Crysis: What I Was Missing

I was feeling a bit under the weather, and for once it was raining all weekend so I was stuck inside. When this occurs, a rather grumpy monster forms inside my brain that craves new media. Be it movie, anime, or game, I must consume something. I happened to have some Microsoft points gifted to me (as I tend to hoard all gift cards and points for explosive spending binges like this) so this seemed like a good time to spend them. After seeing an ad for Crysis on the Xbox 360's feature link for instant download, I decided to take the plunge and see if it could amuse me for a while. There are no words for what I've been missing since 2007.

Most of you have prolly seen this hotness already. If so, please just shake your head at my slowness and move on. For the rest of you -- check it, you're gonna want to see this if you dig first-person shooter games with a story -- you know, at all.

Crysis takes place in a near future/nowish timeline where an ancient alien ship has been discovered buried inside a mountain on an island somewhere in southeast Asia. You are a Marine called Nomad that, along with your spec-ops team, go in to check out what's up on the island. Along with sweet weapons, you are fitted with a powered nano suit that among other things heals you, cloaks, has a shield function, allows you to jump 15 feet in the air and sprint at around 40 mph, and is equipped with night vision. In short, it's the hotness.

The weapons in Crysis are a mix of real worldish weapons and the hyper-cool future tech of FPS nirvana. Each -- and there are many -- can be modded out from several nodes that are easy to switch in combat depending on your style of play and need at the moment. Whenever you pick up a new tech like an assault scope or silencer, you get both to keep it and affix or remove it as you see fit.

For me, dual wielding a pair of laser-dot pistols was the go-to weapon of choice. I loved them and conserved the hard stuff for when I really needed it, which was often.

When you take into consideration that this is a 4-year-old game originally meant to be a PC game and then ported to a console, the graphics are stellar. All the environments are crisp and interesting as well as diverse in nature. There are jungles and very sweet icy winter landscapes that make the game move so you don't feel like you're just treading water in the same map over and over.

Then there are places completely alien in nature. It was here that I really started to understand the level of sweetness I had been missing. Coupled with the storyline, characters, and pacing, the entire experience really feels more like a good action movie you happen to be participating in. It stands in stark contrast to other FPS games that often replace plot and storytelling with a disjointed series of events which happen to have the same rendering engine.

There's this one other thing that's hardly worth mentioning, really -- there's a tank. Not an armored vehicle with big wheels. Not a nerfed out APC thing that looks like a tank -- an honest-to-Crom tank. A tank that during the entire level mows down all before you. A tank that, if operated with a heavy trigger finger, will turn every enemy vehicle and standing building into a fireball. It is a thing of pure beauty. Also, it doesn't fire a shell; that, my friends, is a Gauss cannon hanging from the turret. A no-trajectory, no-lag-time, no-reload-time Gauss cannon. Life is good.

I know I'm late to the party. My coworkers, brother, and friends all seem to have gotten the word when it was going around the first time. I suck. All I can say is the next time something this sweet hits and no one ties me to a chair and shoves a controller in my hand, I will consider it a personal insult.

Adding to my gleeful find this weekend was the news that Crysis 2 was released in March of of this year. After a 16-hour marathon of destruction I was watching the end game credits for the first game, turned in my chair, hit Best Buy online and popped some gift card cash to have Crysis 2 delivered on the bounce. Yeah, it was that good.

Crysis Series [Wikipedia]

7 Responses to "Crysis: What I Was Missing"
  1. uubergeek says:

    Really glad you liked it Sean! I had played it when it first came out on the PC and really loved it! I have been looking at getting Crysis 2 on the pc, but waiting for the price to drop a bit more first 😀 lol (plus i’m scared C2 might not run as well on my pc).

    I just can’t play fps games on the xbox near as good as i can the pc, or i’d be happy to hop in with you.

    Either way, thanks for bringing the game back to my thoughts.

  2. Oddball says:

    Hells Yes!

    I religiously played that game for several months after release. First run through I did my “kill absolutely” everything that get’s in my way, Next, time out I tried to keep the body count low. Both were fun fun. The suit and the options you can use with it in your drive to win are really cool. The alien nest thing was vomit inducing in it’s weirdness (in a good way). Great story line for a shooter/stealth game. Well worth my coins and time.

  3. Fenatic says:

    *Shakes head at my slowness and moves on*

    You might also want to check out Crysis Warhead. I don’t know if that has been ported to Xbox yet, but it is basically a new camping along the same lines as Crysis. You play as Psycho, the british guy from the first game. In my opinion, it is a little shorter, and a little more fun.

  4. Spad31 says:

    Okay. Just bought it for the xbox. Never got it for the PC either, so Sean, I’m right there with you in the “missed it” crowd. Time to roll!

  5. Sean O'Hara says:

    Like me sir, I think you will be surprised at the awesome.

  6. boogedyboo says:

    Loved Crysis when I first played it and fell in love with wandering the island and non-linear paths. Crysis 2 was a bit more linear in gameplay but had some amazing visuals of New York city and a more engaging story.

    For those that have the pc version Crysis or Crysis Warhead there is a great total conversion mod based on the Mechwarrior universe.

    website:
    http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/

    trailer:
    http://youtu.be/lNFeE8mIlxQ

  7. Bishop Montanha says:

    I might have to pick this up too, the first time around my computer just could cope with it but not to the point of really enjoying it.

    Now that I can pick it up now with a more modern computer, it should be fun

    Lets just hope I don’t get motion sickness (first happened when I was playing HL2. (hence why I like games like Batman – over the shoulder).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Comment via Facebook

 

GWC Projects

GWC on Facebook