Crysis

It's one of the few AAA shooters out there that’s a PC exclusive (really hard to come by since the 360 and PS3 hit the market), so there’s been a lot of hype around Crysis. I doubt that Crytek really had a choice in this matter – even with the tremendous power of the Xbox 360 or PS3, there’s no way the game could be ported to them without having their visuals and physics toned down a good bit.

Hell, even the most powerful rigs out there can’t run Crysis smoothly with everything maxed out (yes this game has owned every graphic card out there) It’s not because the game isn’t very well coded though, it’s just 'cos the game’s visually (and physically) intense. We were invited by EA and NVIDIA for a ‘Crysis Pizza Party’, where we had a chance to play the game on one of their most powerful machine – the monster had a 2-way SLI 8800 Ultra, and it still couldn’t handle the game with maxed-out settings!

The rig I used to review the game had a Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB RAM and an 8800 GTS, and I still had to play the game in medium to get a stable framerate. Hey, I’m not complaining; the game looks spectacular even at medium or low settings! It’s just a shame that we cannot play the game at its full potential yet, since they released it a whole hardware generation too early.

Just like the visuals, the gameplay is ahead of its time. Open-ended first person shooters have never honed this type of gameplay: deep, immersive and simple at the same time. Crytek took a simple concept – a suit that allows its wearer to enhance a number of his abilities – and implemented it so beautifully that every encounter can be played out in any way you want.