Jelle's "Crysis" Amature Review

The Story

Crysis is a game about an alien invasion somewhere in the year 2020. You and your US Special Forces-team gets dropped on an island filled with North Korean soldiers and aliens. The story is this game is interesting and somethimes exiting.

The Graphics

Crysis was an over-hyped game befor it got released. The main reason for that hype were the graphics. One trailer after another showed beatifull graphics and realistic physics. Everyone couldn't wait to get their hands on Crysis, untill people found out about the requirements.

Yes, the graphics are beatifull! But WOW do you need a good system to run this game. I managed to play Crysis on XP ( Graphics/Performance enhancement tweaks ) on 1600x1200. But I was only able to to that because all my hardware is overclocked pretty darn high.

If you ask me, with the default settings, the game looks to ugly. The environment doesn't have the correct gamma/contrast/brightness settings, rocks are to "flat", the textures don't look so good, etc... I used tweaks that I found online and I messed around myself untill I found a good color-balance and many tweaks provided beatifull DirectX 10 details. To avoid uploading many screenshots again, I am just gonna refer you guys to an old page -> http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=241946 .

Some people say, the requirements for these graphics are to high. I disagree. The graphics in this game are so amazing. This game reminds me of Halfe Life 2 when it got released. This game has the same "wauw" factor. Let's compare Crysis to games that run on Unreal Engine 3. One of the biggest problems in Unreal Engine games is that the framerate ALWAYS effects mouse-speed. Crysis only has that problem once you go below 30FPS. As long as your PC manages to stay above that, you will not encounter any mouse-lag problems so it doesn't really matter that the framerate is not so high as in other new games. In UT3 or GOW, you WILL notice your mouse-speed dropping if your framerate drops below 62FPS. Many people won't notice mouse-speed changes from 62FPS to 50FPS, but I always play with a very high mouse-speed and that's why I do notice this.

However, I do feel that I need to play the Crysis singleplayer again once I get my 9800GTX. Can't wait to play the game on 2048x1536

The Special Effects

In every review you can read that the Physics in this game are amazing, I completely disagree. There are only 2 things that are actually NEW in this game:
1. You can destroy trees ( and only 1 kind )
2. Fire looks very realistic ( http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff312/JelleMees/Crysis/Crysis2007-11-1419-28-05-88.jpg )
All other things are far from special. A CSS map designer I know demonstrated a map where he had rebuild the small houses from Crysis, he clearly showed me that you can have the same building-destruction in the current Source engine.

You can still walk trough plants, there are still many trees that can not be destroyed and you can not destroy rocks, leave permanent marks in the ground, etc...

Crysis is just a small step in the right direction, but there are so many things that could have been done, but haven't been done because it would require MORE CPU- and GPU-power, and that is something that the current hardware just can't provide.

Crysis is the one and only game where i actually like motion-blur. The effect isn't really original but it's worth mentioning.

The vehicles

In Crysis you can controll cars, boats and helicopters. They are all very easy to controll. The ID-Software could learn a thing or two from Crytek... It's to bad though that enemies have some kind of superpower that allows them to see from a huge distance that YOU are the one driving the vehicle, and not a Korean soldier. It would be very cool if you could get very close to them before they realize that you are their enemy. Well, maybe that's something we'll see in Crysis 2

The Nanosuit

1. Maximum Armor
Allows you to take a lot of hits without dieing.

2. Maximum Strenght
Allows you to jump very high, flip cars, use soldiers as a football, etc...

3. Maximum Stealth
I prefer this mode, allows you to become invisible for a small amount of time.

4. Maximum Speed
Allaws you to run very fast for a short time

The Gameplay Overall

I look at Crysis and I see "Half Life 2 2008". This game gave me the exact same feeling I had while playing Half Life 2 for the first time. Bioshock was pretty cool, original story, good graphics but there is something about huge beatifull levels with a lot of freedom that give me that extra "kick" in a shooter. Bioshock doesn't have that. COD4 doesn't have that.

Aiming is pretty difficult untill you know when and how to use every weapon. It might piss you off at the beginning that it's so hard to hit something but in the end you don't remember why it was so hard in the beginning.

I have to be honest though, there are some levels that are pretty ennoying and somethimes your teammates are to retarded, but the majority is fun fun fun!

Audio

The Audio is great. Sound effects are cool, music is pretty good and 5.1 surround works perfectly.

The Multiplayer

Already addicted to one shooter ( America's Army ) so I didn't eaven launch the multiplayer, not once.

Conclusion

If you have a Geforce 8800 and if you have an overclocked C2D or C2Q, try it out. You really need very good hardware to get an unique experience. Crysis, for me, is the #1 Singleplayer game from 2007. I think that only Far Cry 2 can beat this game when it comes to graphics and gameplay.

Pros:
+ Freedom
+ Challenging
+ Uge environments
+ Unique gameplay

Cons:
- Most people I personally know can't run it like I can

My score: 9/10

PS: Sorry for all spelling faults

Bytor said:

Are there any add ons for single player? If so where can I get them?

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