A beautiful first person shooter with incredible focus on realism.
You play as nomad, a delta force operative equipped the advance nanosuit for the United States investigating a phenomenon happening in an island near Korea. The game kicks off with you parachuting off the plane. You'll see small droplets of water in your visor because of the humid temperature in the atmosphere which is really realistic and cool to look at (no pun intended). But something hits your chute and you fall right into the water and get separated from the team.
The first level introduces you what you can do with your nanosuit. There are four modes namely strength, stealth, armor and speed mode. Strength mode lets you aim and fire more accurately. It also adds more power to your melee attacks and lets you throw objects farther. Stealth mode which lets you blend in to the environment with an active camouflage, armor mode lets you absorb more damage by adding another life bar (energy bar) and finally speed mode that lets you move twice as fast. The great thing about the nanosuit's four modes is that it lets the players choose their own style of gameplay. Also, weapons can be customized on the fly. You can modify it with different kinds of scopes and attachments which adds for tactical gameplay.
The shooting is solid but sometimes inconsistent. It's quite realistic as it's hard to fire accurately from the hip at range. Although you can sometimes miss with well aimed shots which is annoying. The recoil and sensitivity can be adjusted in the options to your liking.
There are two enemies that you'll be facing in Crysis; Korean soldiers and aliens. Between the two, Korean soldiers will be more challenging to face. I wouldn't really call the AI intelligent because you can easily manipulate them and see how the were programmed to react. It's among the unrealistic part of the game. First of all, they have incredible peripheral vision and instinct. AI's will swarm at your position when you fire a shot even if you're not seen. For example, firing at prone position atop a sniper tower will cause the KPA to swarm at the bottom of your position. They can also spot you miles away and start firing at you with incredible accuracy which is ridiculous and frustrating and which brings to my second point; their incredible accuracy. They can literally pick you off with a shotgun at sniper range. Instead of feeling challenged, you'll feel like being cheated. This is consistent through the whole game in any difficulty. The difficulty in this game is very unique. Higher difficulty doesn't make the enemies deadlier or make you more fragile. Instead, it makes the game more realistic. In easy difficulty, grenades are highlighted, driving wheel and mounted gun of the car can be controlled simultaneously, binocular can highlight enemies and mark them and Korean soldiers use English language. The higher the difficulty, more of the features are removed, and instead of English, Korean soldiers will use their native language. It's a very innovative way of adding challenge to the game at the same time maintaining its focus on realism.
There are some issues although not really a problem but is quite frustrating. One is just how fragile you are. The game lets you play as a super soldier, so it's very ironic that you can be put down with a few shots. The energy of the suit drains up very quickly, a bullet will drain all of the energy in armor mode, which takes out the fun and lets you feel less of a super soldier. The other is the the enemies are too tough. Unless you aim for the head, it'll most likely take a whole clip to bring an enemy down. Completely opposite and very very ironic since a super soldier like nomad wearing the latest piece of armor can be brought down with a few bullets while they take a whole lot more of damage. But overall, the gameplay is solid and very fun. You are able to grab an enemy's throat and use him as a human shield or throw him at his comrades. You can also jump great heights with your guns blazing, and many other super soldier stuffs.
All in all, the game is just amazing. It's one of the best, if not the best, first person shooters out there. Graphics + Gameplay? Only Crysis has the best of both worlds.