Thursday, January 03, 2008

Game review: Crysis



Plot:
Set in 2020, Crysis plot follows Lieutenant Jake Dunn, codenamed "Nomad", is sent in to investigate an alien meteor crash, you must fight through the North Korean Army which has also arrived. You must also fight aliens.

First things first. This is Far Cry with better graphichs. And in order to really benefit from the game you must crack open your piggy bank and invest in a decent gaming rig. I have the requiered PC specs on my new computer and I could run it at medium with the occasional lag when the shit hit the fan. It got so bad sometimes that I had to put the settings to low just to get through the level. So In order to get the most out of this game you really need a beefy computer. Yeah, the game has some new gadgets but its not really anything revolutionary. The story is not really worth mentioning but I can sum it up like this: Your a dude, who has to save an bunch of scientist dudes from evil korean dudes, and sometimes there are alien dudes trying to ruin your life.. Thats really it. You do nothing but shoot other people. And those you cant kill means they are friendly. You cant go wrong.



There are some driving missions and you can always hijack a car or two. I used to do this alot and damage the vehicle so its about 95% damage when I come flying trough the wall of a enemy base. Bail out and put a bullet in the fueltank. Big badda boom.. They also get you from place to place but I found driving really acward and the vehicle physics are really quite frustrating. A little bumb from a leaf and I am already on my way up to 30% damage. plus you must for the most part stick to the road. If you go exploring your car is only going to get stuck on some pebbles and catch fire.

You are taking of on foot for the most part and while the area you have at your disposal is huge, not all is **acsessable**. I often got stuck on hillsides when the game though I had enough and wouldent let me get higher. This became a big problem since the game is suppose to be free-roaming and here I am getting stuck on 70`degree hills



You have a suit on you at all times that gives you four "powers". These are. Strength (makes you strong and you jump higher and throw/punch harder) Speed (making you faster for a short period of time) Shield (does what it says. Gives you a little more resistance) and Stealth (Makes you invisible for a short time) Speed and stealth was a huge part of my tactics and they made it way to easy since you are virtualy invisible to you opponents even if you go right up in their face. The enemys should have had some sort of disrupter with them or they could have just sprayed bullets around since one hit makes you loose the camo.

Punching through buildings and people are really fun and here the phycics really show of their true potential as you throw barrels and chairs around you



You also have a fifth "power" This one takes you to your weapons for a customizing meny. Putting silencers, scope and laser on your shotgun should be in every game. *slams table* Here you can also switch ammo types and such

The enemys AI is good. They do the standard flanking, throwing nades and runnig away and occasionaly sneak up on you. Something I found weird in this game was that the enemy dident have a clearly visable hit animation. They just twitched when hit. Adding some "hurt" animations, like holding their neck, hands, leg or stomach would have greatly helped the immersion and realisme in the game. Same with the animation when you grab a enemy could have been done better I think. He should be kicking and screaming, not just stare into the infinite abyss exepting his demise. Fighting the aliens was a bit anticlimatic in my opinion as you had to grab and punch them. The words "Now thats what I call a close enounter" or "Welcome to earth" came to mind as well as a sea of other equally bad pun-lines.

Crysis contains a Sandbox Editor, much like Far Cry's, in which new levels can be created and edited. Such levels will have full support in all multiplayer modes. This will allow the player to easily build their own levels, seeing everything in real time within the editor. The player can also jump into the map they are working on at any time to test it. The editor will be the same one that was used by Crytek team to create the game.

I did not play the multiplayer part. I heard its good and Im going with that notion and so should you.



Crysis continues the Crytech teams succsses of making high-end games and inovating graphics. Its with out a doubt the most beautiful game to hit the marked so far. Its graphics are simply the best yet for a FPS and are truely breathtaking. The story is above standard and have some epic and true gaming moments. The only downer on this is that you have to have a behemoth of a machine inorder to play on full settings and truely get the Crysis experience.

8/10


PS: (spoiler) I did not finish the last segment of the last level due to a huge bug in scripting. The second boss was stuck inbetween the hangarships upper level (flight deck) and lower level (a storage room) I tried again and again and slowely but surely I got ahead to fight the big boss. But again my gaming experience was tamperd with since the rockets I fired at him did not register. I ended up with having to watch the ending on youtube.

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Monday, October 08, 2007

Medal of Honor: Airborne PC review



Ok.. yet another WW2 shooter from EA. Lets get it out in the start. It dosent suck. Its not a big woop either but there is a bit a fun to be had in this game. The new "feature" this time is that you start your mission from a airplane and that you drop down onto a map. Yeah, the consept is that the whole map is open so that its up to you to choose where to land and start you mission. Its a great consept but dosent really add anything to the overal game-experience. Its way better then the liniar scripting that has plauged the franchise so far but you still have a set amount of objectives to go trough. And once you get the hang of steering the parachute you quickely discover that you cannot land exactly where you want. But cudos to EA. The parachuting is a fun minigame when you die and was new enough to hook me in yet again. *throws fist in air* The game is afot EA, the game is afot...

This game is powerd by the Unreal engine and it looks good but just good. The levels are way to static and alot of seen it before scenarios. Its all very grey and brown. Like most "realistic" games nowadays. What irritates me the most is that most items in the world that you incounter is deadstuck in the scenary. The effects of books and halfbroken bookshelvs flying trough the front door after you lob a grenade in to the room is nonexistent. Instead you get some smoke that clears up within 1-2 seconds. There is the occasional nazi-helmet flying through the air after a clean shot but thats about it. Its a shame that they dident include destructible enviroments or at least the ability to knock over cover. Another thing is that enemies have a tendency of spawning right infront of you. This dosent happen alot but its noticable. The physics on the soldiers is completly bonkers. You hit a guy in the toe with your M1 Garand Rifle and the german flys over the entire level. When are they going to work with "euphoria"!

. The game also suffers from bad/lazy level designing as I could easilytry to land somewhere I wasent supposed to and just sail straight-through the map

AI is another issue. Even the enemys from delta force 1 was better then this. They arent very smart but at least they are agressive and nade-happy, resulting in alot of frantic battles. Hit detection is extremely bad here as it tok several shots before they even registred. While theirs are top-notch and can hit you from the other side of the map with any gun whatsoever. You cant sneak up on the guys either. Its impossible!. Its like they have a eye in their back or something. Also attacking them from the rooftops is pointless since the they see you as soon as you see them. Event though you only see their backs. What kind of world do we live in where you cant sneak up on a german? Your team comerades Ai is sometimes useful, but other times they don't do anything at all when fired upon and often just get in your way blocking your view. The aiming is also for some reason hard to get used to. This plus the fact that the enemy animations blend together sporadic makes it more difficult then it should be.



The new cover mechanics works best on 360 where you have the pressure sensetive thumb-buttons. On pc you dont. This dident ruin anything for me while I was playin on the pc. It just made me stick my head out more then I wanted

Sound is decent. Some of the guns have a distinct sound and really sounds powerful but most sound like a duckwhistle. Although nais at certain key spots, its become a standard and is extremely over-used. It feels almost like a parody of itself



EA has included a upgrade system for you weapons so that your weapons can be upgraded three times as you progress through the game. This will add better stabilisation or a bigger clip size. You have a certain criteria that you have to make inorder to upgrade your weapons. Like exp: 3 headshots, or 5 kills in a row. The effect is really satisfying when you get a marksman or sharpshooter commedation award. I dident really get to test this out propperly since I just knicked two german weapons and stuck with them for the whole duration of the game cause they where the most effective.

All in all, the one real reason for why I keep on playing was because of the whole arcade nostalgi of the first "mohaa" and its still here. That keept me going to the real treat in this game. The 3 last levels in this short campaign is a real throwback to the castle wolfenstein genere, as you have to fight of these minibosses. A waffen SS ubersoldat gassmask wearing guy with a mean MG3. (think the enemies in Jin-RĂ´ and you get the idea) There was also a level thats covered with snipers which was so injoyable since it was so far out there from what you expected from EA. Same with the level where you have a huge weapons bunker that you have to wade trough. But the game itself is short. Its about 5-7 levels and took me about 6-7 hours to complete.

Its a shame that not more ideas was put into this game. It feels like a polished version of the first Medal of honor game only with updated graphics and a tacked on parachute feature to make it seem like the levels are "open" and give that sandbox feel. Since most of the objectives can only be approched from one direction, it makes the parachute feature feel redundent.

Pros: Graphics look nais. Satisfying upgrade weapons system. Wolfenstein references is always a plus =d

Cons: The genere is done to death and adding anything new to this gametype is just impossible. First half of game is a dull afair. Parachuting/open level aspect of the gameplay isent really open ended enough, short

6 / 10

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