Good game. Gameplay hasn't advanced much from Far Cry, but the graphics and physics are a healthy step up, as are the sy
The graphics are the high point of Crysis, not surprisingly. The draw distances are extreme and the maps are mostly open, with impassable cliffs often used to define the mission boundaries, preventing you from straying too far. They did the same thing in Far Cry, though Crysis seems to give you more leeway in this regard. The island environments look great, trees, water, rocks, everything. Character models are nice, with the faces being particularly realistic. The physics have been upgraded as well - trees fall over when shot, and some buildings can be taken apart, piece by piece, perhaps a little too easily. Other than buildings and trees, the rest of the environment is fairly static, no craters or deformable terrain. Also, the physics system does not allow you to shoot through materials as CoD4 does, as even NOLF did. You can crouch behind a piece of plywood with enemies blasting away and nothing will penetrate it.
The nanosuit is another addition to the formula. It allows you to withstand extra punishment, run faster, punch harder and jump higher, or cloak. It does add variation to the game, but sometimes it causes problems, especially cloak. Cloak renders you totally invisible, and by totally I mean that an enemy can't detect you when he's so close that his groin is touching your nose. An enemy might have you in his sights, but as soon as you cloak, he quickly forgets where you are, firing a few blind shots initially, then resumes a search pattern. The advantages of cloak are offset by the fact that it drains energy over time, and the burn rate increases the faster you move. When used in conjunction with a silenced weapon, enemies become dazed and confused, and the AI just doesn't seem to be functional anymore, running around aimlessly as you pick them off one by one. Enemies should be able to fully detect you once they get within 10 feet or so. The funny thing is, I can see their cloaked guys from a mile away with all the blue swirls around them. Well, you say, just don't use cloak or silenced weapons. Well, I tried that, and all it buys you is quick trip to the boneyard as every enemy within 200 yards bears down on you in a heartbeat. While the average North Korean soldier can take anywhere from 6-8 shots to the body before dying (many, many more for NK nanosuit soldiers), you are dead after 4-5 hits, nanosuit and all. Headshots will kill most human opponents in one hit, unless you're a certain North Korean general who can take hundreds of SMG rounds right in the face and not blink. So in the end, everybody will end up making heavy use of stealth tactics, cloak and silenced weapons, since that is by far the most efficient way to deal with situations. Cloak, kill, hide, wait for energy to recharge, cloak, kill, hide. Unfortunately this also seems to break the AI.
The AI performs well when it's not boggled by stealth tactics. They take cover and attempt flanking maneuvers. They don't react to being shot, however, and keep right on going, not even staggering for a few moments or bending over in pain.
The early missions involving the North Koreans are well done. They allow you to tackle them mostly as you see fit, with some limitations. Vehicles are plentiful and there are quite a few ways to approach a given objective... you can swim up the river or take it from the jungle, on foot or by vehicle/boat, etc. The larger camps will usually have several entrances, guarded by heavy machinegun emplacements, sniper towers, and sometimes minefields. There are also some secondary objectives which you'll be given along the way, usually to disable radar jamming which interferes with your map, or learn the locations of caches, hostages, etc. They did a good job creating the feel of a war zone - reinforcements are flown in when you secure an area, planes fly overhead on bombing runs, enemy helicopters patrol the sky and drop in their own reinforcements when trouble arises (caused by you). There's even a tank mission towards the end of the NK portion. A nice sense of freedom and well-executed for the most part.
I actually preferred to avoid combat as much as possible, and I'm appreciative that Crysis gave me that option, at least in the NK part. Most of the time I would sneak by patrols instead of engaging them unless they were absolutely in the way.
On the flip side, the alien missions are not as good. They tend to be confining, linear, and very heavily scripted. Most of them are the 'kill X number of baddies before you can move on', type. You're usually required to defend someone or something by killing off a set number of spawning aliens. I had these sequences break on me several times, simply because some of the dead aliens wouldn't disappear, which prevented new ones from spawning. I ended up sitting around the first time wondering what I was supposed to do next. Reloading was the only solution. The spawn and kill missions are pretty much all you're going to get in the second 'half' of the game, which is considerably shorter than the first 'half'. You'll get to do them on foot, in a humvee, in an anti-aircraft battery, in a troop transport, and on board a carrier ship.
The end boss, while spectacular to look at, fell right into the shooter boss stereotype. Wow, I need to blow up piece x, y, and z in order, then use a special weapon, with the help of my friends of course, all the while fighting smaller spawning enemies, and *then* I can kill it? Wouldn't it be cool for a change to have an average-sized or even small end boss, or maybe no end boss at all, perhaps something that requires some imagination? The end run really has you on rails, and it left me disappointed.
As to the characters, yes, they're there, but they fall flat. The character you play, Nomad, lacks any personality. At times I could detect the voice actor nearly laughing as he read his lines. Unlike Jack Carver in Far Cry, Nomad is a faceless soldier (literally) who has no opinion or input of his own, other than 'I can do it!'. Your encounters with other NPCs are brief and none of them are particularly interesting or memorable. As ridiculous as Far Cry's story and characters were and the voice acting being pure cheese, they were lively, memorable and had a sense of humor. Crysis doesn't have those elements.
This has become the norm these days, but it must be said that this game is quite short. It's perfectly do-able to finish in 6-8 hours on delta, assuming you aren't doing much sightseeing.
There seems to be a great deal of potential with the sandbox editor and mods, so I'm sure the game will have a long life beyond SP. The MP aspect should get bigger as time goes on as well.
Good game, yes. Big innovation, not really.