Crysis 3

crysis 3

In November of 2007 PC gamers across the globe were presented with a crisis. Many gamers, like myself, believed they owned a fairly powerful machine but were knocked flat on their butts by a little game called Crysis. Less than one year later Crytek has delivered yet another installment to the "nano-suit" chronicles titled Crysis: Warhead.

crysis 3

Unlike the original Crysis, you play as the inappropriately named Sergeant "Psycho" Sykes. I say inappropriately named only because "Psycho" seems to have too many morals and good decision making skills to bare such a name. The game takes place on an island filled with Korean soldiers somewhere in the Eastern world. Led by General Lee, the Koreans are racing you to obtain a newly discovered form of "alien" technology. Although the question of whether the technology is actually from another planet or not is never answered, I believe it would be considered alien to anyone who did not start in the film The Matrix.

crysis 3

As you work your way through various Korean camps guided by your trusty GPS powered mini-map, the story begins to unfold. I must admit the first hour or so of game play is a bit slow and very linear. I almost gave up after an hour of game play but I managed to continue forward. Boy am I ever so glad that I did.

crysis 3

Once you get about two hours into the storyline, the game really takes off. The game play becomes very fast paced and your true objective begins to present itself. You seem to be constantly running in to your biggest adversary in Crysis: Warhead, The General. The General is the leader of the Korean army who is your typical villain who seeks unlimited power in order to take over the world. Oh, and he has a nano-suit as well! He also has an army of more advanced soldiers equipped with nano-suits. These guys can be tough, but fortunately for you there is a trick to taking them out with ease. Remember, the nano-suit is electrical. EMP grenade anyone?

crysis 3

I don't want to give away too much of the story so instead I'll give you a run down of some of the things I really liked about this game. First off, it uses the same engine as the original Crysis. This means beautiful graphics and amazing physics. Don't let that scare you if you're not running a super computer. Unlike the original Crysis, Crysis: Warhead scales really well across a wider range of hardware. An NVIDIA 8800GT 512mb should give you lots of pretty things to look at as well as a solid frame rate. There's also lots of ways to transport yourself in this game. There's lots of ground vehicles you can take for a spin, although I didn't notice any boats in Warhead as opposed to it's predecessor. Crysis: Warhead also includes some of the great sandbox game play that the original offered. For the most part, if you can see it you can get to it. There's plenty of weapons at your disposal as well, and Crysis: Warhead offers a hefty weapon modification feature in comparison to other FPS games like Call of Duty 4. And of course my favorite thing about the game, the price tag. You can snag this game for a mere $30!

crysis 3

Crysis Warhead isn't without it's faults though. The single player campaign is pretty short. Which seems to be a growing trend in FPS games. Probably due to developers including more features in the online modes. The average time to complete the single player campaign was about 8 hours if I played ninja and used stealth much. To make up for the short single player, Crytek includes a second disk of online modes called Crysis Wars. But that's for a different review. The game does scale pretty well across a wide range of hardware, but configuring the settings to match your hardware can be daunting. If you're playing on anything less than an NVIDIA 9800GTX, you're probably going to spend an hour or better tweaking. In my experience the automatic optimal settings the game chose was terrible. But with some tweaking I managed to keep it looking spectacular while keeping a solid 50 to 60 frames per second. The sandbox game play is great but it too has it's faults. Although you're basically free to go wherever you want, there's really no reason to. There doesn't seem to be any alternate stories for different paths of choice. This really left me with no desire to go anywhere except to the green dot on my mini-map that indicates your next checkpoint. I was kind of let down that their aren't more boss fights in this game as well. Especially after the last boss fight. It made me wish they had included more mini-bosses due to only big boss fight being so much fun.

crysis 3

All in all, I highly recommend this game. The single player is kind of short, but you get infinite hours of online play and it's only $30! You really can't lose on this one. Remember to research the minimum and recommended specs first if you're playing on an older machine or aren't sure if your hardware is compatible. It really is a beautifully designed action packed game. It left me feeling like Neo in the Matrix as a lot of the "alien" technology you encounter in this game resembles those electron hungry machines from the movie. I give it a solid 8 out of 10. You can pick up a copy of Crysis Warhead on Steam or at your local game shop. All together now, "maximum armor!"

crysis 3

crysis 3

crysis 3