Related Articles

Single player jungle adventures, odd alien floating sequences, icy escort missions and alien battles and tough aerial fights make for one confusing time in Crysis. The game delivers action and some twists through the story but it ends up suffering greatly because it seems as if the game can never quite make up its mind on what it really wants to do, as a jungle experience the game is great, it brings back fast memories from the original Farcry and plays out extremely well with the many options available. As an alien adventure, the game feels sluggish, like the section is determined to take the fight out of the player as they stealth around and try to fend of strange gel-like aliens within a strange mother ship / cavern / organism. The game could have probably made use of some other mechanics here to make the player feel more inclined to push around but in the end the areas end up getting a little confusing and really bland. Sure there's some talk as Nomad records the environment, but there's not a whole lot of other things at work other than some transparent screens and computers that really do not seem to be capable of creating things like the squiddie creatures. The flying sequence feels sluggish -- it gets aggravating to have to slowly bank and fire slow missiles at these quick, zippy aliens.

Multiplayer and Sandbox modes are a treat for gamers, there's a lot of satisfaction to be had in owning people with a nano-suit and doing some impressive damage to opponents not expecting it, although once everyone goes stealth things get a bit eerie and sound really becomes a factor in knowing if someone is creeping right up with a toe tag or not. Would I bet people would buy Crysis only for the multiplayer though? No, I wouldn't. But this game would be a decent title to get if you can run it, or maybe if it is on sale, because it does try to deliver an experience of enjoyment, it just fails to hold that later in the game, and for those who complete it, there is some fun to be had without playing 100% of the game again. With the sandbox and mod community out there, I'm sure good things will be come in the future, as well.  One can only hope that the modd'ers really do follow through as I've already seen a more classical title being built around this game and I've heard a new Mechwarrior fan title being moved to the engine as well. The sandbox is a powerful thing and it looks like it'll be a signal to how much those interested can play with the mechanics of the game if they wish to do so.

Overall Crysis doesn't feel like the action packed title I had hoped to see after all those years at E3. The boss battle, the in depth jungle exploring, it ends up being way too short and leaving me wanting more but not wanting more in a way that I would throw down $50 for Crysis 2 with more "Frozen Jungle Experience(TM)" and odd robot aliens and a trip back through the 0 gravity slow motion pit inside the mountain. It leaves a desire that they could have pulled the game out like they did with Farcry and provided an experience that had a lot more of what the game features, senseless roaming and fighting, all the while destroying things and watching the physics engine go crazy while pretending to be a superhero that grabs enemies by the throat and hurls them into their companions while wielding a rocket launcher. More of that is what I would have liked to have gotten out of the game that EA showed me year after year making sure I knew that this game was originally going to be insane. I really hope that if Crysis 2 emerges despite the bad sales right now that they really take a look at what made people enjoy Farcry and parts of Crysis.

Normally this is the part where I say that after waiting ages for the title to come out that it's just as impressive as we hoped and how it played originally in all those previews and private spaces. This time I say that the graphics and engine are very impressive and that for a while the game really has a dead on focus of game play and enjoyment, but that later this game loses that and that the story goes up the wall and loses a lot of momentum that it was carrying in favor of a decision to split the game up and hope that the choice made works out in the end and that we come back wanting more.