Weapons and that Nanosuit
So we’ve got this far and I still haven’t covered any of the weapons or your Nanosuit and all gadgets and gizmos you get to play with.Anyone who’s had a go with the sandbox editor in the single player demo will be more than familiar with the wide range of armaments on offer in Crysis. You’ve got everything a futuristic special forces soldier could need. To start off with, your special ops standard weapons are the SCAR rifle and SOCOM sidearm, both of which, as with pretty much every weapon in the game, can be modified with silencers, laser sights, flashlights etc. Obviously the LAW rocket launcher can’t take a silencer and it seems a bit odd that you can fit a red-dot reflex site to something as inaccurate as a shotgun, but there you go.
To kick off, you won’t have access to every modification but you can cannibalise other weapons, stripping them of their mods to use elsewhere, which is very handy. The Nanosuit’s strength mode comes into play here as well as some of the heavier weapons, such as the Minigun, are much better if you use your suit’s powers to not only pick the damn thing up but also lessen recoil and increase accuracy.
Click for larger imageOn the vehicle front Crysis reminded me a lot of Far Cry in that you can climb into practically every vehicle in the game. To start off with you’ve just get access to Humvees and civilian trucks but later on there’s a brilliant tank mission with you leading a platoon of tanks into battle. Most vehicles have multiple seats, which seems a bit odd in the single player campaign as sitting in the back of a Humvee or a gunboat isn’t going to get you very far. Swapping seats is a matter of a keypress though you do have to be careful how you get in… I’ve lost count of the number f times I’ve legged it to truck to make a quick getaway and then, because I’ve approached from the passenger side or back door, found myself just sitting there wondering where the steering wheel has gone.
Crysis gives a heavy emphasis to the physics on the vehicles, mainly the tyred ones, in that shooting out a tyre has an effect on the handling. Sadly, times when North Koreans are hurtling towards you and a quick tyre shot results in a spectacular crash are not all that frequent… so there’s not many A-Team moments to be had.
You main weapon is your Nanosuit and a lot of the gameplay hinges around how you use the armour, strength, speed and cloak settings. You could opt for the stealthy approach, creeping along cloaked (which drains power more slowly), suss out the area and then retreat to a safe vantage point using strength to jump up beyond the reach of the enemy. Or you could go for maximum speed, tear-arse into the enemy taking them by surprise and quickly switch to strength to batter them with your fists, the choice is yours.
Click for larger imageSeeing as the Nanosuit is it’s own little environment keeping you alive, there’s not a medipac or recharge point to be found in Crysis. If you’re taking too much damage it’s simply a case of finding cover and letting your armour recharge. For me, this took some of the urgency out of Crysis. Taking too much damage? Just hole up and wait a few seconds for the suit to sort itself out and you’re good to go again. I found myself using a ‘shoot and cover’ method to progress, waiting until a cautious enemy snuck into view or until the suit was back up to power and then going after them… The lack of a ‘can I make it to the next health kit/recharge point?’ feeling did take some of the edge off the firefights and made it a more immediate ‘can I find cover to pick them off from?’ game.
Click for larger imageThat said, the firefights are brilliant fun and watching an enemy spin around or stagger back when you hit him in the shoulder is great. Add in the AI which generally reacts as you’d expect a human to, and you’ve got yourself a lot of fun.