Joystiq hands-on: Crysis (PC)
Crysis has been gathering momentum as it nears release, gathering hype like a katamari rolling up schoolchildren. The game will finally hit store shelves "sometime in 2007" according to publisher EA; after recent play-time in the game, I decided to pour a little gas -- and water -- on the hype fire.
As is usually the case, I only got a short time to play the game, and Crytek has nearly a year to make more changes; these impressions reflect only the area and version of the game I played. Still, I walked away looking forward to the final game. Does it look good? Yes. Does it look better than anything my tiny mind could imagine? Not the parts I saw. Does it feel fun to play? Yes. Do the gameplay and story hold up for hours? That's way early to call.
Crysis involves some quasi-futuristic story where you're a super soldier wearing a super suit, fighting in jungles -- maybe even super jungles. There's probably a government conspiracy, aliens are somehow involved, apparently you go into space, and a lot of other nonsense happens that the EA representative explained to try to make up for the small demo area I played. (I was cooped up in a non-super jungle for the duration of my time.)
I demanded to see the awesome DirectX 10 graphics that would make me literally throw money -- lots of small bills wadded up -- at the CompUSA salesperson to buy an GeForce 8800, currently the only DirectX 10 video card. (Or why stop with one; it's only $1,200 for SLI mode. What value!) Where was the sequence -- said to be elsewhere in the game -- with the wall of water rushing at me? Where were the big set pieces? The jungle area looked good, with gently swaying plants in the foreground and nodding canopies of leaves in the background, but it didn't look $600-video-card good.
Still, the jungle foliage, explosions, and focus effects kept me satisfied with the graphics throughout the demo. By the time Crysis ships, maybe the rest of the game -- and/or an improved jungle area -- will set the new visual standard.
Gameplay hooks me most into any title, and I eventually stopped analyzing the graphics; Crysis felt fun. The combination of fluid controls, attack options, and sense of choice may make it a rounded game.
I usually map my FPS keys over atypical letters (ESDF versus WASD), but I played with the defaults. Even without my favorite controls, Crysis felt good; I was quickly bounding around the area, assaulting enemy fighters. And the super suit added to my ego the fantasy.
With several options, including a stealth mode and a speed mode, I kept my super suit on the strength option; this setting let me leap between jungle shacks and stop enemies with my fists instead of guns. I would close in on a guy, and either punch him out with a quick hook, or toss him thirty yards away.
Near the end of the demo, I picked up a rocket launcher to fight a helicopter, so the guns also packed a punch. The sniper rifle and other hand-held guns met my expectations, and I also shot from a truck-mounted turret.
It's hard to grade the sense of variety and choice in Crysis based on the short demo, but I'm optimistic that the final game could provide lots of options. Various non-lethal approaches will apparently be in the final game, but even without using those in the demo, Crysis seemed to encourage exploration. I took time out of firefights to punch the metal sheeting off the shacks and otherwise wander around, interacting with the world.
Will Crysis be the next FPS benchmark in graphics, gameplay, and plot? It's too early to guess. But I can say that the Crysis I played still has the potential to live up to its hype.
