Crysis Updated Single-Player Hands-On - The First Three Levels
The eagerly awaited Crysis is almost here, and we get to play the first three levels of this cutting-edge first-person shooter.
After more than 18 months of anticipation, Crysis is almost here. If all goes according to plan, this highly-awaited first-person shooter will go gold in a matter of days, meaning that it's finished and headed for duplication and manufacturing. On Saturday, October 27, the single-player demo will be released, letting you play the entire first level of the game. We didn't have to wait that long, though, as we got the opportunity to play the first three levels of the game. We'll describe our experience below, but please note that what follows contains extreme spoilers to the plot. So stop now if you wish to enjoy the story unspoiled. Seriously.
Crysis begins with a radio call for help from a science team on a remote island. A female voice on a radio reports that the North Korean military has seized the island. There's more, though. "We found something buried in the rock," she says. The date is August 7, 2020. During the radio call, the screen shows images of something strange, almost alien. At the end of the transmission, the screen goes black and the words "Seven days later" appear on the screen. Then a C-17 transport appears high over a large, mountainous island. It's the Lingshan Islands in the Philippines Sea. Inside the transport are five members of the elite Raptor Squad, all clad in high-tech nanosuits. Everyone goes by a call sign here. The squad leader is Prophet. The guy with the Australian accent is Psycho. There's also Jester and Aztec, though they don't say much. And then there is your character, Nomad. The ramp opens, and the team jumps out of the plane at 30,000 feet. The mission: parachute into the island and rescue the science team.
The freefall is a pretty cool experience. Condensation actually appears on your nanosuit's visor as you pass through the clouds, and you can stare at the island rushing toward you. When the parachutes open, however, something goes wrong. Some strange force causes the team to scatter, and your chute collapses on you, sending you hurtling toward the water. Thankfully, the nanosuit absorbs much of the damage, but you find yourself separated from the team. You've got to swim ashore, where your suit reboots, and link up with Jester, who landed closest to you. As you'd expect, this opening level serves as a tutorial of sorts, slowly introducing you to the many aspects of the game. You'll need to crouch and jump to navigate around the rocky beach, activate night vision to help see better, use stealth and silenced weapons to take out a lone North Korean soldier, and use binoculars to locate a North Korean patrol. You can choose to ambush the patrol, or bypass them. We chose the former, and using the nanosuit's cloaking ability we hid in plain view while the patrol stared right at our location. When they got close enough, switch to full auto on your rifle and take them out.
When you link up with Jester the next goal is to help out Aztec. His parachute got tangled in trees and he's helpless, plus there's a North Korean patrol near him. However, there's something else, too. As Aztec is screaming for help the sounds of battle erupt in the distance--and the sound of something unearthly, as well. You rush to his location, only to find the North Koreans and Aztec all killed. There's no time to mourn, though, and Prophet over the radio activates the self-destruct button on Aztec's nanosuit. Aztec and his suit disintegrate; the latter is far too valuable to allow the North Koreans to get their hands on it. You've got to move on and reach the next rendezvous point, which involves another long overland trek.
You parachuted in at night, but now the sun has slowly come up and morning has arrived, which complicates things a bit, since your next goal is to knock out a GPS-jamming beacon at a small beach village, and then get across a bay to the next rendezvous point. We played this part of the demo back at E3, and it's just as impressive now as it was then, as you can try to take the long route and sneak around the many North Korean soldiers in the area, or you can engage in a hectic running battle. The beauty of Crysis is that there are so many different ways to get through each situation. For example, we fought into the village, blew up the jammer, jumped into a pickup, and screamed down a dirt road. Then we encountered a North Korean roadblock, so we jumped out of the moving pickup, then shot at the gas tank on the back of the pickup as it rolled up to the North Korean transport blocking the road. The pickup exploded, sending the wreckage hurtling into the North Koreans.
After you get past most of the North Korean resistance, you'll get a secondary mission objective to knock out an enemy command post. It's optional, and since we were in a hurry, we bypassed it and went straight to the rendezvous point. The team has found the location of the distress beacon from the science team, and the kicker is that while the beacon was on a boat, the boat itself is now sitting in the middle of a frozen patch of jungle. Jester and Psycho start to freak out at Prophet, demanding to know what exactly is going on, since the North Koreans obviously don't have freeze rays. However, an unearthly roar erupts nearby, the earth starts to shake, and a giant mechanical thing bursts out of the trees, grabs Jester, and darts away. The team runs after it, but it's too late. Jester's body is located and Prophet hits Jester's self-destruct button.
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