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I would classify myself as an avid First-Person Shooter (FPS) gamer, having played games like Half-Life, Doom, Hitman and F.E.A.R. Sure enough, these games are great and much fun to play, but nothing I have ever played comes close to comparing with Crysis. Needless to say, this game is 5 out of 5 for me. Allow me to elaborate.

Crysis is a futuristic FPS game set in the year 2020. The world is plunged into conflict following a sudden and seemingly uncalled-for attack by North Korea’s military on an American research facility in the Lingshan Islands. It then dawns that the North Koreans has secured and conquered the tropical island as the American researches have stumbled upon a discovery that could ‘change the future of the planet’. All communications were lost after a distress signal was sent out by the research team spearheaded by Dr Rosenthal. The USA government then decided to send a team of covert operatives equipped with the state-of-the-art nanosuit technology and advance weaponry to infiltrate the island and evacuate the civilians. You take control of one of the Special Forces operative, codenamed ‘Nomad’ and your mission is to work with your Raptor team to rescue the civilians on the island.

The first thing that strikes the player when you begin playing is the stunning graphics of the game. Developed by German firm Crytek, making use of the famed CRYEngine2 system, Crysis is a revelation of graphics, physics and AI technology. The graphics and physics quality is unparalleled - you can see the individual leaves swaying in the wind, tree trunks exploding from bullet impact, ripples in the water surface when debris drops in and visibility slowly diminishing with the coming of the night. Facial movement is superbly designed and is extremely realistic, lip movement is mostly synced to dialogue and there is even some very realistic gesticulation.

Apart from the graphics, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) has also been tweaked so meticulously that it is scary to see the AI respond so ‘humanly’ to your interaction with them. Take a few potshots at them and they will radio for backup and try to flank you. Move clumsily in the vegetation and they will hear the noises and make an effort to investigate in pairs. The AI characters can be seen performing very human actions even when idle. Enemy North Koreans will chitchat in Korean, smoke a cigarette and even take a leak in the bushes. In Delta difficulty mode (the hardest), the enemies no longer speak English, but converse in Korean while trying to hunt you down.

Gameplay is never boring in Crysis. The open-ended nature of gameplay opens up many options for the player to advance the course of the story. Be it minimal combat through stealth, or sadistic hunting of enemies, it is still possible to advance the game and finish objectives. With the other-worldly functions of the nanosuit, killing enemies will never be boring (pardon the sadism). There are countless possibilities of taking down enemies, given the Cloak, Strength, Speed and Armour functions of your suit. Deploy the right function in the right circumstance and no enemies will be your match.

With all my ravings aside, Crysis does have a few actual drawbacks. The most outstanding one is the cause of complaints of many netizens - the system requirements required to run the game. In order to fully enjoy the Crysis experience, one must meet not only the minimum requirements, but the recommended one as well; and the requirements will not be as pleasing to the eye as the in-game graphics. 2.2GHz of processor speed, 2.0GB RAM, GeForce 8800GTS or equivalent graphics processing unit. These specifications are not what the average gaming computer would possess. Needless to say, many computers would not even be able to run Crysis, much less enjoy it. In order to satisfy more gamers, the Crysis graphical engine is highly-customizable and scalable, which means that lower-end computers can run Crysis but at lower settings, so that they still can enjoy the gameplay.

Also, I feel that there is much room for improvement in the storyline as well as the gameplay. I felt that the twist in the storyline was rather predictable and that this has the potential to degenerate into a mindless shooter for gamers with shorter attention spans. Introduction of team cooperation would be welcome, instead of a Rambo-one-man-army-like assault by a single operative and would make gameplay much more appealing. In this aspect, Crysis has much to learn from games like Call Of Duty 4.

Crysis is supposedly the first in a trilogy, and I hope to see more of the graphical brilliance so flamboyantly displayed in the first installment. What I also fervently wish for is the improvement of gameplay and plot, to make Crysis 2 an all-round 5 out of 5 game.

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