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From the makers of Far Cry comes the most technologically advanced video game ever made, with graphics to make you gasp and enemy artificial intelligence so clever it could give SkyNET a run for its money. With Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 now well established, Crysis has become the new milestone for PC graphics and first person shoot ‘em-ups. The premise of the game involves an alien landing on an island off North Korea, with you as the only person that can stop it. The incredibly realistic looking environments are the game’s initial draw, with some particularly stunning looking jungle locales. All the levels include dynamic effects to make them even more realistic (and dangerous) including earthquakes, breaking ice, landslides and tornadoes. Since the alien decides to flash freeze the entire island half way through the game, and the final sections end up in a zero gravity spaceship, it’s unlikely you’re going to get tired of the same old environments.

As in Far Cry, there’s no strict level structure and you’re able to explore the island however you want; choosing to go in all guns blazing or taking a more stealthy approach. You can also customise your weapons to suit your preferred style of play with silencers, telescopic sights, laser sightings and more. Your special armour can also be modified as you go, so that you make less noise as you move, run faster, jump higher, recover energy or just take damage better and make use of heavier weapons. Naturally the game also includes an extensive multiplayer mode, but it is the stunning, near photorealistic, graphics and game world which is most certain to claim the game’s name in PC gaming history.
HARRISON DENT

Customer Rating:
Summary: Faultless
Comment: First things first, my rig:
OS - Win XP
GFX - XFX Nvidia 9600 GT Alpha Dog Edition (740mhz core)
RAM - 3GB
PRO - Intel E4600 Dual Core 2 (2.4mhz)

The aforementioned game runs (95% of the time) smoothly on HIGH settings with the above specs. For those people worried about cost to upgrade your GFX card I would highly recommed the XFX Alpha Dog - reason?...£90 at PC World. My processor is now on sale for £50 - £70 at Amazon also.

The detail in EVERYTHING around you has never been seen before in videogame history. Every blade of grass, cracks in cliff faces, AI 'belongings' within buildings and huts. Wind - water - fire and explosions.Its all there in great detail.

The game itself is outstanding. Sharp AI that 'hunt' you in the jungle or 'hide' if you've taken-out a number of their comrades. As mentioned in a previous review 'Delta' is a suitable difficulty setting from the off (it doesn't get rediculously hard but does really challenge you).

The weapons are varied and the 'Nano-suit' adds another dimension to the combat. The game has it's fair share of well designed set pieces whether it's securing areas ready for your buddies to be deployed at by air or fighting your way through the aliens craft in zero-gravity (and no, its not cheesey).

If you want a special FPS - this is the only game to purchase. You will not be disappointed.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: great graphics, enthralling story
Comment: so I thought id post my comments to try and counteract some of the more negative reviews.

firstly, performance, when I origonally bought this game I was using a 6800gt graphics card and a similarly old system (amd 3200, 1gb ram) and I had heard the horror stories so I ramped everything down on low, first thing to note, low on this game puts many many games high settings to shame, it just becomes 1 of the pack, nothing special, but not bad.

feeling brave I then increased all settings to medium, again this ran just fine. Finally my settings became a mixture of High and medium settings, this is on a machine that is now nearly 4 years old! This ran the game from start to finish, the fps at its worst was around the 20 mark, so playable (everyone has their own opinion on whats playable to them, so thats why I posted the actual low fps figure, most of the time it sat around the 40fps mark).

recently I upgraded my graphics card to an 8800GTS which now makes mincemeat of all DX9 options ( I run in xp) even with my low ram and cpu. fps never seems to drop below 40 with all settings on high.

next gameplay, this game is made by the same people who made far cry, and they have made a similar game, the 1st part of the game is very open plan/tactical based. The 2nd part is fighting crazy aliens. Right here and now ill say if you didn't like far cry, you wont like this!

the suit adds a new aspect to the game, unfortunatly I felt it made sections of the game too easy, ie shoot someone, hide recharge, cloak, move position shoot someone else rince and repeat. However it did mean you could change tactics to add a new level of intrest to a section if you are finding it boring, maybe stealthing in, grabbing someone and hurling them at some one else, before speeding away to cover. This is 1 of the elements that makes this sufficiently different to alot of generic shooters out there.

I see alot of people comparing it to cod4 and unreal tournament and things, this is quite ridiculus, id 1st like to say I own both cod4 and UT3, love them both to bits, but the experience is so completely different to crysis. crysis is all about finding the best way to tactically attack a target, be it a base, or a blockade or whatever

UT3 is of course just a high pased fragging game and cod4 is extremely linear. If you want a run and gun game, this aint it (although you can do that on lower difficulty settings if you so wish) but if you are going round on the hardest difficulty everything becomes much more tactical, you loose your crosshair (having to rely on actually 'aiming' your gun) and can take very few bullets

my 1 disapointment with the game was multiplayer, I cant put my finger on why, but it was just very mediocre, whenever I reinstall this game its for the single player!

overall, this is 1 of the very few games single player I have enjoyed going through a few times now, and 1 of the favoite games I own, up there next to cod4, UT3, Far cry, and the half lifes (1+2+expansions)

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Customer Rating:
Summary: yeah its good but...
Comment: having played through it twice now it is a great game, but its not that innovative. the openness is an illusion - if you really try to explore the game will punish you for being 'out of bounds', and I never managed to find a way up to one of those high peaks (one of the great thing in Far Cry, its predecessor) was the hang gliding.

the AI is actually quite stupid. To win every area you just need to grab a vehicle with a gun, make sure you are seen, and then reverse out of immeadiate line of sight and wait for them to one by one walk into the line of fire of your infinate machine gun ammo.

but its a nice distraction for a couple of days and the tank battles were fun (even if you are stopped from leading from the front because of the finite ammo on the tanks - you need to let the friendly AI take out a couple or you will run out).

the suit enhancements work well but give you a bit too much of an advantage... snipe, pull behind a rock, stealth and then snipe again. repeat until the 'stronghold' is empty.

it looks great if you have a decent rig to play it on. this is one to rent though if you are only interested in the single player campaign. the 4 stars is for the impressive engine and the fact I felt like playing through it a second time (after pulling it out of the collection again).

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Comment: I bought this on release, have decided to review now my PC has almost come up to scratch to give the visuals justice. I have just replayed using Vista64 and and ATI 4870 graphics card and a core2duo processor with 4Gb ram.

It looks gorgeous. I really enjoy playing the game through, being stealthy and picking off the Korean soldiers one by one.

The let down is the later levels. Graphically amazing, but gameplay wise a yawn fest. Also I wasn't too keen on the VTOL level back then, and still not keen on it now, although the tank level wasn't too bad.

More levels just with enemy soldiers would have sufficed, or at least some better AI for the alien enemies, who's AI appears to come from Doom, where as the soldiers at least varied slightly in the attack patterns and use of grenades.

I'll still be purchasing Crysis Warhead (PC DVD) on release, although I hope they learned from the mistakes in Crysis. I have read it's a different Crytek studio so here's hoping!

Game loses 1 star for the crap alien levels and (in my opinion) shoddy multiplayer.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Believe the hype
Comment: I played the demo when it first came out and at the time I didn't particularly have a great rig, I could only play Crysis on all low settings. At first I thought gameplay was average, I wasn't really trying the game out to see what the gameplay was like but more to do with how good my pc could run it at the time.

How the tables have turned; I recently got myself a powerful gaming rig and I decided to try the demo again and well what can I say, my system's optimal settings recommended high and it plays like a dream. Now that I own the game I have managed to tweak some settings and I have a mixture of high and very high and it runs as smooth as silk, personally I cannot enjoy a game unless the graphics are as amazing as they should be; This is important as it really sets the atmosphere of the game making the gameplay more immersive.

Gameplay wise, very fun indeed a lot of the content is similar to other shooters but hasn't all first person shooter games got the same kind of conecpt? However a lot of it is also origional, AI is one of the best I've seen in a fps game (not scripted and use environment to their advantage etc) Your nano suit is what keeps you alive, this is a very interesting new feature and it works well.

The story/plot is some what familiar and you do feel like you have been here before, but at the same time it is unique in it's own way and I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish.

The multiplayer aspect of it is the only downside to Crysis which is why I only gave it 4 stars, it is a game designed more for single player and it feels like Crytek put the multiplayer in at the last minute.

Over all fantastic gameplay, beautiful graphics not so good multiplayer.

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