Crysis is the successor to Far Cry, the award-winning first-person shooter from Crytek.You are ‘Nomad’, part of a US Special Forces team equipped with some very high-tech and classified gear. Your mission is to insert into a North Korean-controlled island and rescue some hostages. The reason why North Korea has suddenly annexed this small plot of land? Unknown. For now….
Graphics: Using the latest DirectX 10 enhancements, this game looks incredible and, like Far Cry before it, sets a new benchmark in computer game graphics. Unfortunately, you need a mighty powerful rig to take advantage of the effects.
Our Test Rig:
- AMD 6000+ AM2 Dual Core CPU
- 4Gb of DDR2 RAM
- BFG 8800 GTX OC Video Card
- Sound Blaster X-Fi Gamer
- Windows Vista 32-bit
We were able to run the game very well on our set-up. The graphics looked amazing and none of the effects were lost. The depth-of-field looks very convincing as does the physics modelling.
Sound: The sound design in Crysis is no slouch either. Ambient noises really make you feel as if you are alone on the small island, of course, until all hell breaks loose. Sound effects are excellent as well, with subtle touches like ‘freezing’ sounds, invidual shells dropping, and even the rattling around of fallen paper cups to immerse you in the virtual world.
Music: Music in Crysis is good, although it is outshown by the sound design and graphics. The tones range from eerie to adrenaline fueled marches.
Gameplay: Your super nano suits have four different modes in which to utilize. The first increases your armor – this is the mode that we used most often. The next mode increases your speed. The next mode cloaks your body (ala Predator) for as long as your suit’s energy holds out. Finally, the third increases your strength and man does it increase it. Under normal circumstances when you grab an enemy by the throat and throw him, he will lay there a minute, then get back up. When strength is engaged, he flies much farther and doesn’t get back up. In addition, some obstacles can be broken by punching them, only in strength-mode.
These modes give Crysis it’s replayability. Choosing to go guns-blazing into a village or to go in stealth-mode is up to you. In fact, you have certain mission objectives but it is pretty much up to you how you get to your objective and accomplish them.
Unfortunately, there are still a ton of bugs in the game that can affect performance even more so than the high system requirements. We saw a couple ‘CTDs’, an issue with the game not wanting to start in full-screen mode, what seemed to be a memory leak after about forty minutes of play, and even a strange sound issue with this incesant clicking noise. At this time, patch #1 is currently being readied for release. Hopefully, this will fix some of these issues as it is always a shame for bugs to bring down opinion of an otherwise excellent game.
Conclusion: Crytek has done it again, bringing an excellent cinematic gaming experience to the masses with Crysis. If you can hold fast for the upcoming patches, you will be treated to an excellent game.
