A great shooter that could've easily been better with a bit more work.
The story is worthy of the silver screen. While there isn't any deep psychological elements or some lesson to be learned, it has a colorful cast, a good variety, and an interesting War of the Worlds feel. You play as a member of the US Delta Force inserted onto the fictional Lingshan Islands to find a Dr. Rosenthal. Things turn sour very quickly, with two of the team members being annihilated in short order by unknown forces. Once you figure out who the third party is the roller coaster ride starts and doesn't stop until the credits.
Your suit is equipped with 3 powers. You have Speed, Armor, and Strength. Each has a certain application and is rather fun to chain together. For example use speed to run forward very quickly, switch to strength and leap through the air at a tremendous speed. The cloak ability also allows you to confuse your enemies and pull off some rather cool maneuvers.
Unfortunately these powers could be better done. For example Cloaking power deteriorates as you move. The faster you move the faster it deteriorates. Problem: If you like being super sneaky, the cloaking power fuzzes out too fast. A lot of your early stealth will be turning on cloak, creeping over the hill and...no one. At first it's tense, but then it's tedious. Proposed Solution: Make cloak deterioration related to enemy presence. If there are no enemies, cloak does not deteriorate. If enemies are in the distance it deteriorates very slowly. If an enemy i very close it deteriorates quickly. If the enemy is staring at you face to face, cloak switched off. Also have cloak deteriorate even if the enemy is not looking at you (relative to distance not sight), then add a knife attack that you can use without breaking cloaking, and bam, you have a fun, balanced stealth system.
Speed. Currently it makes you run slightly faster and can allow you to sprint a short period of time. How it could be better: Make it slow motion! And increase your normal movement speed even more. The current speed power has little combat application besides escape. In order to better give a feel of speed, put the world into slow motion and keep the player's movement the same. Of course for balance purposes don't let the slow mo last to long. Think similar to the game Timeshift, but better.
Strength. Currently the most useless power. Firing your weapon costs points in this mode, but reduces your recoil. It also allows your to dish out more damaging melee attacks, and jump higher. How to make it better: Make the recoil reduction free, like a passive power. This alone would make strength immediately more useful. Next hype up the power of your punches. I want to be able to punch a tank and sending it flying a ridiculous distance. Allow me to pick up cars and throw them. Stupid? Perhaps but you can't deny how cool it would be. Of course for balance, make Strength recharge very slowly.
It's issues like those above that detract from the game. It's not a bad game, in fact it's a great one. If only the powers had been perfect then this may have been the greatest shooter of all time.
The level design is suburb, giving the illusion of freedom, while driving the player forward with some great pacing. The jungle environments are nice, but some more variety would be nice. The ice levels look great, and mark the beginning of a more traditional linear shooter experience. If there's only one problem with the levels, it's the Zero G environments. While they look impressive, they're rather boring.
AI and Weapon Handling is what makes the combat stand out. The AI is very intelligent, some of the best I've seen. They use cover, flank, and even sneak. They'll flush you out from a hiding hole with grenades. If you suddenly cloak, they'll fill the area blindly with bullets hoping to hit you. The AI is also incredibly believable in it's reactions. If a enemy soldiers sees foliage moving while your cloaked, he may flip out and open fire. Sprinting at them with the speed power will shock them. Leaving cloak suddenly can do the same too. Grabbing an enemy creates genuine fear in their eyes. Also realistically, everyone reacts differently. Expect to see die hard Koreans that won't be fazed by anything. It's this believable AI, and NPC fear that lends an amazing predator and prey feel to the combat. You can guess which one you are.
The weapon handling and customization is also strong. Pressing "C" brings up a customization interface that is bursting with options. Early on there isn't much, but towards the end you can easily have silencers, laser pointers, grenade launchers, tranquilizers, multiple types of scopes, and more. It extremely easy to change these on the fly, and allows you to tailor any weapon to the circumstance. This is probably the best designed element of the game. Handling is also good. Firearms have a rather realistic feel. While there isn't bullet drop, there is rather intense recoil and long range shot are difficult. The guns actually "feel" very meaty and the suburb animation and bullet impact sounds make getting shot sound truly painful.
Now onto sound. The voice-acting is really good. I can't think of one character that sounded off to me. Sykes may be a bit annoying, but that's his personality. The impacts and firearms are powerful. I swear these are the most devastating impact sounds ever. It really sounds like someone took a baseball bat to human flesh, which is gross and sounds completely awesome. The music has a nice Hollywood feel, and makes you think of an epic war film. Pretty incredible stuff.
Of course Crysis is most famous for it's graphics and they are incredible. Facial animation and detail is what stood out immediately and it's some of the most amazing in a game to date. The animation is incredibly smooth and articulate and makes everything extremely believable. What environments lack in variety they make up for in detail. The foliage looks great, rivers and creeks look nice, and waterfalls cascade in the distance.
There are problems. Foliage isn't anti-aliased and it tends to shimmer. Textures in some areas are low resolution. Looking at most ground textures you can see quite a bit of blurriness. LOD isn't great either, though I understand that to have everything look sharp would;ve rendered the game unplayable.
Besides graphical problems the engine performs pretty poorly. Here we are four years later and performance still isn't great. I have a 2000$ PC (Core i7, 8GB of RAM, 2 5870's in Crossfire) and I'm hard pressed to run this on Very High at 1920x1080. I don't know if that's possible, but it's definitely disappointing. Needless to say Warhead runs alot better so it's clear that Crytek did not optimize very well.
In the end though, all performance issues aside, Crysis looks great. What's more important is that Crysis has suburb gameplay to back it up. It has a place right next to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and games like it as my favorite shooter. While some stuff could've been done better, there's no denying the game is awesome as is.