Single player campaign is average, eventually becomes excellent. Multi player is surprisingly entertaining.
I'll break this review down into three sections, hardware, Single player and Multi player.
Hardware Requirements:
My hardware: 8800GTS 640mb, 2GB-6400 Ram, Core2Duo e6600 (2.4Ghz)
This game is a beast to say the least. If you like running your games at the highest settings like me, you'll be in for a surprise.
The game defaulted to all high settings for me, with Anti Aliasing turned off. I bumped the AA up to 2x, just to get a little nicer of a picture while playing campaign mode. Overall the game worked fine, but there were some hectic moments (the last encounter especially) where this game brought my system to its knees. In these rare sections I had to turn the AA off and cut a few of the settings down to medium to get acceptable, playable frame rates.
Overall with all high settings and 2xAA i was averaging 30fps. Not great, but more than playable as long as your not playing online against other humans. In multi player you'll probably opt to drop the settings a bit further like I did.
Single Player Campaign:
This section is where i may differ from other people but honestly, starting out the game was interesting. Learning to use the exosuit to augment your tactics was fun, and being able to approach each situation however you want, either Rambo style, or Metal Gear style was a true bonus.
The problem... This gets boring, really fast, there's not much change through about 70% of the campaign, you're going to complete numerous infiltrate, attack, destroy missions, you'll pickup on the AI tactics pretty quick and they become way too predictable, eventually you're probably going to get very impatient like I did. You'll even say what I said "Where are the aliens???".
Well, the good news is, they do show up eventually, and the better news is, this is where the game gets awesome, and I mean really awesome. I can't remember when I had so much fun in an FPS, its been a really long time. I don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't played yet, but this last part of the campaign definitely raised the bar for FPS games in the future. Trust me, you'll enjoy it.
Multi Player:
As a player who once tried Far Cry online, I definitely wasn't expecting much at all from the multi player from Crysis. It definitely wasn't the reason I bought the game. Thankfully I was greatly surprised, if you're a fan of the battlefield series, you'll see allot of similarities here. While maybe not quite as in depth as Battlefield, there are vehicles in the game, they serve their purpose and seem to be well balanced. Nothing seems overpowered, but the bigger weapons pack the punch they should.
The fact that every player has their own exosuit means there is absolutely no safe place to hide. If you think you have a fire escape covered, think again when a player just pops his strength augmentation and jumps onto the roof from behind.
If you like objective based games, you'll probably like the Power Struggle mode, which is very similar to the Battlefield 2142 Titan based Conquest maps... Capture strategic points, hold them to get weapons to weaken the enemy base... Then of course, blow up the enemy base.
The other multi player mode is Instant Action, this is a straight up death match which becomes extremely hectic when playing on a 32 player server, If you want to work on your pistol or melee skills, or just want to wreak havoc on people, this is the place for you.
Unfortunately those are the only modes I'm aware of, but at least they are entertaining, maybe Crytek will add some more in a later patch.
Summary:
Hardware - Its going to bring your system to its knees unless you have the latest and greatest hardware. My system was playable on all high settings and 2xAA (at 30FPS ). For Multi player i reduced half the settings to medium to ensure I wouldn't be hindered by slowdowns.
Single player - Repetitive at the start, can get boring. Ramps up extremely fast about 70% through when you finally meet your new enemies. The ending is very reminiscent of a game I once played: Battle Clash (SNES) with the Super scope. Overall the campaign is rewarding, it just takes a while to get there.
Multi player - Still playing it, it can get addictive and is a welcome surprise. Power Struggle and Instant Action are fun, hopefully they will expand this to a Team Death match and maybe a few others in the future.
If your system can handle it, buy this game you won't be disappointed.