Played on Xbox One (base)

Developed by Crytek, Saber Interactive & Crytek GmbH

Released 13th November 2007

Crysis was an impressive step in PC gaming back in 2007, heralded as Crytek's best performance since their groundbreaking open world of Far Cry. It was a benchmark in hardware performance and spun a catchphrase of "But can it run Crysis?". Nearly 2 decades later and it's still seen as an impressive usage of gaming hardware.

Story

The story as a whole is relatively simple and cliché, but the settings it embraces are quite great. For the first half of the narrative, the game can be bogged down to a typical army game with a technologically advanced protagonist - something akin to Halo. However, towards the final act of the game, it wields that 'Halo knockoff energy' even more with malicious alien life and instead of trying to hide it as its own concept, it embraces that feel more and it works out for the better. This switch from futuristic warfare to extraterrestrial combat caught me off guard and even served as a treat. The pacing is also fine as this 8-hour game takes place within a 24ish hour time period. As you progress, the narrative keeps topping itself over and over again, resulting in a better and better experience, however, the cliché elements do become quite prevalent in some instances, resulting in a reminiscing of the older Halo titles rather than creating its own memories.

Gameplay

The gameplay is excellent. The shooting felt responsive and satisfying, and while I normally prefer games with customization, the basic loadout swapping style this game has is done quite effectively. The nanosuit that you're encased in for the whole game has this god-like feel as if you fully upgraded the skill tree, yet despite this, the gameplay is balanced, introducing difficulty increases via new enemies or combat scenarios, all while matching the pace of the story.

Bossfights

The boss fights are very disappointing. There was a total of 3 bosses, and they all felt like bullet sponges that sucked all the fun out of the encounter. The first boss could've been amazing but the AI decided to just stand there and yell out its position. The other 2 bosses were more frustrating as regular enemies started to spawn and gang up on me, making the encounters feel frustrating rather than fun, especially when the enemies could 2-shot me (To be fair, I was playing on Hard).

Characters

The characters border the same lines of 'cliché knockoffs' as the story. You have a stereotypical protagonist who is seen as a reaper of the battlefield among other soldiers. You have a stereotypical ally/crew who are meatheads but show emotion and a will to fight near the end. Finally, you have an admiral and general who are tough as nuts and don't give a damn about what's dangerous and what's best. To say the least, they definitely weren't the highlight of the game.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere is shockingly impressive. The developers managed to create a beautifully diverse jungle that varies exceedingly in design without much effort. A simple change of time of day, weather or camp layout was able to make the landscape that much more intriguing to navigate. The audio didn't stand out to me except for a couple of glitches and bugs within it and the music can be simplified down to an intensified version of the basic ‘army music’ you’d come to expect of a shooter game.

Story- 7/10

Gameplay- 9/10

Bossfights- 4/10

Characters- 5/10

Atmosphere- 8/10