The Very Attractive Elephant in the Room
I have deliberately avoided using the bulk of my words in this review on Crysis' graphics, because Crysis would be a great game even if it didn't look so damned good. It cannot be denied, however, that many are most attracted by its visuals, and this is little surprise. So here: Crysis looks really, really good--if your rig can handle it.

There will be times when you cannot help but marvel in awe at the unbridled grandiosity of the epic environments being rendered on your screen. The inspiring feeling that comes with cresting a hill in a game and being presented with a vast, gorgeous landscape is not unique to Crysis, but seldom has it been done with such a superbly--and subtly--tuned sense of natural beauty.

You don't really need me to tell you this. You can view any number of screenshots and videos and rest assured that, yes, Crysis can theoretically look like that on the proper hardware. I played the game on a PC with a Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz dual core CPU, an nVidia GeForce 8800GT video card, and 2GB of RAM. The game recommended maximum settings across the board, with a resolution of 1024x768; I was able to bump the resolution up and keep the game at acceptable framerates by turning down the demanding post-processing graphical option and the anti-aliasing.

It really is hard to overstate how impressive Crysis looks. So many facets of reality are well-modeled. It goes beyond the jungle, too. Though everything takes place on the main island, later levels delve into bizarre architecture and spaces that share absolutely nothing in common with anything like what was seen in Far Cry. Some of these sequences are among the most visually surprising in the game.

Fair Warning
Of course, the downside of Crysis' intense dedication to intricate realism is that the game is not very artistically scalable. It really demands a fairly high-powered PC to coax the full, proper Crysis experience from its processor-pushing code.

Some games have a highly defined, self-sufficient artistic direction that is partially, if not heavily, independent of the game's technical demands--titles like Team Fortress 2, BioShock, and even the Half-Life 2 line come to mind on the PC side.

Crysis is not one of those games. Its artistic merits are intrinsically tied to its technical ones. This is not an inherent flaw; it is an unfortunate necessary byproduct of trying to push the envelope of realism so far, but it does have the effect of delivering to some users on the low end a stripped-down experience that doesn't represent the core of what the game's visuals has to offer.

So it's a good thing Crysis isn't just a tech demo, as many snarky internet armchair pundits have cynically declared prior to the game's release. It's also a good thing the affordable 8800GT just came out.

Still, the steep requirements hurt. Running the game on lower settings does have more of a negative effect on Crysis' immersion than it would for most games, because it's easier to tell what you're missing, and the game is intended to supply so much detail that there are a lot of jaggies and off-looking areas when it's turned down. Some later levels become even more demanding, which led me to have to turn my settings down at cetain parts. (For the record, I also found that after playing the game for several consecutive hours, I would start losing performance anyway; restarting the game generally remedied this.)

Art Imitates Art
Crysis starts out a little like the movie Predator--in the midst of an armed conflict, you move warily through a dense jungle, continually finding your squadmates gruesomely eviscerated by some unknown, likely non-human, force. In a bit of what is probably unintentional parallelism, you can completely turn the dynamic of the game around and become the Predator itself.

Juggling the cloak, the silencer, a high-powered rifle and scope, enhanced strength to steady your aim, grenades for sowing confusion, enhanced speed to stay on the move, and dense undergrowth for cover when not cloaked, you can silently and satisfyingly take out one enemy at a time, leaving fellow enemies to discover their comrades' bodies but unable to locate the killer.

You can't play through the whole game as an invisible, invincible sniper, however. Crysis features a range of gameplay that is much broader than what we saw in Far Cry, with some sections that are much more linear and consistently intense. There is even some inspiration taken from the WWII genre; one mission drops you directly into the middle of a nighttime warzone, with massive shells exploding left and right, aircraft being blown out of the sky, and enemies everywhere. It's a more directed experience than much of what had come before it, but still within the context of Crysis' open-ended framework, which is impressive.

Much like Far Cry, there is a point at which the game largely shifts. In Far Cry, it came when the mutant Trigen took center stage; in Crysis, it's aliens. Along with that shift in enemies comes a shift in gameplay. Past that breaking point, there is a good deal less of the open-ended, large-scale gameplay that defines the first two-thirds of the game or so.

First things first: it's a lot better this time around. For one thing, the environments actually change thematically in an interesting way as that happens, and in some cases the gameplay veers off into completely unusual avenues (a zero-gravity segment is one of the most unusual bits of gameplay, and one of the most visually well-conceived). It doesn't feel like the rude shock that I, and many other gamers, had when Far Cry pulled the same stunt.

The Other Caveat
That's not to say it's all brilliant. Crysis is undoubtedly at its best when Crytek is doing what it does best: large, open environments. The more directed, most plot-driven, closer-quarters sections later in the game are well-produced and for the most part very entertaining, but not nearly as impressive or robust in gameplay terms as the earlier parts.

I imagine it would be difficult to really ratched up the pacing and narrative as the end of the game approaches while sticking to a somewhat nonlinear gameplay, but that doesn't change the fact that those bits just don't feel as thrilling in the end.

I also rarely enjoyed extended vehicle sections. Using a jeep or speedboat to speed up a journey from one point to another as part of your own self-planned route is fine and dandy, but levels in which vehicles are the centerpiece, or in one case are absolutely mandatory, were considerably more frustrating than fun for me. The goal was clearly to mix things up, but the controls and overall tightness need some work.

So That Bit's Over With
In the end, despite a few frustrating levels, Crysis is an amazing experience. Far Cry was one of my favorite shooters in recent memory, but it seems now more like a rough draft in preparation for Crysis.

Those who play through a game once and are done with it forever will find a shooter that is likely to somewhat adapt itself to whatever style they naturally gravitate towards--after all, it still plays just fine as a standard shooter.

Gamers who love replayability will find they are able to play through many of the game's missions over and over and over again, trying entirely new styles of play. The world physics, the ability-enhancing suit, the gun modifications, the destructible environments, the wide-open environments, and everything else combine to provide an impressive gameplay canvas that can be painted over again and again.

A closing tip: save your missiles for the helicopters, and you will be saved a whole lot of grief.

Turn the page for notes on Crysis' multiplayer mode.