View All (41)

View All (25)

Like Timeshift, the idea was to make every level based around every possible use of the suit’s powers, although Crysis actually pulls through with it. Here’s a great example: shoot an explosive barrel with the silencer on so it starts leaking, turn on Cloak while carrying the barrel towards a group of unsuspecting Korean soldiers who will see a walking barrel, and then toss it at a humvee surrounded by them using Strength. Finally, quickly switch to Speed to run out of sight from the survivors and pick them off with a combination of Cloak and Strength by beating them down.

That’s really the second beauty of Crysis, the openness of the game. Yes, it follows the storyline and there are certain things you’ve got to do, but other than that control the world is open for your destruction, or lack thereof. There may be orders to do one thing and take a certain path to reach it quickly, but that doesn’t mean you can’t climb up a hill using Strength, scope out the village and blow up every building in the vicinity.

The story behind all this is based around Nomad, a US military Leuitenant in the year 2020 who is one of the privileged few who gets to wear the Nanosuit. After receiving a distress signal from an excavation team on an island off the South China Sea, your multicultural-nanosuit wearing team finds the island overrun by North Korean soldiers. Of course, weird things are going on and it isn’t too hard to figure out that something else is on the island.

If “awakening sleeping aliens on some far off place in the middle of nowhere only to have them start kicking our asses” sounds too clichéd to you, don’t worry; the overdramatic acting and occasional “wow that was unexpected” sarcasm will put you right at home for a 70’s sci-fi. Oddly enough, the dialogue isn’t poor, which would be expected, but some of the acting is rather questionable.

Aside from the over-the-top-ness of everything that is Crysis are also some absolutely ridiculous situations. While fighting the alien menace on harder difficulties, it wouldn’t be too hard to fathom that they are supremely powerful in comparison to even the mightiest of nano-suit wearing marines, but one hit kills by a smack on the back? Armor depletion after a few shots from their unnamed weapons? A disturbing resilience to even their own weapons? This isn’t supposed to be War of the Worlds.

What Crysis lacks, however, is a much shorter list than what it doesn’t lack. There’s basically everything you’d expect in three games rolled into this one. Tank level? Check. Airplane dogfight level? Check. Zero gravity level? Check. No, you won’t find Scooby Doo-like mysteries, but just about everything else is added in one way or another. Tank battles were amazingly rich, and even then there was always the option of jumping out and plopping bombs on enemy tanks or rocketing them from far.