I’ve been playing Crysis lately, the game is a marvel of technical achievement, the graphics are some of the best I’ve seen in a game to date, especially on the right hardware. The storyline is also incredible, well at least for the first half of the game. This is where I am a little disappointed. From the word go the gameplay leads you on a stealth fest with short bursts of action sequences thrown into the mix. The pace is perfect and you can decide how you want to complete an objective, the developer having given you multiple paths to victory all contained within wide-open linear objective-based gameplay, but only for the first half of the game.
The build up of the thrilling story is greatly executed and there’s a real feeling of suspense as you progress. Everything is perfect right up to the point of entering the Alien Ship, then suddenly the gameplay degenerates to this arcade style shoot-em-up fest that feels as if you’re playing a different game, and this continues all the way up to the end. The final boss sequence was a complete joke. Throughout the game you could take your time in deciding how to tackle an objective but the final boss was a scene straight out of Xenon2 or those other top-down scrolling shooting games where you have to destroy 4 cannons, then 2 more cannons, then one more badass cannon and then you have to open a hatch and launch a nuke (That’s how it ends by the way). Even though they left the story open for a sequel, or a trilogy as some people on the Crysis forums have been saying, this was the most disappointing and ridiculously out-of-place ending to a stealth/action game that I’ve ever seen.
Technical achievements and potential trilogy aside the fact of the matter is the ending of the game was not in alignment with the pace of the first half of the game.
Anyone else feel the same?
Filed under: Gaming | Tagged: Crysis, Entertainment, Gaming
I agree with you. It’s as if the game were made by two completely different companies. Part one excellent. Once you enter the alien’s domain then it suddenly turns into a very linear old school game with better graphics. CRYTEK have no excuse to short change us in this way especially considering the time they had spent on this games’ development. I am sure we can all think of more imaginative ways to finish off aliens..
I’m hoping for a patch to the ending and thinking to myself that I just played the beta ending. The very last cut scene for put me in FPS mode for a second then froze to show me the credits…why? Why not just show the credits after the end of the scene?
The alien ship was a little weird and I think it was disappointing because you couldn’t really use the tactical moves in a normal G environment. It was basically shoot in the direction you’re being attacked, rinse and repeat. At first entering the spaceship was a little exciting, but as soon as the excitement wore off, the gameplay just reminded me of what you described, an arcade game.
I totally argree with you on the boss sequence. It was completely linear, and taking out the canons before nuking the boss left little to the player imagination.
The beginning of Crysis is still a great game and I don’t mind replaying the jungle fights again. I love scanning with my binoculars and picking them off one at a time without being discovered, or just going Rambo…either way. I love having choices.
Totally agree with you guys. During the first few missions I was telling my pals this was the best game ever, and then all of a sudden everything just went to crap. I enjoyed stalking around the jungle so much, why did they have to change it! Ending up having to downgrade my initial review to my pals.
First half – yaaaay!
Second half – booooooooooooo!
Story has been relocated to:
http://www.vgpro.com/profile/jonc/article/disappointing_ending_to_a_fantas
Makes more sense to have it on a blog site dedicated to gaming.