Let's get past the hype
Ok, I’ll be honest from the start and say that I was a big fan of Far Cry. Yes, I know there were issues with the AI being brilliant at times and dumb as a brick at others. And yes, I know that although you had much more freedom than corridor based shooters, you still only had two or three paths to most objectives… and yes, it does kinda sink into your average corridor shooter for some large parts of the game. But hey, Far Cry did push the envelope, it did try and give us more and I reckon it did a damn fine job.But turning to Crysis, my first thoughts are on the hype. If you actually take a look at what the hype is all about, once you scratch the surface it’s all a bit, well, vague. Some people are going on about Crysis being massively free roaming, others about how advanced the AI is, some are raving about the environments and still more are banging on about the graphics.
But I think that you can’t judge any game on these merits alone. If that was so, Tetris on the GameBoy, with probably some of the worst graphics ever, wouldn’t have sold more than a few copies. But then again, Doom 3 proved that graphics aren’t everything and if it’s awesome AI you’re after, then why aren’t we all playing Chessmaster 3000 Brainybastard Edition? Because, as the more rational among us know, it’s all about how the game hangs together as a whole…
Click for larger imageSo yes, Crysis has beautiful graphics… and the AI might be so damn clever it’d be able to hold its own in a political debate (perhaps only with Boris Johnson but we’ll let that slide), and we might be able to go anywhere we like but is there any point or purpose in buggering off across the map? What I’m saying is yes, Crysis is here, I’ve been playing it and let’s all just calm down and see what the game has to offer, mm-kay?
Right, for those of you that’ve just returned from a pilgrimage to some remote monastery in Tibet, here’s the score. You play the role of a Delta Force soldier, codenamed Nomad. This being a near-future version of Earth, 2020 to be precise, you’re wearing the very latest in military gear, the Nanosuit. This prototype suit enhances your physical abilities, giving you increased strength or speed as you need it. It’s also bullet proof to some extent and can give you Predator style cloaking, making you almost completely invisible. All these functions require power though, especially the cloaking and speed settings, so you can only use these for a limited time before you need to let the suit recharge.
Click for larger imageCrysis starts as you and your team are dropped onto a remote island in the South China Sea to rescue some archaeologists who claim to have made a major discovery but couldn’t get the details out before the North Korean Army overran the site and took the scientists prisoner… yep, we’re saving the lab-coat boys again!
The only problem is, your drop goes awry, you end up separated from your team and, to make matters worse, one of you gets turned into Pedigree Chum by some unseen animal… and that’s even before you have to deal with a bunch of very pissed off North Koreans. And of course, it only gets better when you discover the archaeologists have found something alien, I won’t say what, replete with non-Earth life forms who are even more hissy than the North Koreans…and guess who has to save the day?