Crysis

Having a big bag of tricks and the complete freedom to approach each encounter from so many different strategic angles is a great thing. Each individual area of the game is overwhelmingly impressive, but when considering what Crytek has accomplished with the game as a whole package it's hard not to be blown away.

As an action game, Crysis could be the best first-person shooter ever, blending over-the-top gunning and dazzling pyrotechnics with enough freedom to make you feel like the cunning badass you always wanted to be. It's an immensely satisfying, richly detailed experience.

Destined to be a classic, Crysis is a creative and technological marvel that eclipses every other shooter released this year. [Holiday 2007, p.60]

Crysis is the game of 2007 that will be judged for years to come as how a game should be made.

Crysis is a truly evolved first person shooter, both in terms of just how photorealistic the whole immersion becomes and the gameplay its highly attuned physics simulation brings to the player.

Masterful.

Crysis is visually stunning, packed with intelligent, thrilling gameplay, and easily one of the greatest shooters ever made.

Even without the picture-perfect graphics and spectacular technological prowess, Crysis is a great action game that can stand up against any great FPS. The acting and story aren't spectacular, but using the Nanosuit makes this open-ended adventure one that is fun from start to finish.

The game play is fantastic, intuitive and engaging with the best graphics I have ever been witness to in a PC shooter. If you love first-person shooters and are jonesing for something to play on your shiny new rig, this is the game for you.

A near-perfect melding of next-generation technology and interactive gameplay, Crysis is the pinnacle of the evolution of the first-person shooter and is the new standard against which all others will inevitably be compared.

An excellent title that really set the benchmark for all FPS's, not just for graphics, but for realism as well.

There’s absolutely no doubt that Crysis is one of the best FPSs ever. A landmark for its genre, both in technology and in the certainty that Crytek will bring us many great things in the future!

This is some fast, well designed gameplay with enough options to allow players to use their own style of attack with satisfying suit abilities and weapons. Crytek has upped their attention to detail in presentation and dropped the worst parts of "Far Cry’s" story.

Top-class graphics, sound and atmosphere - with due modesty: this is the the world's best first-person shooter so far. A game which combines all the virtues of its predecessors: a thrilling story, an open game world, physics simulation and graphics to marvel at.

There was a time in PC gaming when A-list titles regularly pushed the limits of what computers were capable of. This might've been a necessity, but it forced developers to deliver new experiences. Crysis harkens back to that mindset, reminding me of why I became addicted to PC gaming in the first place.

Crysis is a fantastic game that offers amazing graphics that immerse you into the game in a way that no other visual presentation can. The cinematic elements and superb art direction keep the gameplay’s intensity level at a constant high, making Crysis a game that no PC gamer should miss, as long as their computer is up to snuff.

Crytek has crafted an exceptional game, but if you were waiting for a revolution in FPS gameplay, then your wait continues.

Crysis thrives on putting the onus on you to create your own brand of action and adventure in its stunningly beautiful locations. You and the game can haphazardly create moments of such gaming brilliance that often you pretty much have to stand up and applaud. [Christmas 2007, p.44]

Crysis as a whole is really a phenomenal game. One of the richest and most visually striking games ever made combined with a fantastic single player campaign that really never lets up after it picks up until it ends.

Crysis turns out to be a pretty perfect woman. It's beautiful, clever, fun loving, doesn't mind what you get up to and does its very best to keep you happy (it even has the option to turn the volume down). In fact if I wasn't already spoken for I may be getting ready to introduce it to my parents.

What makes this type of play so much fun is the fact that the levels are so huge.

A spectacular and beautiful sci-fi epic. [Christmas 2007, p.78]

Everything that made "Far Cry" good was successfully taken to the next level in Crysis (with the possible exception of the AI). Even if we are looking at one of the biggest hardware hogs ever to grace the PC platform, and despite the AI issues, this first-person shooter comes highly recommended from us.

A massively polished and highly accessible shooter that just doesn't let up long enough to allow you to get bored of it. [Christmas 2007, p.50]

Beautiful, action-packed, and fully featured, Crysis is a shining example of how a first-person shooters ought to play.

The most important point, though, is that that unique blend of playground-style level design and narrative-driven play that was so very nearly exemplary the first time round has been greatly refined, and no longer suffers any flaws quite as game-spoiling as before.

If you want a game with fast action, huge scale, stunning graphics, and intelligent gameplay, then Crysis is for you.

So, while there are some minor hiccups from time to time, overall the game plays well, it’s fun, and it’s something FPS fans are going to enjoy for a long while.

A game that feels supremely engineered, like a precision machine, or a German automobile. It's makes "Half-Life 2" seem old and frail, but by the same token it does nothing to diminish the imaginative achievements of that series. Crysis is impressive, but not imaginatively bold. Nor does it engage us like some other great shooters - such as "BioShock" - have done with their world and their personality. It's far better than "Far Cry."

Gamers looking for the most technologically sophisticated game of the year should head directly for Crysis. The artificial intelligence can be quirky, but the open-ended gameplay, spectacular graphics and incredible nanosuit powers more than make up for it.

It's hard, action packed, tactical and utterly amazing to look at. It wouldn't be at all surprising if Crysis remains the best looking video game well into 2008 and maybe even beyond. Hopefully by then we'll have the hardware to keep up with the game engine.

The sandbox gameplay is among the best in the genre, and its lengthy single-player campaign largely makes up for some questionable multiplayer.

If "Far Cry" was a game of ambition, then here is one of power. Power which Crytek has channelled, with both passion and care, into superb freewheeling gunplay. [Christmas 2007, p.84]

An exceptional game that will remain a pleasure even when the graphics begin to spoil. [Chrismas 2007, p.112]

Crysis pushes the envelope in the graphics department and experiments with some freewheeling gameplay. The end result may not be a perfectly polished game experience, and it might require a monster system to really appreciate, but it's hard to fault a game for pushing so far past the bleeding edge.

Crysis is one of the best first person shooters to be released this year, right up there with Bioshock and Halo 3 and drops action by the payload.

Come for the eye candy, stay for the action: if you have a machine that'll take the strain, there's no better way to show it off.

A vast, photo-realistic game world with perfectly paced missions to play within it. [Christmas 2007, p.78]

The game takes a powerful machine but it does offer some great visuals and some fun gameplay for the first half. Once the aliens come it goes a little bit downhill.

It’s a unique first-person experience that can only be done on the platform. Crysis manages to transcend the hype to go beyond the pixels and stand solid on its own.

Crysis was our most anticipated PC game of 2007 and the final product does keep some of its promise in terms of its graphics and its multiplayer mode. However its high system requirements will also keep many players from fully enjoying it and a great first half of the single player campaign gets bogged down with its more mundane and ultimately unsatisfying second half.

Crysis has long been touted as the new standard-bearer among visually compelling shooters, and in that regard, Crysis does not disappoint. When you throw in a nanosuit, nonlinear freedom of movement and an exciting story, Crysis is as good a reason as any to upgrade your computer.

Looks and sounds great and the free-form gameplay with the nanosuit never gets old. Unfortunately the choices player can make lessen more and more towards the end of the game, where you are just forced to shoot things out. The end of the game is simply stupid, everything stops just when the final chapter is supposed to start. It feels like the developers ran out of time and had to ship the game before the levels could be finalized. [Dec 2007]

Crysis has a lot going for it, even though you'll need a pretty powerful computer to get the full experience. It does have its shortcomings though, and among other things I think that it may prove to be pretty frustrating for casual gamers and that a fair number of gamers won't be too pleased with the endgame.

Crysis, like "Halo 2," is like foreplay without sex. The journey is great but its abrupt ending leaves you speechless and annoyed.

Adding it all up, Crysis is definitely the most impressive title today from a graphical point of view and the only thing the competition can do is smile and wave.

As cool as it can get, Crysis has some issues and bugs that should have been stamped out or fixed on the drawing board. At times you'll be amazed, and at other times you'll wonder, "How did this make it through?"

It’s a startling change that the game emphasizes by having the aliens cover the island with snow. It feels as though Crytek created two games and jammed them together, and while the last third is still pretty fun, it feels like a pale imitation of "Halo 3."

Crysis has been on the receiving end of a lot of hype for quite some time now, so there has been tons of pressure for the game to perform well. By and large it has. It looks very good, and the gameplay is solid with some fun new tweaks thrown in.

Crysis contains some amazing sound effects and graphics, the kind that sells hardware to gamers like yours truly.

Fast forward through scraps of miserable story and melodramatic dialogue, along with a "boss battle" inherited from the coin-op class of '88 (see: "Contra"), and the ordeal is done -- beautiful throughout, mostly amazing, but vegetative by the end.

Crytek has clearly stuck close to the Far Cry formula with Crysis, which is no bad thing. Improvements in graphics and evolved gameplay, as well as brilliant new features such as the nanosuit, make this a thoroughly suitable spiritual successor to Crytek's first game. We'd be lying if we said that the campaign's final act wasn't bitterly disappointing though.

It would be safe to say that Crysis, at least in the single player, does not manage to live up to the expectations that people had for it. Crytek's idea and shell for this game is superb, but falls a little short in the execution.

I encountered a number of bugs on my play through, to varying degrees of seriousness.