E3: Hands on with Crysis

by: Chuck - posted: 7/12/2007 3:15:00 AM

At the Games for Windows event tonight I finally got my hands on Crysis, the upcoming sci-fi FPS from the folks at Crytek.  Before I say anything else you need to know one thing.  You're going to need a new computer to really enjoy this game.  At first blush the game looks and plays like an updated version of Far Cry.  The graphics are just amazing and you really have to see them in motion to really appreciate them.  My first minutes of the game were spent just looking at the awesome water effects and marveling at the amazing textures for everything in the game.  This of course got me almost killed a few times but it was worth it because the effects are so amazing.  This is one of those games where screenshots just don't do a game justice.

The gameplay itself is your standard FPS fare with a few twists.  Pushing on the middle mouse button brings up a radial menu of all the different capabilities of your nano suit.  This allows you to change your role on the fly and enable things like stealth mode, armor mode, spring mode, and customize your weapons settings.  Your standard weapon has a few different modifications as you can add a laser range finder, sniper scope, and a few other goodies.  The game also has some cool melee attacks as you can actually walk up and pick up bad guys by the neck and then throw them around.  You can also use binoculars to spot and mark enemies at long range which is a nice hold over from Far Cry.

Of course this assumes that you can focus on the actual game play instead of staring at the great graphics and destroying trees one branch at a time.  I only got to see some of the island levels from early on in the game but what I saw was pretty impressive and I hope that the plot and remaining game play can live up to the graphics of the game.