadow, as well as the way the foliage moves realistically in the wind (both natural and from explosions) makes the environment truly immersive.  Flame effects and concussions from grenades are also very well done.  While your human adversaries look quite good, some cutscenes show a few rough edges in the way faces are animated during dialogue.  Half-Life 2 is still the gold standard when it comes to animating faces, even though Crysis is quite good. 

The physics engine in Crysis is used very effectively, particularly in the jungles.  Foliage may provide you cover for a while, but a few dozen bullets (or a single grenade) can rapidly chop down the tree you are hiding behind.  Enemy structures are also fully destructable, and with your nano-suit muscles you can actually punch through walls to kill your foes.  Grenades cause a great deal of damage to buildings, and can bring guard towers crashing down in a satisfying heap.  You have realistic limits on the numbers of weapons you can carry, forcing you to make due with only two "rifles" and a pistol.  Ammunition is a constant concern, and you must conserve your bullets during firefights.  This is done very well, however, and contributes greatly to the satisfaction of surviving firefights.  My only problem with the firearms in the game (which include the usual shotguns, submachine guns, and assault rifles) is that your standard issue SCAR runs out of ammunition rapidly and you have few opportunities to get more. 

Enemy AI, when you are fighting humans, is wonderfully done.  The North Korean soldiers behave realistically when they are attacked, using cover effectively and working in teams.  Your sudden appearance in the middle of the enemy base will create a great deal of confusion among your foes, but they eventually pull themselves together and begin systematically trying to track you down.  Enemy soldiers will use their ears if their eyes start to fool them, and silenced weapons give you a much higher chance of escaping a firefight without being detected.  If you've been highly stealthy, you may be able to sneak up on enemy outposts who have no idea they are in any danger.  Some soldiers may even be asleep at their posts.  If you've made noise, however, outposts will be on full alert and ready for your arrival. 

The AI of the alien creatures is far less interesting.  Despite the fact that they clearly possess advanced technology, they fight like animals with no sense of tactics or intelligence.  This is why the later stages of the game feel so unsatisfying, as you find things quickly degenerating into typical run-and-gun tactics we have all seen in countless other games.  It is unfortunate that the designers of Crysis didn't study the way HALO gave its alien creatures such sharply defined and entertaining personalities. 

Overall, Crysis is a stunning game in many ways.  Its graphics are the new gold-standard which (according to rumor) are actually beyond the capabilities of even top-shelf gaming systems available at the moment.  The first of (hopefully) many expansions has already been released, and the nano-suit concept is highly innovative and entertaining.  Hopefully future editions of this franchise will flesh out the aliens and give them a true personality, or at least have the decency to focus the action on human opponents.