I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I looked up the release year for this game. Boy time does fly when you're wasting it on a day job. I already finished the game once when it came out, emphasis on once. So it didn't impress me that much.
It's actually a great game, up till the point when you start fighting aliens in it. From that point on it started feeling like a drag, and I only finished it out of curiosity about the story. Not for the merits of gameplay.
I didn't touch the game with any sort of tweak or mod, and I updated it to the latest version available, despite this it was still riddled with bugs. I could almost say that I died more often due to some glitch than actually getting killed by enemies, even tough I played on realistic difficulty.
As I mentioned I only enjoyed the game while I had to fight soldiers, but this part of the game feels exactly like FarCry. The only notable difference is the improved graphics. The AI almost seem to be worse than in that first Crytek game. The green swimming things, are certainly having some troubles in their brains.
From the game mechanics I disliked only one thing. The thing that the whole game is built around basically: The nanosuit. Sounds crazy? Wait I'll explain. The developers adopted it as their trademark, their masterpiece, the thing that lifts them out of mediocrity, but I hated it both in the context of the story and the gameplay. The whole game is geared at making you make use of the suits capabilities. For example if you use cloak the enemy won't notice you even if you stand right in front of him. But if you don't use it, they'll spot you from miles away in the bushes behind three rocks and four mountains. Compared to this in Far Cry you could hide or sneak up on enemies, but it wasn't impossible or child's play either. But here it's either one or the other.
I mentioned bugs before, so I'll give some examples. I can't count it on my hands how many times I got stuck in objects, walls, or staircases in the most innocent situations in the game. Sometimes one misstep and you instantly die, and I don't mean dying of gunfire, I mean you fight your way trough twenty soldiers only to die in a stairwell, because of the fucked up physics engine. Of course getting stuck with vehicles is even easier than on foot, you have to avoid even the smallest objects while driving any vehicle including a tank. I also saw enemies who failed to show when they were giving away brains, so they'd just stand there doing nothing. And I also saw enemies that wouldn't die. Gunfire didn't hurt them. All the bugs one needs to ruin the gameplay.
As far as the story goes it's almost non-existent. They tried to imply some sort of attachment between the characters, but it all felt weightless, and unauthentic. Mostly because you hardly ever interact with them during the entire game, including but not limited to the cutscenes.
The big boss fight at the end of the game felt like something out of a side scrolling platformer game, I almost felt nostalgic.
As far as the graphics goes it's still acceptable today, but don't expect ground breaking visuals from a ten year old game.
+
- Gameplay (before aliens)
- Huge arsenal of vehicles and weapons (tank, vtol, apc, cars, and lots of exotic and ordinary weapons)
-
- 10 hours on the hardest difficulty
- Gameplay (while fighting aliens)
- The story is not developed enough
- lack of interaction with npcs
- The ending lacks any form of closure it feels like you just finished the first chapter in a game
my overall impression: 6/10
Before I shut up, I want to say a few words about:
Crysis Warhead (2008)
Because I don't think it deserves a separate post since it's basically the same game with new missions, or rather the same missions only with another character. If it were today this probably would have been released as a DLC, and not a stand alone game at all.
So here are a few thoughts:
+
- Gameplay is good all the way. You fight soldiers almost always, but even when you encounter aliens it feels better than the original game
- Much better main character, and storyline, not that it's hard to improve on the original
- Level design is much better, and so the missions are more enjoyable.
-
- Less than 5 hours long, and they actually sold this as a stand alone game.
my score: 7/10