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Crysis
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 16th November 2007
The Otherside
I’m adding an extra page on gameplay in here and deviating from the usual bit-tech template a little. It’s something I only do for the biggest and best games and it’s something I feel I owe to Crysis.So far I’ve focused almost exclusively on the problems that the game has and there are a few other things I haven’t mentioned – such as the fact that cutscenes are unskippable the first time you see them. It occurs to me that I’ve probably painted a picture of the game which is a bit harsh and one-sided and it’s something I want to put right. I could rewrite the above to be more balanced, but those are all perfectly reasonable complaints, so I think I’ll let them stand.
So, what’s good about Crysis and what can it do flawlessly?
Well, we’ll put the graphics aside for now and focus on the gameplay. On that basis, my personal favourite thing about the game was being able to customise my weapons, which I already mentioned, and being able to exploit that by adjusting the game to suit my preferences.
Example. Richard spent a good chunk of the day watching me play the game and would invariably get annoyed at my methods, much as he does in Team Fortress 2 because I like to use a stealth-sniper approach. Richard himself prefers to use his fists, probably because he’s such a bad shot.
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He’s so bad in fact that he usually plays as a Medic in Team Fortress 2. I mean, really...
When I approach a firefight my first instinct is to try and tackle foes from a distance. I therefore set my weapons up with silencers and scopes, put laser sights and silencers on my pistols and stealth my way behind the enemy if possible. There’s nothing I love more than a silent headshot from akimbo pistols, so I’ll kick off with that and then switch to a scoped assault rifle to finish as the enemies track me down.
The great thing about Crysis is that the game doesn’t enforce a style on you. There’s multiple entries to most areas and only the occasional minefield which can’t be circumvented with a strength-mode mega-jump. That allows players like Richard to harness the weapon mods and suit mods for their own styles – in Richard's case sprinting into the middle of a battle, whacking people around with his fists and finishing things off with a shotgun.
Brilliantly, if things get hairy then you can always grab an enemy by the throat and use him as a human shield or chuck him off a ledge. Pretty much anything can be picked up and thrown around, from frogs to…well, OK, that’s as weird as it gets.
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The other great thing about Crysis is the way that the physics, whilst occasionally a little perplexing, are consistently worked throughout the gameworld. Physics is a bit of a buzz-word right now and has been ever since the Gravity Gun was first invented. Some games use physics well and some don’t – Crysis is one of the former despite the frequent problems.
It’s pretty rare to find an area in the game which doesn’t have physics worked carefully throughout it. It’s in melee combat as we mentioned before and pretty much anything can be picked up or smashed, but it’s also in ranged combat because bullets will rip through and destroy some materials, meaning you can tactically destroy or create cover.
It’s also fantastic when a soldier dives behind a wooden fence for cover and you destroy each plank individually with a spray of bullets.
The range of vehicles is also pretty fantastic and there’s a fair few different types of trucks, cars, tanks and helicopters for players to whiz around in, which is always a plus. I did think that it was a little odd that players had the option to change through a number of different seats in each vehicle, but lone drivers were always in control of the machine guns remotely – but it’s something that I’m willing to overlook for the sake of balancing.