Okay, *now* I’ve finally gotten around to starting Crysis.
It has a reputation for demanding extremely high system specs, but it’s running pretty well so far on my system, even with everything on High. The end result is indeed very pretty, with a ton more foliage than I’ve ever seen in any other game.
It’s a traditional shooter in many ways, but its main feature is that it’s like its predecessor Far Cry in there are often multiple approaches you can take to any particular battle. Although the overall path is still linear, there’s enough openness to the world that you could choose to stealthily take the enemies out in small groups, or create diversions to draw troops away from your path, or go rampaging in guns blazing, or take a more tactical, cover-heavy approach, or bypass certain hotspots or patrols entirely.
The other big feature is that your character has a nanosuit that you can set to one of four different modes: improved armour (the default), where your energy tank acts as a shield; improved speed, where you run faster; improved strength, mainly for jumping higher; and cloaking, making you nearly impossible to spot. Cloaking is by far the most useful of them, since it lets you sneak right past enemies, hide away after drawing their attention, and get the drop on them. You just have to watch out for the limited battery charge, which forces you to move from cover to cover while it recharges, so you can’t just run around permanently cloaked.
The rifle you start with is pretty useless since you run out of ammo soon, but once you pick up a different one from an enemy, there’ll be plenty of ammo for it. You can only hold two different types of long guns, and so far I’ve been sticking with the North Korean assault rifle and switching the other around as necessary. The ‘precision rifle’ is nice, but I’ve hardly found any ammo for it and abandoned it as soon as I ran out. There’s a shotgun, but I haven’t bothered with it yet since most of my fighting has been at longer ranges.
The story starts out fairly typical: an archaeological expedition has radioed for help and a squad of special soldiers has been sent in to extract them. But, of course, nothing goes as planned and nothing is as it seems… The North Koreans are interested in something alien and ancient that was discovered here, and only brief glimpses of it have been seen so far, mostly to kill off other members of our squad (now down to just me and one other member, Psycho). A big shift in focus is supposed to be coming up soon though.
So far the highlight has been a segment where you take control of a tank at the start of the level. In most other games, tank segments like that are more like a rail shooter, where you just have to make sure you fire at the right time and spot of the pattern, but here it’s a lot more interesting because it’s a wide open area with more freedom to move around and you have to be wary of dangers from things like roaming squads of RPG launchers. The vehicles are rather hard to control, which is expected with tanks but it also applies to the regular cars. They’re still useful though, just as additional firepower and protection if nothing else.
Right now I’m at the start of the sixth level, of eleven according to a FAQ, so it probably won’t be too long a game. It’s a pretty good ride so far, though.