Crysis (PC Games)

Reviewed by Mason on January 22nd, 2010

Crysis made me get out of my seat it was so good graphics. I haven't seen that good graphics for a long time. Great game go out and buy it!

Reviewed by Alex on November 22nd, 2009

Crysis is a brilliant 1st person shooter game. The game manages to mix science-fiction and realism in one fast paced action filled story. The game works very well if you have the recommended settings for the game or better. Generally you want a good graphics card that can run Crysis on high settings, I personally recommend a ATI Radeon HD 3650 or better. but you can still run crysis really well on low settings if you have a cheaper graphics card.
The editor is also a great bonus for the game.This great tool allows you to customize,edit and create levels for crysis.
Overall the game is great and I highly recommend it.

Reviewed by Daniel on October 24th, 2009

While the campaign is relatively short (as most FPS games are), Crysis is well worth buying. Stunning graphics, great gameplay and, last but not least, an enthralling plot, make this game one of the all time greats. I highly recommend this to anyone.

Reviewed by Mike on August 14th, 2009

Spectacular visuals, are brought to life on screen through crytek's latest installment Cyrsis, the overall feel of having powers all but make's you feel immersed in this world that you can have hours of fun with. Crytek's had done a great job with making you feel like you are apart of a world without boundaries, if you have a PC that has the power to punch out what is necessary to high settings, you will be nothing but impressed from what you have just purchased. happy gaming.

Reviewed by Roger on June 2nd, 2009

Crysis is a first-person tactical shooter developed by the chaps at Crytek back in Germany. Winner of the 2007 Game Critics Award, it has to be good, right? Well, it is good, but it's not without its flaws.

The premise is close to the usual One Man Army seen in many of these games. Your soldier is equipped with a super-powered suit made of:

[ ] Magic.
[ ] High tech materials.
[X] Nanomachines.
[ ] Mysterious space origin.
[ ] Atomic tech.

The nanosuit has an array of abilities to suit different situations and purposes. From a very useful stealth mode to a straightforward "extra armor" mode, passing through a fast sprint mode and an extra-strong one, both of questionable usefulness outside of spots placed specifically to require those abilities. Stealth + Extra Armor were the two modes I most often found myself in.

The plot starts straightforward enough. You and your buddies are sent to retrieve a group of scientists at an excavation site from the North Korean Army. it starts as a straightforward search and destroy mission, and then slowly the deeper plot starts to unravel. Something is in that island, something mostly unknown (mostly dangerous for the looks of it), and the North Koreans, under the direction of his fearless general, are set to discover and use that something.

The game will slowly evolve from a counterstrike-style of game towards more of an all-out shooter, Medal of Honor style. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind you. There are several tactical elements included in the level design, and you will find yourself (at first) having several options to tackle the challenges as you go along, from going in guns blazing to slip by unnoticed, or perching yourself atop a tower and play it sniper style, and others depending on the situation. For the most part, going against the North Korean Army is challenging, interesting, and the levels offer a reasonable amount of challenge and interesting variety in the gameplay.

I mentioned before the One Man Army style of game. This is it for the most part true - you'll be the one in the field doing the shooting - but there is constant radio chatter with other members of the team and with Headquarters and such. It's much less lonely than more classic single-player shooters.

That said, about halfway through the game is when the bait-and-switch happens. For the first half of the game you will be either infiltrating North Korean camps (and shooting them) or leading your army change into the field against them (and still shooting them). Halfway through it, after a probably disappointing encounter with the North Korean boss, you'll find out just what menace is, and of course you'll go and shoot it in its ugly face. The gameplay will change so drastically that you'll wonder if they fired the previous people and hired a new design team to finish the game.

You start off, and I say start off because it does feel like a completely different game, exploring some mysterious tunnels in zero-G (trying to avoid spoilers here, you'll see, saying there are some mysterious tunnels isn't much of a spoiler, you figure that out in the tutorial level basically), which is not only disorienting but it can make for very frustrating gameplay. It's not uncommon to lose orientation when in the tunnels, and more importantly, the zero-G is not such, there is an enforced horizon level (as if your backpack was filled with air or something), so you will automatically - and inevitably - pitch to level when trying to turn. This makes fighting in the zero-G very very frustrating. Add all this together, and the level will feel like it goes on and on forever and ever and never ends and keeps going on and on. Oh, and there's no map available for that level.

To follow-up on this, you'll go on to a level where you have to escort one of the most annoying whining NPCs I have ever seen in gaming history. Then you have one of the slowest and most boring aerial battles I've seen. That follows up to a level with an unwinnable battle against an undefeatable boss, and after that you will have a final showdown. This is all quite different from the previous half of the game. Off the window goes all the tactical consideration you had when fighting the North Koreans. It's all shoot-them-up guns blazing destruction. Not necessarily a bad thing if that's your cup of tea, but so very different from the game before.

If you are disappointed by the ending, don't be. Crysis has been pitched as a trilogy, so there should be more to come. It does feel a bit shorter than it actually is when you reach the end. It could be that the Crytek guys did a good job at leaving wanting one for more, or it could be the abruptness of that end. The final battle will remind you of the classic 2D shooter games, overall enjoyable but with some balance decisions that may make you shake your head as you load the saved game once you get hit in the face with the one-shot-kill enemy gun.

The levels themselves tend to be rather linear, for plot's sake I assume. The inevitable insurmountable mountains will box you in to the path you must follow, although for the most part at least it's not so narrow that there is no room for you to maneuver. It's hard to make it a negative when the levels themselves offer such a wide variety of scenarios for you to play.

Graphics wise it's a very good looking DX9 game. A bit resource hungry for what you get, and the bloom and blur is a bit excessive, but it's very customizable so you can tone down everything you don't like if you feel so inclined. Overall you won't be disappointed by what the game looks like. The environment is also very interactive, trees fall down when caught under intense crossfire, you can grab and toss things around, including the inevitable exploding barrels (thanks, DOOM!), there is good attention to detail all over the place.

The sound is excellent. The battles are as noisy as one could expect from their fierceness, and the constant chatter from NPCs and the tactical radio and all make for a very enjoyable background for the whole game. If you go stealthing around, you'll be using your ears a lot.

So, overall, it is a good game that is not without flaws. It's almost as if two different games were crammed into a single product, and while some of the flaws I've picked are clearly so, others can be ascribed to personal taste, so I'd likely let them slide. Would I recommend it to others? Probably, after mentioning the caveats. It's undeniably a good game.

Reviewed by Sporb on April 21st, 2009

I found Crysis to lack Gameplay to warrant it being a great game. Instead the developers have left it to the graphics to do the work. And work they do! I still haven't found a better looking game on PC!

Storyline is forgettable and characters aren't any better. Design work on locations and characters is great however. Lots of different terrain and variations in scenery. The nano suit abilities are fun to play with and do make the gameplay more fun.

All in all this is a rather standard FPS enhanced by one of the most impressive visual engines to this date.

Reviewed by Vasu on March 15th, 2009

This game is just awesome!!! It is one of my 2 most favorite PC games, the other one being Doom 3. Crysis has got some cool and innovative features that make the game more fun...**cough** play it hard mode **cough**. The harder the game is, the more better it is. This game will be awesome if you have surround sound speakers (just a tip), i played it without surround sound and i am definitely satisfied.
Graphics is awesome.
Storyline is good.
Setting is awesome.
Action is ULTIMATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5 out of 5

Reviewed by Daniel on February 23rd, 2009

Now the cheap graphic cards are out that can run crysis at fairly high settings, i gave it another try.

i attempted to play crysis several times before and gave up playing after about 30mins of playing due to boringness, but this time i put some effort and put more time on playing. and it just blew my mind!

Things get really interesting when those aliens start to appear, i was all of a sudden 100% fully into the game.

so if you find it boring and not your cup of tea, just stick to it till you see aliens appear, it will turn the game upside down. The game becomes unbelievable.

Reviewed by Richard on December 2nd, 2008

Crysis is a fantastic and graphically immersive first person shooter that could have been (impossible as it may seem) even better. Like its predecessor Far Cry it is a shooter for intelligent gamers because it rewards smart tactical play. Dumb beeline charges towards the enemy without cover will frequently end in death on the harder difficulties although I noticed it is not as unforgiving and frustrating as Far Cry. Yes, the graphics are unsurpassed and it ran well (20-35 fps, medium settings) on my Toshiba A300 laptop with its modest Radeon ATI 3650 gpu with 512 mb of RAM. But what sets Crysis apart (in addition to its gorgeous graphics) is the immersive gameplay that the nano suit (you wear) allows. Having said that there are a few shortcomings that could have been improved. The second half of the game with the aliens was not of the same quality as the first half, where you're fighting North Koreans because of two reasons. Considering the open nature of the game was one of its promoted good points, the alien fight was a bit of a scripted "on the rails clay pigeon shoot" initiated by a pointless and overlong "swim" through the alien compartment in the cave. Secondly, the frame rate drops significantly in the alien fighting section. I had to reduce my 15.4" laptop screen's resolution from 1024x768 to 800x600 to maintain playable frame rates. Another issue is the enemy AI. The AI Korean soldiers are intelligent in some respects ie they will seek you out, hide behind cover, flank you etc but glaringly dumb in these specific situations, even on the Delta difficulty level. They don't seem to show any concern and agitation when they discover their dead mates. That should automatically set off a hunt for you, in my opinion. They seem to lose interest in you if you move out their designated "active boundary." When you sneak/snipe them from the watch/sniper towers they won't climb up to investigate (even without using the silencer) or at the very least blow the tower (and you) up just to make sure. Lastly, considering this is a sneaky asassin game where is the knife, the weapon that is associated more than any other--with the assassin's profession? Combined with the invisibility cloak it would have made for many thrilling silent kills. Now these issues should not stop you from acquiring this game. This is still a fantastic game.Crytek sets very high gaming standards which make some other shooters seem simplistic in comparison and Crysis embodies that philosophy well. I recommend you get Crysis for some joyously memorable hours of immersive modern day sniper-ninjaring. You will not regret it.

Reviewed by Sam on October 7th, 2008

Crysis failed to engage me at all. I played through the first act just hoping that something interesting would happen - after floating around for what felt like forever in the beginning of the second act I decided just to give up. Haven't given it a second thought since shelving it.

Reviewed by REECE from HAMILTON, NZ on January 7th, 2008

best game i have played for a while , its around about the same as farcry , well made by the same company anyway .
had to up grade my vid card to 8800gt to play it on very high specs and it was worth it .
great game all round 9 out of 10 for me

Reviewed by Michael from Welly on November 11th, 2006

Having played some of the most graphically intense games ever made, this game looks to be a new #1 in detailing and video card strain. The features i have seen from in-game footage are mind-blowing and very clever
- Especially the combat suit you wear its features seem un-ending.
I really hope they put an amazing story with this title, if they do it sure to be stunning.