Crysis – Review

Crysis

Click to see our Crysis DVD

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If you haven’t heard of it from all the hype from the last few months, Crysis is a first person shooter published by EA. In Crysis you play a solider in a futuristic (Nano) suit who is sent to a remote island on a mission to find more than he expected.

The storyline in Crysis for the most part cannot be said as it would ruin the game, but it does go into a lot of detail and fleshes out the events surrounding you. Crysis is easy to control in terms of gameplay controls with the mouse and keyboard presenting no issues. For those of you who have seen all of the trailers over the months and played the demo you will find the game is exactly as advertised; a large number of gameplay areas all vast in size and varied in type. While FPS games do well just for being an FPS the biggest draw is the idea of replaying the game using the various different possible ways that the levels can be completed such as doing it once while invisible without killing then going through just like Van-Damme would punching everyone and then finally like Sly would with full-on guns in the jungle just like in Rambo.

While people might have been reporting issues with graphics settings in the demo versions, the full game is extremely easy to use and can scale to any system to give a perfect frame rate. No matter your system’s capabilities, one option that is a must in the graphics settings is Physics quality. The higher quality physics settings control effects such as buildings being able to come crashing down. Lets be fair that’s half of the appeal for the game so having it on high is a must!

There are some issues though that are hard to ignore. After spending up to the last 6 months hearing nothing about how much we are going to love this game, getting a single player campaign that only takes 10 hours to complete on a PC only title is a pretty disappointing. You end up wishing for the game to have been longer since you have been hearing about it for so long, it’s kind of anticlimactic. Some enemies get stuck in walls if you shoot them in close proximity to them which is a serious game play issue. There is also an escort mission, which is rather dull.

With a solid multilayer map set and an ending that leaves it open to a sequel, we can only hope that Crysis 2 fixes the issues with this game. While Crysis is fantastic to play, the excitement of blowing trees drys up pretty quickly and it only actually effects enemy characters directly in the rarest of cases.

Crysis also features a level editor called The Sandbox2. It doesn’t add that much value to the game as it’s way too technical for a novice to use. The program is hidden away in a directory on the install CD with only a single acknowledgment in the readme file and no directions on how to find it on the CD’s autorun let alone use it. The editor also isn’t mentioned at all in the instruction manual in the box.

Verdict: +

Ted Stokes

Proof of full version review before retail release.

We have had some comments on digg that some users doubt that this is a review of the full version. As is usual it is a review of a press unit and above are screenshots taken by myself to prove it is from the full version using the popular fraps screenshot program. Since promo shots are a single one or two from a level it was decided to give a number of non-action shots as to try and not ruin the game or at least the level. At the top of the review are the new exclusive screenshots. Look for the Stuffwelike name on the save screen in screenshot 3.

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Ops I Broke it Again

Broken Computer

If you came to StuffWeLike between the times of midnight to 8am you might have noticed a white blank screen. Our WordPress always wants to switch to the default template so I’ve decided to make the new design, the default. Hopefully this will fix any issues we’ve previously had with this dumb thing. If not oh well, just know that we’ll fix it as soon as possible.

Thanks for caring.

WordPress Ain’t for Dummies

WordPress is meant to be a simple blogging program for those who are lazy in building their own website from scratch. Well I’m one of those lazy people. The thing is that I’m a dummy and WordPress hates dummies. I’ve been trying to upgrade this site to the latest WordPress version AND I’ve been running into several errors.

Well I give up! I’m going to go cut my self in an Emo fashion now.

Emo David

[Update]
After cutting my wrists and almost bleeding to death, I present a new design. What do you think?

StuffWeLike Goes Retro

Ok maybe retro isn’t the right word when you consider that we grabbed footage that was a year old and added it onto StuffWeLike’s media player The Pipeline, but that’s not the point.

Ever since we launched The Pipeline we were missing several video podcast shows, including what many deem as their favorite – the Wii launch event at Universal Citywalk (it’s #7). I’m very excited that we’re able to show off these videos again.

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Portal’s Appeal, and Why we need more games like Portal

Two Portals open

There is something plain weird with Portal. I finished playing this game not very long ago, and it has me absorbed. Not just when playing it, but even when I’m not. I reach for my Portal Gun every so often, or hurriedly look for my Weighted Companion Cube or, well, back away and run out of the room when I see a cake, yelling “The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!”

While navigating through portals is somewhat disorienting at the beginning of the game, you get used to it fairly fast. The same applies to the “flinging” concept – it can be frustrating in the beginning, but you get addicted to it later. Another addiction I found was to shoot one portal in the ceiling, one on the floor and jump into the infinite vortex thus created.

Portal appears so weird because it is the first game in a long time that doesn’t want to be “realistic”, it realizes that in a video game, you don’t have real life’s restrictions. You can do whatever the hell you like. And it is games like Portal that we need in the industry – games that are different, creative and stimulating.

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Old Skool Games Rule!

There’s something about dusting off your old console or PCs and trying to get these 10 year old games playing correctly. It’s almost like playing through your memories. Whether they’re cheesy or down right terrible, you remember these games as being groundbreaking. They left an impact on you as a child and have forever shaped who you are. This is why we like old skool video games.

Soon enough we’ll see companies popping up, restoring old classics just like they do with films nowadays. God I love these games!

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