Conclusion, final thoughts and awards
Right then, let’s bring all this together in summing up what Crysis is like. For me, the free-roaming has improved somewhat from what we had in Far Cry and the environment is just miles ahead of anything we’ve seen before. That said, I don’t think Crysis is the ‘great leap forward’ that many people were hoping it would be. We haven’t got the innovation of Portal or Prey’s variable gravity but at least we don’t have to put up with yet another version of bullet time… The thing is, Crysis is set within a realistic world, so other than the Nanosuit, there’s not much room for innovating other than tweaking and improving on what has already gone before.But in trying to improve on what’s gone before, I think Crytek may have bitten off more than they can chew and Crysis definitely needed some more development time to iron out several bugs in the game.
Chief among these is the physics engine which, whilst being very good has odd quirks that need ironing out. I blew down a fence panel and for some reason the clipping went screwy with the fence post sliding through the panel and then the physics went apeshit, bouncing that panel around up and down the post because it was having serious issues with a solid post being embedded in a solid panel. There’s issues with the physics collisions as well, sometimes causing objects to bounce around as if they’re made of rubber.
Click for larger imageCrawling around under huts can be problematic too as several times I got stuck for no reason at all, I was crouched but I seemed to have the headroom, yet I couldn’t go prone and couldn’t move. A reload later and the same thing happened but this time, setting the Nanosuit to strength I managed to jump free, except my thrashing around had alerted the guards… completely blowing all my previous sneaky work out of the water.
There’s a few other bugs too, such as the sound of a weapon sticking on… so you’ll have the shotgun noise constantly firing even though you’re not actually firing and the only way to stop it is to reload from your last save. Or there’s odd moments when, for no reason at all, you’ll take damage… if there’s an enemy following you he might even die with no sign at all of why. Maybe Crytek have modelled brain haemorrhages into Crysis? Well of course they haven’t, it’s a bug, but why’s that kind of bug in the game?
Click for larger imageAnd of course there’s the AI, which as I’ve discussed, is pretty good out in the open but really quite dumb indoors. Yes, I know that we can all take advantage of glitches in AI in any game, but having soldiers literally walk into you while you’re cloaked and then wander off as if nothing was wrong is pretty poor, especially so considering the buggers can spot you in the thick of a jungle with ease. And there’s obviously some work needing to be done on the AI routines to stop them doing stupid things like trying to hide in water or just improve performance when you have a whole bunch of AI all working at once.
There’s framerate issues too, most noticeable when you switch to your binoculars or when a level first loads… and of course there’s graphical bugs too, such as my rather attractive four armed version of Nomad, and the less than attractive view down inside my own character model, regardless of reloads, restarts or even the driver set I’m using. For more on drivers, DirectX and which OS to use, check out the Afterburner at the end of this review.
I can sympathise with Crytek a great deal because it must be incredibly hard to model a 3D world where the player can go pretty much anywhere he likes and do what he wants. The problem you have is keeping that modelling consistent in a near infinite variety of possible scenarios. And I think it’s fair to say that though Crytek have done an admirable job, Crysis still needs some work to smooth out some rough edges that even the most traditional player, taking the most obvious path, will still come across.
Click for larger imageSo having read those last few paragraphs you might be thinking that Crysis isn’t worth it. Well, let me solve that one for you. Crysis, when everything is working as it should be, is a masterpiece of a game… an absolute stonker of pure enjoyment. On the other hand, general bugs in the graphics, physics and AI let all Crytek’s hard work down, reducing Crysis’ potential to be head and shoulders above other shooters to nothing more than Crysis being an equal amongst its peers.
To be honest, deciding on an award for Crysis has been one of the toughest decisions I’ve had to make as at times it’s brilliant but at other times it makes annoying mistakes and that’s before we add in the problems detailed in the HEXUS.afterburner.
Click for larger imageRight then, time for me to recommend a buying decision and here’s where you might be somewhat surprised. Despite all the problems I’ve listed on this last page, there’s no denying that Crysis in a bug and glitch free session is something rather wonderful, an example of the future of first person shooters, a damn fine game and something that’ll get all your expensive PC hardware sweating but will be giving you bags of fun and eye candy in return.
Under XP, Crysis is an absolute dream and to be honest, if you’ve got meaty hardware, you’re not missing a whole lot of compared to what the Vista users will be seeing under DX10. I’ve had innumerable problems under Vista but in spite of that I’m still going to award Crysis an Editor’s Choice Award for the very reasons in the previous paragraph: When it’s working, it’s amazing and in spite of the problems I’ve had, I just can’t help but love it.
Windows XP Pro
Pros
Most detailed environments we ever seen
More open gameplay with less ‘funnelling’
AI pretty good in open spaces
Nice variety in levels, especially later on
Physics engine does a decent job
Nanosuit powers let you choose how to play
Cons
Feels a lot like ‘Far Cry 2.0’
AI can be dumb as hell
Odd bugs get you stuck in scenery or injured for no reason
Multiplayer limited to DX9 servers
Additional ‘Pros and Cons’ for Windows Vista
Pros
Cracking DX10 graphics and effects
Multiplayer works on both DX9 and DX10 servers
Cons
An absolute nightmare to get running
Graphical glitches no matter which driver you use
Sound issues only fixable by loading an earlier save
Graphical bugs only fixable by loading an earlier save
Crysis is a good game under Vista and could’ve been great but only underlines the merits of sticking with XP, under which, Crysis is bloody brilliant.
HEXUS Awards
Crysis – PC