Review: Crysis game

Crysis is the sort of game that becomes a landmark before it’s even been released.

Images of its stunning graphics have been doing the rounds online and in magazines and anticipation has been high.

For the most part, this is one of those rare games that genuinely live up to the hype.

Set sometime in the near future, you play a special agent who is part of a team rescuing some American archaeologists who been captured North Korea.

The game’s location is a tropical island, giving the early part of the game a similar look to the excellent Far Cry - in fact, Crysis was developed by the team who produced that game.

Gameplay, too, has a lot in common with Far Cry, at least to begin with. It is a free-roaming first-person shooter, allowing for a certain amount of choice over how you get from A to B. Your character’s 'nano suit' offers four different enhancement modes to augment your speed or strength, increase resistance to damage or provide a temporary cloak to hide from enemies.

At a certain point, things take a turn and your character has to adapt to a strange environment and a new enemy. At the risk of giving too much away, the game’s twist doesn’t just shift the plot in a different direction - it has an intriguing effect on the way the game plays and keeps things challenging.

The star of the show is the graphics: using all the latest technologies, Crysis is spectacular, and the graphics immerse you in the game. Unfortunately, to enjoy the visuals at full tilt you’ll need an extremely powerful PC with the very latest graphics card. Even with all the settings reduced, the minimum requirements are steep.

We tested the game on two PCs: one only a couple of years old could barely run it, and even a brand new one with a top-of-the-range processor and graphics card struggled at high detail levels. It’s a shame, then, that such an excellent game will only be enjoyed by a handful of people.

Vista compatible: Yes