Krakn3Dfx
December 6th, 2007, 09:46 PM
I've been pretty excited about Crysis for a long time, since it was announced actually. I am a huge Farcry fan, have played through it several times, and I like that even though it's not a sandbox experience per se, it is a little different everytime you play it, and has some great, dramatic moments that stick with me and get my blood pumping. I didn't care for the multiplayer experience in Farcry, it was all about the singleplayer for me, and it was worth the price of admission in spades. I had high hopes Crysis would give me the same singleplayer experience. In some ways, it did, but in a lot of ways, but in more than one way, it left me bitter, indifferent, and a few times just pissed.
The battles with the korean soldiers were great, intense, and rewarding. The vehicles handled well, the weapons variations and upgrades were very cool, and the nanosuit abilities were good, although I spent more time using invisibility far more than anything else. I guess that was a choice on my part, I probably could have used other abilities more and made the game a different experience, but those situations weren't immediately obvious in the heat of the moment, and sometimes you would be in a situation where you would think an ability would come in handy, but then it didn't work well enough to meet the requirements for the event. The occasion that sticks out most in my mind was a cliff wall by a waterfall where it seemed obvious that you were supposed to power jump to the top, but after 10 minutes of trying, I realized the top lip of the cliff wall was just a little too high, and I ended up having to hike around the wall to find a path that you just ran up to the top. Not wrong specifically, it just seemed like an opportunity missed, of which there were quite a few in the game.
Regardless, the game felt like a sandbox sequel to Farcry until you reached the General Kyong confrontation. There was some build-up to running into Kyong, you see him and hear him a couple of times leading up to coming face-to-face, and I expected a pretty intense boss battle with him. In the end, it was a short man in a nanosuit constantly running away from me while I punched him in the back of the head until he died. Sadly lacking the marks of a quality boss battle that would mark the mid way point of the game.
Then you're in The Core, the mountain where you get your first real experience with the aliens. In The Core there are two types of aliens, both look identical, but one shoots ice shards at you, while the other...punches you if you sit still for them to punch you. For me there's a problem with an advanced alien race sleeping in a mountain for millions of years and waking up only to sucker punch me and throw ice at me. The level design was okay, I've heard it being referred to as Descent-like, which is pretty accurate, but the alien AI and variety in The Core was...lacking to say the least.
So eventually, if you survive the hitting and ice, you'll end up on the side of the mountain, and it's cold and snowy. Cold enough that if you stand still long enough, you start to freeze, and then you die if you wait long enough. My biggest problem with this area was that after the game being extremely smooth so far, suddenly it's like I'm playing on my a 6800GT instead of an 8800GTS. The graphical requirements go up exponentially in this area, and pretty much last until you leave the island. This is also where the game very much becomes a very confined, rail shooter experience, where you are held in one area until you complete a task, at which point the visible (or invisible) walls open up and allow you on to the next area.
As much as the first half of the game allows you a certain amount of freedom in how and where you travel on the island and what you do, once you hit the snow, that's all over. Move to point A, shoot X number of aliens, move to point B, shoot X number of aliens, move to point C, turn something on/off, move to point D, and so on. For me, it felt like an entirely different team was working on the 2nd half of the game, with different goals and expectations in mind, and it's definitely disappointing.
I won't go into the last level of the game or the end boss battle. I wasn't completely disappointed by the final boss, but it felt a lot like a boss from the old side scrolling shooters like Gradius, which is fine, except what's probably the coolest weapon in the game can only be used one time, which is a pretty big bummer.
Crysis for me is a 7/10 for the singleplayer, since I haven't tried the multiplayer. It's a good game, or a good half a game I guess, great concepts, inconsistent application of those concepts. There were also some pretty severe graphical and audio bugs for me, which I won't go into here, but they were there regardless.
Hopefully the sequel will be more like the first half of this game, and less like post-Core.
The battles with the korean soldiers were great, intense, and rewarding. The vehicles handled well, the weapons variations and upgrades were very cool, and the nanosuit abilities were good, although I spent more time using invisibility far more than anything else. I guess that was a choice on my part, I probably could have used other abilities more and made the game a different experience, but those situations weren't immediately obvious in the heat of the moment, and sometimes you would be in a situation where you would think an ability would come in handy, but then it didn't work well enough to meet the requirements for the event. The occasion that sticks out most in my mind was a cliff wall by a waterfall where it seemed obvious that you were supposed to power jump to the top, but after 10 minutes of trying, I realized the top lip of the cliff wall was just a little too high, and I ended up having to hike around the wall to find a path that you just ran up to the top. Not wrong specifically, it just seemed like an opportunity missed, of which there were quite a few in the game.
Regardless, the game felt like a sandbox sequel to Farcry until you reached the General Kyong confrontation. There was some build-up to running into Kyong, you see him and hear him a couple of times leading up to coming face-to-face, and I expected a pretty intense boss battle with him. In the end, it was a short man in a nanosuit constantly running away from me while I punched him in the back of the head until he died. Sadly lacking the marks of a quality boss battle that would mark the mid way point of the game.
Then you're in The Core, the mountain where you get your first real experience with the aliens. In The Core there are two types of aliens, both look identical, but one shoots ice shards at you, while the other...punches you if you sit still for them to punch you. For me there's a problem with an advanced alien race sleeping in a mountain for millions of years and waking up only to sucker punch me and throw ice at me. The level design was okay, I've heard it being referred to as Descent-like, which is pretty accurate, but the alien AI and variety in The Core was...lacking to say the least.
So eventually, if you survive the hitting and ice, you'll end up on the side of the mountain, and it's cold and snowy. Cold enough that if you stand still long enough, you start to freeze, and then you die if you wait long enough. My biggest problem with this area was that after the game being extremely smooth so far, suddenly it's like I'm playing on my a 6800GT instead of an 8800GTS. The graphical requirements go up exponentially in this area, and pretty much last until you leave the island. This is also where the game very much becomes a very confined, rail shooter experience, where you are held in one area until you complete a task, at which point the visible (or invisible) walls open up and allow you on to the next area.
As much as the first half of the game allows you a certain amount of freedom in how and where you travel on the island and what you do, once you hit the snow, that's all over. Move to point A, shoot X number of aliens, move to point B, shoot X number of aliens, move to point C, turn something on/off, move to point D, and so on. For me, it felt like an entirely different team was working on the 2nd half of the game, with different goals and expectations in mind, and it's definitely disappointing.
I won't go into the last level of the game or the end boss battle. I wasn't completely disappointed by the final boss, but it felt a lot like a boss from the old side scrolling shooters like Gradius, which is fine, except what's probably the coolest weapon in the game can only be used one time, which is a pretty big bummer.
Crysis for me is a 7/10 for the singleplayer, since I haven't tried the multiplayer. It's a good game, or a good half a game I guess, great concepts, inconsistent application of those concepts. There were also some pretty severe graphical and audio bugs for me, which I won't go into here, but they were there regardless.
Hopefully the sequel will be more like the first half of this game, and less like post-Core.