The boring

Know this dear reader, the words which will follow were not intended to be your everyday video game review but a mix of game reviewing, reality checking and perhaps also a statement of intention. If you are exclusively interested in our take on Crysis, please feel free to skip the whole first part of the article and jump directly to the actual review (you've been warned).

Here at PixelRage we've been avid video gamers for most of our conscious lives, some of us are young, some of us are already growing a beard like Guybrush Threepwood and some of us are well on our way to becoming old school farts.
We witnessed the birth of the video game industry, we lived the shareware era, and now we see the multi billion $$$ industry that it is today. At some point along the line we decided to comment on all this (as if anybody gave a damn).

We rated the games on a 1-100 scale, we talked about graphics, sound, system requirements and other software specific considerations (gameplay being the only non-software rating criteria) but in the end we always felt that the score we gave a particular game was a very subjective one, based more on the impression the game as a work of art left in the mind of the reviewer. So at times we felt confined by the software biased rating system, and more than that there were plenty situations where the rating of the game conflicted with the overall taste of the review. And we're not the only ones to lament on this.

One of the most recent and well done sum-ups of the fallacies of game reviewing was done by Kotaku – here's the link.

The Crysis software

The graphics, oh my ... Surely you did not think we were going to speak about anything else first, right? And we SHOULD not speak about anything else first when it comes to Crysis.
Let's try some adjectives to describe the visuals of this game: stunning, never_before_seen, excellent, breathtaking, impressive, most impressive, next gen (whatever that is), and we could go on for a while. But you get the idea.

After 30 minutes into the game we simply could not mutter anything but “omg” or “wow” or “holy funky s*it”. Never before we've seen real time rendering on a computer to match the looks of CryEngine 2 as far as photo realism goes.
Without a doubt, the engine can deliver more than what can be seen in the game, because there is not much to see there besides the tropical island setting, the tropical island setting with a twist and a bunch of corridors on a battlecruiser ship (think US Navy, not Starcraft). At one point in the game there is also an “alien ship” with a 0 gravity environment but which to be honest could have been easily left out from the game as all it does is just bring back memories of Descent 3, and nothing more...

So clearly what we see here is a showcase of a potent graphics engine, capable of pulling almost every current day visual effect, capable of rendering realtime shadows for everything and so much more.
You must see it to believe it, as one picture is worth a thousand words; and this is no picture but a realtime interactive show.

CryEngine 2 also features a proprietary physics engine called CryPhysics which unfortunately gets to shine considerably less than the rendering system. Ragdoll physics is generally well done, also building collapses and foliage blending, but the uses are extremely limited, in the sense that all buildings pretty much the same building copy pasted all over so they break in very a similar fashion, ragdolls are in effect only for about 2 seconds when a character dies and generally the physics interactivity of the game is mostly repetitive and limited to 1 type of tree, 1 type of building, 1 ragdoll.

You will not find in Crysis the same ragdolls you are used to in Havok enabled games like the Unreal series or Oblivion or the extensive use of physics use that you've seen in Half Life titles. CryPhysics is more like a nice scarf to go with the package.

As far as the user interface goes both for the in-game menus together with their functionality and the main characters' suit controls, weapon customization and HUD are flawless. Clean, simple and well done. Also it's nice to be able to change any setting of the game engine on the fly without the need reload the entire scene, a feature that is rarely seen in other games.

When you couple all of the above with the fact that Crysis comes with a level editor that at a first glance looks extremely flexible and user friendly, you get a marvelous engine with tools to create your own content that is bound to be a serious option in the industry as far as features go at least.
There's a fair amount of bugs also, ranging from serious camera clipping issues to the stuck_in_the_wall_syndrome and other annoyances like a tank that is stuck because of a 5 cm pebble and the heavy pop-ins of objects.

And not at all the least important thing about this software is how it actually runs on real world hardware... piss poor that is. You're basically expected to play a fast paced first person shooter at an average frame rate of 15 frames per second even on the latest generation hardware. The moments where the game becomes unplayable are frequent and game breaking. It's hard to say at this point if it suffers from bad programming or feature bloating but the reality is that there is no hardware on the consumer market available to make this game to run consistently at playable frame rates.

Also worth noting is the blunder Crytek did while trying to market Microsoft's DirectX 10 and Windows Vista by locking out some graphical eye candy on DirectX 9 systems. It was revealed by users shortly after the launch of the demo that with minimal modification of the configuration files, the same visual quality can be obtained with Dx9 as with Dx10 and with even better performance.

The Crysis game as a work of art  

Boy this part is going to be easy. Because we humans have such a quick response to beauty and emotion, we are almost born as real-time art reviewing machines.

You know the paintings in the tourist trapping spots everywhere, right? You are familiar then with the lush colors, the overdone tone, the all too cheesy interpretation and the lack of subtlety and depth. Crysis is all that.

It's the B-movie voice acting, it's the cliché tropical island invaded by aliens, and it’s the story that reeks of putrefaction. And it gets worse.
For all the graphical glitter the game has, all the gameplay objectives are “run there – touch the activator” or “kill everyone so the door opens”. The “maximum game” motto seems almost anecdotal in this context.

It's entirely possible for example on the first level of the game to completely ignore everyone and everything and just run to the “exit level” activator and ... poof! - Cut scene – finished.
Voice acting is bad, sound fx are hastily done and lack “meat” (although the engine sports 48.000 khz default processing, EAX, and some positioning).

After the first NPC stuck in a wall or the first time I've seen 15 enemies clump together and running in circles after me I basically stopped paying attention to a supposed AI element. A single bot from Unreal Tournament would probably be a rocket scientist indeed compared to the brainless worms that the Crysis NPCs are.
And I simply won't stop here. The music in the game is also horrible and was probably done in 1 hour by a bored midi enthusiast with a painful hangover.

BUT WAIT! ... Who says that a shooter needs a story these glorious new days !? Silly me.
The game has the next generation ... bionic (for all we care) suit which is in fact the single most important gameplay addition to what Farcry (CryEngine 1) had. And it plays out well.
The usual invisibility, strength and armor powerups common to almost all shooters are merged in Crysis in this suit and you can switch at anytime between them for short periods of time.

The thing does create some gameplay but the good that is done quickly fades when mixed in the kitsch pot. All that is going on for the short duration of the single player scenario, driving a tank, some cars, an airplane has a boring-reloaded feel to it. At least for the one of us spoiled by games like Half Life or Bioshock. So there is not to say that if you are in the mood for a Sunday evening brainwash you won't find Crysis able to satisfy that need and it IS probably better than the entertainment you get from some cable channel.
I really struggle to find something good to say about this game from this artistic perspective but alas... I cannot.

Gameplay is short and repetitive, the level design is uninspired, the story is nonexistent (you're shooting aliens and Koreans and that's about it). It surely provides some relief if you just feel like virtually squeezing the trigger, especially if you want to engage in such an action using the latest and the greatest rendering technology for games.

The fact to the matter is that artistically, this game is a bucket of mediocrity at the maximum kindness stretch. So I will stay firm and refuse to take my consumer pills for now and will just act spoiled and play something else. Or read a book. Or talk with people. But I WILL probably rely on Crysis for benchmarking hardware that I buy or just use it to remind me from time to time that I haven't bought all that high end microelectronics for nothing.

Finally

So in the end, I had some fun with the game, it's true only for a couple of hours but the feeling was intense and I don't regret playing through it. Although I would say it's a boring game overall, I guess it takes these kinds of titles to remind everyone about the state and quality of entertainment today.
I know some of you people enjoy foolish sitcoms, but I would rather go to the theater. I don't hate you, but please don't have me for calling a bluff with Crysis and calling it the best looking and most hyped B-Game ever.

Time will tell if Crytek finds the commercial success with their engine they are hoping for, if they end up being brought by Electronic Arts or whatever.
I shall say no more, because frankly I don't think there is anything more to be said that the game really deserves.

A quick rundown of the Pros / Cons that everybody loves and we're out of here:

Pros

- Best looking real time computer rendering so far
- Some stress relief for people who don't have the time to give a damn
- Benchmarking and patting_on_the_back (of the video card) value

Cons

- Horrible performance
- Kitschy
- Boring if you are spoiled with good games