Reviewed by Brandy Shaul
Back when Crysis hit the PC in 2007, there were plenty of gamers ready to do whatever it took to upgrade their machines to run the game, as it required quite the beast to run. To make matters worse, console gamers were not given any option to experience Crysis. I remember many people back then even claiming that a console version would be, in fact, impossible. Crytek has proven everyone wrong about the original Crysis, and finally gives console gamers a chance to play what is a rather satisfying experience.
Crysis has you taking control of Nomad, a member of Team Raptor sent to North Korea to spy on your nation’s enemies. Once your team arrives, they find out that this mission will be the farthest thing from routine. The real enemy is not Korean, it’s extra-terrestrial. You heard me correctly; immediately after the first mission, it’s revealed that aliens are getting ready to invade earth and they are already causing chaos here in the jungles of North Korea.
The story isn’t really that important in Crysis though – the gameplay and non-linearity are. As Nomad, you are given many options for completing missions. I don’t mean just picking between a simple fork in the road either. Rather, the game tells you where your next objective is, and then it’s up to you to figure out how to get there. The first mission alone has close to 10 different ways of reaching your objective point. You could go completely stealth and not touch any Koreans along the way, you could go crazy killing everyone in your path, complete a mix of both or even drive armored cars and boats.
Unfortunately, once the aliens start becoming the main focus of the game, it goes downhill at a decent pace. With the Koreans out of the picture, the level design becomes fairly linear compared to the early stages and I couldn’t help but feel that these stages just felt less fun. What would you rather do: float around an alien ship at a snail’s pace or blow up entire buildings to get at some enemies?
Impressively, the game runs and looks decent for most of the game. I wouldn’t say it runs particularly great but this is a game that plenty of folks determined a long time ago wouldn’t even work on a console at all, let alone decently.
There are a few things missing from the PC version here, with the lack of multiplayer being the most notable loss. Having played a few moments of the multiplayer back on the PC, I can say that is probably a feature worth losing in the transition. A single player mission “Ascension” is also missing but I’m willing to bet that this one was also worth losing as it was one of the less favorably received missions in the original.
For Crysis’ cheap price on its new console home, it’s well worth the pick-up for those who haven’t had the gaming PC that’s required to run it. Barring the alien missions as a misstep (which are only average, not bad), Crysis is a fantastic singleplayer experience that can finally be had no matter your preference of current generation hardware.