Corneal Crysis

A few days ago I finished Crysis, the game with the infamous "eye-bleeding" graphics from Crytek. Sure enough, that's the game's strongest aspect, the graphics. Since I don't have near the hardware needed to play this game in the high setting (yet), I missed out on the truly impressive effects. However, even my meager medium settings were enough to stun me.

The game begins on the shore of an island (ala Far Cry) and I spent a good 15 minutes looking around without moving. The moon casts shadows, the water was spectacular and the sky and clouds were among the most realistic I've seen in a game. That's not to mention the environmental interactions, you can shoot leaves off the trees or even chase crabs or fish.

After my eyes adjusted to the retina-blistering prettiness I started actually playing the game. I noticed right away that the AI had two levels. Sometimes they enemy soldiers had the irritating ability to see you from across the map, and of course these same eagle-eyed soldiers happened to be expert marksmen. Other times I could snipe a soldier while his buddy standing next to him would continue to enjoy his Marlboro Red. At one point I shot one that was having a conversation with a fellow recruit. The soldier watched his buddy lose the top part of his head, looked around a little then almost seemed to shrug before he casually turned to walk away (at which point I capped his unsympathetic ass too).

The levels are very open ended. While you need to accomplish certain things, your objectives can be accomplished in a number of different ways. This could be a good point, but also tends to be a drawback. Some maps are a bit too open ended. I won't even get into the alien ship levels that have you floating in space like a grocery bag in a Kevin Spacey movie.

Finally I must agree with Yahtzee in his assessment of the part of the game that you "get" to fly a dropship. My (and Ash's) theory is that the developers simply couldn't get the flying to work well. So they had the writers write in an "accident" that causes the dropship to be "damaged", thus fixing the problem and causing poor saps like myself to pound their keyboards into oblivion with frustration. Gorram "design elements"....