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Crysis is the first title in a planned trilogy and is considered one of the most stunningly beautiful games of all time. Based on a fictional future, the sci-fi first person shooter is able to avoid the cheesiness and unflappability inherent in many future-based games on its way to massive critical acclaim.

Released by Crytek, it is an immense improvement from their similarly-themed yet poorly-executed title Far Cry. It uses the CryEngine2, which is among the first engines to take advantage of the DirectX 10 framework for Windows Vista.

Presentation

Crysis takes place on a fictional island near the coast of Korea, where an alien spacecraft is unearthed below the surface. The island is picturesque and lush, with thick vegetation surrounded by clear blue waters, all of which are delivered beautifully by the games’s graphics engine.

The visuals, quite simply, is one of Crysis’ strongest points. It’s such a huge step up from Far Cry that you would suspect a different company developed the game. The details are prominently defined in everything from the architecture to the textures down to the nuanced minutiae such as the way the nano suit changes colors when using its different settings or the way ice shatters when bullets fly into it. Scenes inside the alien ship that sits embedded in a massive rock can prove particularly breathtaking.

Gameplay

You play the game as Nomad (real name: First Lieutenant Jake Dunn), a U.S. Army Delta Force agent who went to the island as part of an American operation to retrieve a team of archaeologists taken captive by the North Korean army. You spend the majority of the game donned in a highly-advanced nano suit with four settings – armor, speed, strength and stealth – designed to help you through different combat situations. The suit can regenerate itself, removing the need for health restoration kits on any of the missions.

Crysis is an open-ended game allowing players the option to take various ways to meet an objective. The design of each level, in terms of where you can go and what you can do, allows an amount of freedom unusual in first person shooters. While the story is linear, the path you can take to progress through it definitely is not. As a result, you can finish enemies in any number of available manners, along with outfitting your weapons with various devices, including silencers and targeting lasers. The open-ended gameplay makes it possible to play the same levels multiple times with each foray remaining an interesting challenge – you can experiment with various approaches and discover new things in the game along the way.

The AI in the game plays fairly competitive. Enemy soldiers will flank you, surprise you with an ambush attack, spread out to hunt you down and adapt to the highly-flexible game environment capably. While it can exhibit the occasional bad move, it’s pretty hard to beat. In fact, the Delta level (the highest difficulty in the game) can prove a pain to get through, albeit not as impossible as it was in Far Cry.

Alien opponents can be very disorienting to fight as most battles will occur inside the confines of their zero-gravity ship. Outside, though, you’ll frequently end up in combat with pretty dumb alien machines. Fighting them, however, can get pretty tricky once they come in numbers while employing different offensive strategies.

The game offers a good variety in the different levels for single player mode. While most will be spent achieving objectives on the ground, some missions will see you commandeer numerous vehicles and engage in battles inside the alien ship. The game can be completed in anywhere from 10 to 15 hours.

As of the moment, dozens of tested and working hacks have already surfaced for Crysis which can give you a powerful edge against opponents of any skill level. Crysis Hacks currently available include various aimbots (Vector and Hitbox), ways to identify lethal objects and enemies by color and icons (Claymores, Full ESP and Chams), removal of stun effects (No Flash), an ability to snipe opponents from impossible distances (Increased Viewdistance), inifinite stamina, infinite ammo, spawning enemies and friendly vehicles, firing multiple heavy weapons at full-auto and many more. There are actually tons of sites that offer Crysis Hacks, not just MSX.

Multiplayer

Crysis allows up to 32 entrants in each multiplayer mode. There are only two modes available. Instant Action, the first mode, is a typical fight to the finish individual deathmatch. The second one, Power Struggle, is a little more complicated.

Power Struggle pits two teams (Delta Force versus North Korean Army) with the objective of destroying the other group’s headquarters. In this mode, players start the game armed only with a pistol and a nano suit. Additional weapons and vehicles can be gained by completing objectives and killing soldiers in the enemy team. If you think you can win the mode by simply staging a coordinated attack on the enemy base, you’ll need to go back to the drawing board. It is virtually impossible to destroy an opposing team’s headquarters without employing alien technology or nuclear weapons. You’ll need to find a way to obtain either of those during the course of the game. As expected, a game of Power Struggle can drag on for hours on end.

Does It Play Crysis?

A major consideration when getting is Crysis is how well it can play on your current PC. The game will probably kick your PC into a crash at very high settings – leaving you to enjoy the graphics at less-than-optimal levels. The hardware requirements are actually pretty ridiculous that “Does it play Crysis?” has become an over-used joke among gamers when discussing PC specs. To assuage your concerns, though, Crysis remains a very attractive game even at the lower settings, so buying a new PC just to play it may not prove necessary.