Crytek

More Like Crysis 2.5

HIGH Finely tuned predatory gameplay. Also, silenced shotguns.

LOW The abysmal final boss fight.

WTF The explanation for how Prophet's back in the saddle is ridiculous.

A Beautiful Bore

HIGH The new bow is pretty sweet.

LOW The final boss is everything that's wrong with boss fights.

WTF I can't punch a thin wooden door down? This is still a thing?

Crysis 2 is an excellent game and worth playing if you have ever enjoyed first-person shooters at all. On many levels, however, I thought the game couldn't really decide what it wanted to be about. Is it a game about making sound tactical choices in an operation against a superior force, or is it a (bad) story about squid attacking New York City with a bio-weapon?

Clothes Really Do Make the Man

HIGH Taking out every single soldier in a level, completely undetected.

LOW Alcatraz's status as a silly silent protagonist.

WTF Why can I bash this door down, but not that one?

An unsolicited copy of Crysis 2 showed up at my door today (always a pleasant surprise when that happens) and I put about an hour into it. I've heard that the multiplayer demo available wasn't too well-received, but I never got around to checking it out and I never played the first Crysis either, so I was coming into the game basically as fresh as possible. First impressions of the campaign? Very positive.

Crytek's flagship shooter returns with a bang

HIGH Combating scores of aliens while being pursued by nanosuited KPA soldiers through dense, frozen jungles.

LOW Realizing it has to come to an end.

WTF Plasma cannon? Oh yeah!

Game Description: Take on the fight as the volatile Sergeant "Psycho" Sykes in a new parallel story taking place during the events of Crysis. Psycho's secret mission will take him to the other side of the island on a ruthless pursuit of a North Korean general hell-bent on obtaining powerful technology. With the versatile powers of his Nanosuit and an arsenal of fully customizable weapons & vehicles at his disposal, Sykes will do whatever it takes to carry out his top-secret objective. Action on the other side of the island is more intense, the battles are fierce, and the mission protocol is no longer "Adapt to Survive". As Sergeant Sykes, now you must adapt to dominate the battle. Twin SMG's blazing, seizing new vehicles, or going stealth, the action and the victory is on your terms.

Crysis Warhead is finally upon us, and that can only mean one thing—more tweaking! Before reading this guide, it is imperative that you read my original Crysis optimization guide, as I'm not going to re-explain how to alter configuration files or access console commands. The engine is largely the same, and all of the information from the previous guide is still valid. Fortunately though it is far less necessary to use "tweaks" to get great performance from Crysis Warhead due to heavy optimization of the game engine.

I don't care what Cevat Yerli says about their "upscaling" game engine, Crytek's partnerships with Intel and nVidia, or the many gamers (including me) who insist that Crysis scales well and runs just fine. The reality is that this is a game that, despite a relatively lengthy development cycle, was probably released one generation of hardware too soon.