2007 was a crazy year for video games. We had Marios, Uncharteds, Call of Dutys. Halos, Assassin's Creeds, Zeldas, Metroids, and all sorts of games coming out. All of them where unique video games. Innovating despite the fact that they would become outdated by sequels in years to come. But one game really stood out. And I mean stood out a lot, but not too much. Crysis. A game from the people who introduced you to Far Cry created a game that would push expectations. But can it live up to FC? Or will it divulge it all?
Let's hop into it shall we?
STORY
Crysis's story is fairly simple but not effective enough. So basically you're part of an elite military group. Your name is Nomad. Scientists are stolen by the evil nasty north Korean commie scumbags and it's your duty and Raptor team's to rescue them from the evil clutches. All while traversing locations in a Jungle. Which is too cliche to be quite fair considering we all ready tread these grounds in Far Cry. But what does that entail? Plot twists, apparently there's an alien conspiracy. Sadly the Aliens aren't sentient enough to make the game interesting, they are just evil and dumb and have less motivations than Half-Life bad guys. So apperently the evil NKers want to harness the power of the alien supersuits to take over the world. All that backfires. The aliens attempt to kill everyone. See for yourself.
The characters aren't very deep. You have a token black guy , a funny british man, and yourself who is no Duke Nukem. Overall, Crysis has a nice summer blockbuster story. But it's as meaningless as possible.
All the story is pretty short but satisfying.
GRAPHICS
One word. Mind blowing. These graphics back in their day are the best you could see on computers. No computer at the time could run it. Everything is realistic and beautiful like 90% of the time. The graphics are just amazing. Where do I even begin? Ok the lighting, like it's the most beautiful thing about Crysis. Light bounces off the ground and inside even the tiniest cracks of bump map texture light bounces everywhere with paralax occlusion mapping giving tiny rocks a 3D illusion. Light beams peterdown.
Grass and foliage though low res at times incredibly interactive and beautiful. They bounce around and sway in the trees. You shoot the trees and they fall apart and fall to the ground. It's also beautiful. The terrain is beautiful to.
Realistic volumetric explosions combust with sparks as well as other particle effects.
Corridors are fairly minimalist. The polygon count isn't perfect. You'll often see things that are blocky. Compared to seeing something like ME or Quake 4. But Crysis takes advantage of this through it's amazing jagged sci-fi Art Style. The guns look sound and great.
The water is realistic to. Looks very beautiful but lets all be honest. Wave Race 64 mastered this plugin.
The animations are really fluid to. Characters waists and legs move and turn.
The large draw distances are something to savor.
Overall, Crysis's graphics stand the test of time as hard as possible. It looks well better than most games today! It could easily sit play on PS4 or Xbox one X. You can get the best out of C1 by overclocking your PC.
Oh and another thing Crysis still looks darling on all low. You can probably download it on PSN or XBLA if you're a peasent. Haha!
GAMEPLAY
Crysis is a lot more original than most games in that it doesn't heavily streamline itself to become accessible to sell high sales. No Crysis is truely one of a kind. Though it is a more streamlined version of Far Cry it does away with a lot of AAA cliches. None that I can think on top of my head but it's really refreshing to play this type of game.
In essence Crysis is a first person stealth shooter and rightfully so. Crysis has an open world level design that isn't so tightly scripted. You can can either go guns a blazing or sneak around unnoticed assassinating other people. Go around and shooting KPA soldiers or use your nanosuit to throw them killing them as they flop around with ragdoll effects. You can swim around your enemies, drive boats, automobiles, and more.
The weapons are satisfying.
The nanosuit has powers to
Run super fast
Turn invisible
Super Strength
The AI can be either really aware or really dumb at times. It feels like they tried to make them like real life military. As if the KPA had no awareness.
The aliens are much smarter though but they are really simple.
You can throw things, you can do anything!
There are also no third person cutscenes so immersion over cinema is enforced.
Overall Crysis is huge fun I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
SOUND
Crysis has some really good tunes. You can listen to, lots of realistic sound effects.
The dialogue sounds quite cheesy at times.
CONCLUSION
Crysis is a fun game, its a PC pusher and looks great to this day. It's a shame it was underrated. So if you like FPS, open options Crysis is for you. If you don't like generic stories whatever it's still good you can over look that.