Crysis is a next-generation PC science-fiction first-person shooter (FPS) from Crytek, the award-winning developers of Far Cry. A stunning technical achievement, Crysis combines incredible visuals, cunning gameplay and an epic story that challenges gamers to adapt to survive.
Powered by CryENGINE 2, Crysis delivers the ultimate DX10 gaming experience for the PC, including unparalleled graphics, special effects and artificial intelligence. The game is also scalable to deliver a breath-taking FPS experience for older DX9 PCs. But don’t settle for the minimum specs on the box, go for the system recommendations: for graphics of an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB or similar / ATI X1800XT (SM 3.0) or DX10 equivalent, Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.2GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+, and 2GB RAM memory.
System: PC
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Release dates: November 13th 2007 (USA), November 15th 2007 (AUS), November 16th 2007 (EURO)
Players: 1-32
Developer: Crytek
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Origin: Germany
In 2020 global tensions have reached boiling point as the U.S. and North Korea square off in the South China Sea. At stake: a mysterious artifact uncovered by a team of U.S. archaeologists.
The North Korean government quickly seizes the area, prompting the U.S. to dispatch an elite team of Special Forces operatives on a rescue mission. During the siege the true nature of the artifact quickly emerges, pointing to the existence of an alien presence on Earth, and ultimately the trigger for a massive-scale alien invasion.
The battle to save Earth begins as the aliens’ flash freeze the tropics into a ghostly-white frozen landscape.
As gamers take up arms against the aliens, they will be outfitted with customizable weapons and a high tech Nanosuit, allowing them to adapt their tactics and abilities to a hostile, ever-changing environment and a mysterious enemy.
Watch the Crysis launch trailer.
Similar to developer Crytek’s previous game Far Cry, Crysis is an open-ended game with many ways to meet objectives. An addition to the previous Far Cry formula is that most weapons may be modified with devices such as suppressors, telescopic sights, and targeting lasers.
Crysis’ storyline follows Lieutenant Jake Dunn (codenamed Nomad) a United States Army Delta Force operative, who can select four modes in his military prototype Nano Muscle Suit: armor, strength, speed, and cloak. These modes allow him to absorb and heal damage, lift and throw heavy items and enemies, reload and run faster, become invisible and reduce noise output, respectively. Due to the ability of constantly regenerating health, the game is completely devoid of first aid kits. All of these actions, however, use rechargeable energy reserves that power the suit; energy is recharged most quickly while in armor mode. The suit can be quickly switched between modes using a rapid mouse gesture system, which adds a strong tactical element to combat.
The Nano Suit’s mask has its own HUD, which confirms all changes to the HUD with its own suit voice over that makes you feel more badass. This HUD displays a tactical map and current energy levels, your standard fare. The view is electronic in nature, shown in-game through things such as a booting readout and visual distortion during abnormal operation. Standard issue gadgets include a two-way radio, PDA and audio-visual logging capability, with features like image zoom and night vision provided by optional equipment (given by default in single-player).
The artificial intelligence (AI) in Crysis also aims to be realistic and believable. Enemy soldiers constantly employ tactical maneuvers, work as squads, hide and ambush amongst the scenery, and adapt to changing environments and conditions. AI soldiers will also respond to sound and subtle movements triggered by the player’s movement. While not engaged in combat, the AI soldiers will also exhibit typical and lifelike behavior, such as smoking, yawning, talking, urinating, waxing cars, patrolling, saluting superior officers, etc.
Watch Crysis adapt, engage & survive in this feature video.
So what are the main features of Crysis?
* Adapt to Survive – An epic story thrusts players into an ever-changing environment, forcing them to adapt their tactics and approach to conquer battlefields ranging from newly frozen jungle to zero-gravity alien environments. Suit up! – A high-tech Nanosuit allows gamers to augment their abilities in real time on the battlefield. Players can choose to enhance their speed, strength, armor and cloaking abilities to approach situations in creative tactical ways.
* Customizable Weaponry – A huge arsenal of modular weaponry gives gamers unprecedented control over their play style. Blow the opposition away with experimental weapons, discover alien technology and utilize custom ammunition from incendiary-tipped rounds to tactical munitions that can silently put foes to sleep.
* Veni Vidi Vici – Lifelike enemy AI challenges players to assess a situation and approach it strategically. It isn’t about having the fastest trigger finger – players are challenged to be proactive in the fight, not reactive.
* Zero-G Gameplay – Battle a horrifying alien species in a true Zero-gravity environment, where physics change everything as players must adapt to moving in Zero-G and contending with the recoil from their weapons and more.
* Next-Generation Graphics – Built from the ground up using Crytek’s proprietary CryENGINE 2, Crysis’ visuals define “state of the art,” with full DX10 support and scalable options to deliver solid performance on older machines. Watch the following Crysis jungle fight in both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10.
* Open, Physicalized World – Choose your own path through the open world of Crysis, destroying obstacles, driving vehicles from VTOL’s (Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircrafts) to boats and using the environment itself against your enemies.
* Bring it Online – Full-featured multiplayer for up to 32 players with real-time armor and weapons customization. For a pure adrenaline fix hit the Instant Action button. Or prepare yourself for the all-new multiplayer Power Struggle mode that combines economy and vehicle warfare, alien technology and ranking, all wrapped in a strategic objective-based experience. In it, as a special forces operative, you have been selected to capture and secure priceless alien technology, the following instructional video will help guide you to victory.
This Crysis walkthrough video shows how you and the game’s A.I. have to adapt to changing situations, that you can modify your weapons, use your customizable nanosuit, and enjoy the non-linear gameplay.
In conclusion let’s see how much fun Crysis is on a scale from 1 to 10?
FUN FACTOR – 9.5
Crysis is the kind of game where you can apply out of the box FPS thinking and not only is it allowed, you’ll be well rewarded for it. Instead of maximum speeding your way to higher ground and sniping the enemy from a distance, you might find yourself facing them head on with maximum power. Thinking you must be stupid, they might try and run you over with a jeep, but wait, you’ve got superhero powers now and end up jumping clean over the jeep and are quickly shooting to kill as you do. Crysis is filled with moments that either make you feel relaxed walking around on the beach and swimming with the turtles or gives you adrenaline pumping action-filled firefights against soldiers and aliens. But words can’t do this game justice; you have to play it to believe it.
I can’t justify a perfect score because practically no year-2007 PC can run this game on the very high settings without experiencing slowdown. I also play tested it on a 3-year-old PC, which was supposed to meet the minimum requirements, but it put the recommended settings at low and made it look like I was playing a late 90’s shoddy 3D game even after I upped the settings. That said, at its best the game represents virtual beauty realized, even looking at the videos I just added to this review I find myself in shock and awe that it’s not a movie but in-game. This is the kind of high quality game you bought your new PC for, in 2007 only 144,000 people worldwide found out that beauty (great graphics) and brains (great gameplay) in one package make for one fantastic fun experience. Be one of those people, it’s a must-have!
Graphics – 10
One thing I won’t need to tell you is that Crysis has drop dead gorgeous photo-realistic graphics. Play it with a high-end PC, and I wouldn’t recommend playing if you haven’t or you won’t get the full experience of the impressive visuals. While it’s easy to say that, “impressive visuals” encompasses the entire range of technical expertise of what’s put into the game’s one million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders. What you see is a huge amount of creative detail put into the game’s models that make the animals, plants & human seem amazingly real, architecture from lush jungle environments to icy mountains, and textures that create frost that sticks to your gun to making an entire jungle light up beautifully as the sun rises. All seem completely believable and make it the most beautiful game ever created anno 2007.
Audio – 9.0
While the team’s excellent voice actors are mostly the rough soldier kind, and fitting well-acted, the Farscape & Stargate sci-fi TV show star Claudia Black provides a nice variation as the archaeologist Helena. The music makes you feel like you’re playing in a blockbuster action movie. The sound effects are fantastic, gunshots sound real and are satisfying, and be wary of moving past a bush in the jungle since even the hustling of a branch can attract the enemy’s attention, environmental sounds are present to make for an immersive ambiance.
Ingenuity – 9.5
The best keyboard and mouse controls FPS games can offer are in the game. Easily customizable, and they tie in perfectly with the environment interaction you can do. The first half of the game basically lets you play around in huge levels with objectives tying you progressing the story, but you can approach the objectives in one of many ways the suit provides, whatever expertise fits your style. This results in a great sense of creative freedom in interactive gameplay as you scour the sandbox maps. Let’s just say I ended up acting out jungle scenes from the movie Predator with the cloak ability by picking off Korean hostiles one by one as the rest of the patrol grew more and more scared! On the other hand the game pushes back by giving you massive surprises, as for example a tank bulldozers into the hut you’re camping out in. You wouldn’t be able to have this much fun without the straightforward interaction with the suit’s abilities through a simple press the mouse’s wheel button and swiftly moving the mouse to the ability of your choice. While your health regenerates, these abilities are well balanced to the point where without mentally outmaneuvering the enemies that come your way, you’re clearly not invincible, which adds a strong urge to want to survive to finish the game.
Replay Value – 8.5
Depending on the difficulty mode you choose and your play style (runners are quick or explorers take their sweet time) you can expect to spend anywhere from 8 to 20 hours playing through the single player campaign, and you’ll want to revisit the beautiful and fun levels a second time. The multiplayer modes can definitely add a lot to the package, especially since there already are free additional Crysis maps to download. But there’s something else that extends the replayability. The game comes with the developer’s own level modifying software (sandbox editor), so you and the online Crysis mod community can create their own single player and multiplayer levels! I’m positive that will keep the game alive until Crysis 2 arrives.