Sunday, December 30, 2007

Crysis Review

Crysis had been on my must-buy list even before the demo was out. I was bought by the hype that surrounded it. But, as the release date of the game approached nearer, I found myself wondering whether I really want to buy this game, when I have already bought so many fantastic shooters recently, especially with CoD 4 and The Orange Box, which had so much replayabilities with its robust multiplayer features. And the more I read the previews and watched the demos, I started to realize Crysis wasn't really my cup of tea. However, I still bought the game in the end (well, partly because it was on promotion, got the game for only S$44.90). And hence here I bring you my review of Crysis.

The plot of Crysis is pretty standard for a shooter. You're a special ops agent sent into an island in North Korea to save a few archaeologists, but turns out your enemies are not only the North Korean army. The archaeologists have discovered alien lifeforms from their diggings, and *surprise!* these aliens are not friendly. And hence for the second half of the game you'd be battling them, which, to be honest, I find to be a relief after fighting all those irritating North Koreans.

I can't seem to appreciate the supposedly next-gen graphics that Crysis had promised -- sure, they look great, but they weren't nothing that I haven't seen from other games (personally, I felt that Episode 2 looked better). But, maybe it's partly because I had set the graphics settings to medium, which was the optimal settings for my rig. Which brings us to another issue. The thing is, my computer can be considered to be on the higher end as compared to those that most gamers have. If that's the best settings that I can enjoy at without any framerate issues, what about the rest of the gamers? Even if Crysis looks badass at the highest settings, most people won't be able to have access to it, given the limits of their system spec.

My second issue with Crysis would be a more controversial one. For the first half of the game, when you are fighting the North Koreans on the island, the gameplay is pretty much a sandbox type of gameplay -- you have total freedom to choose your methods of finishing your objective. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really dig this kind of gameplay. In addition, the map of the island is such that the route to your objective is more or less the same, and most of the time the missions have you infiltrate into the enemy's base to retrieve some data or jam their radar, so much so it gets pretty repetitive. Also, I found myself more often than not sneaking into the base Solid Snake style, not solely because I like to do that, but it's partly due to the fact that it's probably the only way to do it without getting killed.

Which brings me to my next gripe. What's up with the North Koreans anyway? They wearing nanosuits too? I swear these guys take way too many bullets to kill. The enemy can get riddled by tons of bullets and yet still be able to stand firm and fire back at you. It's really frustrating when you've thought you had silenced the enemy only to see them still alive and kicking as if they weren't injured at all.

It may seem that my experience with Crysis was a negative one looking at all the complaints that I had. However, I have to admit I do enjoy the second part of the game when you are battling all the aliens. I know that there are a lot of people out there who think otherwise; they prefer the freedom you have while fighting the North Koreans on the island and absolutely hated the linear gameplay that dominated the second half of the game. I guess it's a matter of taste, and that is probably why I'd rank Call of Duty 4 over Crysis in my personal list of Game of The Year.

PC Gamer gave Crysis a whooping 98%, a score that is only rivaled by games such as Half Life 2, but I beg to differ. To me, it's just another above average shooter with an innovative nanosuit feature.

Score: 7.5/10
The good: Nanosuit feature is cool.
The bad: Need a really good computer to achieve next-gen graphics, hard to kill enemies.

PS: Seems like the game didn't have any in-build screenshot taker, so I had played through the whole game without taking any screenshots. I don't think I'll be replaying the game anytime soon, so if you are looking for screenshots, check out other sites such as IGN.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Happy Holidays!

Sorry for the 2 weeks long of inactivity, as I was busy, both with real life and also with WoW. Farming honor for the S1 gears is really quite time consuming. Other than WoW, I've been keeping myself occupied with Call of Duty 4's multiplayer ( hich is helluva fun to play), Crysis and recently Team Fortress 2 again (Demoman rocks!).

I''ll put up the review for Crysis shortly, which unfortunately, isn't as fun as I had imagined the game to be. I know I know, I'd yet put up the much delayed review for Episode 2, which I'd probably do it some time soon. In the meantime check out this hilarious, and at the same time bad, TF2 griefing video.

Oh, and happy holidays to you!




Friday, December 7, 2007

Game saves child's life

There's a report by Kotaku about how the game World of Warcraft saved a boy and his sister's lives from an angry moose. It was reported that "he taunted the moose off his sister, allowing her to escape, and then he used his level 30 hunter skill feign death, causing the moose to lose interest and wander off". Expectedly, cheeky comments were posted with regards to this news, such as how lucky the boy was not to have tried to use his level 10 taming skills to try tame the moose, or how lucky the boy's feign death was not resisted.

Well, it's a good thing the boy and his sister managed to escape out of this situation unscathed, but I'd like to add my own cheeky comment here too: fortunately the boy did not play a paladin and tried to do a bubble hearth after grabbing the aggro off from his sister.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Journalism Integrity?

I am sure most of you guys who follow gaming news closely would be aware of the recent firing of Gamespot Editor in Chief Jeff Gerstmann, which was reported in many major gaming sites, such as PA, Shacknews and Kotaku etc. Apparently (though it still is considered a rumor, since none of the Gamespot staff nor Jeff stepped out to comment on the news, at least publicly) it was over the less than glamorous review he had wrote for the new game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men by Eidos, which has been fervently promoting the game with its conspicuous and all over the place advertisements through Gamespot. It was rumored Eidos was unhappy with the review, both written and video versions (the latter was removed from Gamespot strangely), and pressured Cnet, the parent company of Gamespot, to fire Jeff. Of course, Cnet has denied it, but still, it did not in any way alleviate the anger among the gamers, especially Gamespot members, who have since flooded the site's forum, expressing their unhappiness. Eidos' official forum was hit the worst, it was flooded with many outraged gamers registering and spamming the board with all sorts of vulgarities and obscene images, prompting the forum to go down hours after the attack. Back at the Gamespot's forums, countless threads regarding Jeff's dismissal were locked and the admins seemed to be under a gag order, with none making any replies or comments with regards to the incident.

Other than the firing of Jeff, the rest of the news are currently just rumor, with no confirmation publicly by any of the related personnel, but personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it indeed was the case.Looking at the excessive advertising of K&L at Gamespot, I would suppose the ad deal was very lucrative, and if Eidos had retracted the deal, Cnet would lose a lot of money. However, this at the expense of journalism integrity is a price too heavy, and I am sure Jeff knew it too, which is why he sticked to the mediocre rating for the game, which apparently cost him his job.

If everything about the incident were true, it would be very detrimental to Gamespot. Already, people are cancelling their subscription accounts, and more importantly, people would look at any reviews by Gamespot in a different light, especially ones which have their advertisement on the site. It's a lose-lose situation for Cnet/Gamespot now, because no matter what they do (rehiring Jeff, which I doubt they will, and even if they did, Jeff probably would not take up the offer; remain silent and just wait for everything to die down), they are going to be remembered for this unpleasant incident, and their credibility has taken a massive damage.



Gamespot video review of K&L by Jeff, which was removed from Gamespot.