Crysis A Test Report

TEST CRYSIS (PC)
DRAMATIC EGO-SHOOTER WITH NOBLE GRAPHICS

Graphics, sound and atmosphere of the absolute top class. With all modesty: Crysis is the Shooter best up to now of the world.

Landmarks of the computer game history do not distinguish themselves by the fact that they look awfully great. The determining is that they give us the feeling to have created a plausible effigy of the reality as the first play. The feeling that, nevertheless, all landmarks were only plays before it. The 3D-graphics in Doom 3? Nastily! The vehicles in Battlefield in 1942? They get stuck even in garden fences! Physics in Half-Life 2? Only one pretext to shoot zombies with loo bowls.

No, it is a time for the play, to the very first spot (now, however, really!) a plausible effigy of the reality has created. A play which unites all virtues of his predecessors in itself: an exciting history, an open play world, a physics simulation and graphics which themselves allow to be astonished to us: »Yes is something like that quite technically possiblye then generally?!« Yes, it is. It means Crysis

Wide pictures

Crysis begins aboard an airplane, while itself a group of American élite soldiers prepares to the jump. »Great landmark«, you will rightly mock, »I know this already from other plays!« But differently than in Brothers in arm or Splinter Cell: Stand-in agent is the first what we see when our alter ego opens the eyes, a human face. And we mine humanely: with little fold, pores, scars and very expressive eyes. The companion looks so real and speaks in addition still lip-synchronically (in the English version) that we are persuaded: This can be only one Rendervideo. Oh yes, black beams oberund below the picture, we cannot look around us freely – definitely an intersequence.


However, the face is the only one what allows to look the soldiers like a person. Below his chin the man seems to be a robot. Muscles of grey plastic cover his body, in the joints gleams shining metal. Crysis plays in 2020, and the US military equips his command soldiers meanwhile with "Nanosuits" – to fight suits which cure her bearer, offer him protection and lend superforces. Luckily we also carry one, because already at few minutes the thing will save our life.

Bodybuilder

Our troop leader clears up us about the forthcoming application: At night we should jump off over an island somewhere in the China Sea. On the island there lies a research station which has been taken by North Korean troops. We must find out what proceeds there. The application is so confidential that civil names are taboo in the circle of these men.

We are called only Nomad, our leader is called prophet and then there are there another three other shadow warriors from whom to us Psycho strikes mostly. The guy has the face of a heavy-weight boxer who has already lost a few fights. The application begins. The men slip over her helmets, brace themselves against the blustering hurricane of the flight wind on the edge of the falling loading ramp and rush at the night. And we jump with.

In the air

Now there disappear the black beams in the image border, there is a loading break, however, not – these were no Rendersequenz, but play graphics! But we cannot just process this, we rush towards an island. We race along volumetrischen clouds, the wind whistles in the ears, while the moon paints eerie patterns on the armaments of our companions. We turn round, prophet glides along us and throws an impressive shade in the hazy night air.

There a light appears in the distance. Something races on us to! We just still recognise a multisectional shape, there something has already met us in the flight! Our parachute is opened by the impact and is torn off, finally, we reel helplessly in the direction of ground – without reserve screen. Prophet tries to calm us on radio: »Remain cool, you are about water. The suit will protect you.« We can only hope that the man is right.

To water

Splash! Just still the rushing of the air in the ears, all at once wattige silence. We have dived into the water, hear only our own, steady respiration – the Nanosuit supplies us also with air. We briefly pause and enjoy the rest. Fish pull her roads before our eyes, the moonlight gleams by the water surface. We know, on this island action and adventure wait for us, but at the moment we are already contented with this scene.

There prophet broadcasts us again in: »Move your bottom to the beach!« Well, then we want sometimes. We swim in country. Besides, we can see every movement of Nomads to arms: They appear over and over again in our field of vision. This actually rather simple technology lends us like already with Dark Messiah the feeling to be really physically in the computer game.

To country

When we rise from the surf, we are not only: A gigantic land tortoise drags herself on about the beach. When we stand before her, betrays us Crysis that we can lift the animal by keystroke! Nearly all objects in the play are movable and can be manipulated. When we raise the tortoise test-wise, hands come round again Nomads in the field of vision, afterwards the animal thrashes about in our arms. We find this so cool that we lift for several minutes only things and throw around with an other pressure on the use key.

We know physics in Ego-Shootern though already from Half-Life 2, however, there it serves, primarily, as a basis for more or less sensible riddles. In Crysis, however, it behaves with physics like in the true life: She is there simply. If we bump here against a barrel, it rolls a hill down because it requires the gravitation and not because below three opponents stand who want to be killed.

To the weapons

Everywhere in Crysis run, swim or fly animals: Cancers, frogs, chickens, butterflies, birds. This creates the illusion of a living world. As if only the scenery was not quite fantastic enough: The palms gleaming in the moonlight could have arisen directly of a kitsch postcard, the thick primeval forest with all kinds of tropical vegetation, the rock lumps scattered there and here and the softly winding brook in whose mouth we have gone ashore remind us of the jungle war epic Apocalypse Now.

Quite right: Now where we do not need the hands any more to the swimming or tortoise's wide throwing, we can unpack our storm gun. The application requires that we modify our gun a little: Silencer on it. Every weapon in the play equips itself with laser aim facilities, visor facilities, garnet throwers or such. We make this not in menus, but, typically Crysis without being torn out from the play world: Nomad lifts the weapon before his face, and we click the components which we want to change – perfectly.

Danger in the darkness

Hardly we have put on the silencer, we already bump into the first Korean soldier who stretches tiredly the bones at this late nighttime. We see so human actions often with guileless opponents: They lie on the beach, drink from her water bottle, smoke or go pee. Here this goes to bed first: With our mounted numbing arrow thrower we send the man in the empire of the dreams.

However, there two other Koreans from the undergrowth already appear, they have seen us! Pure bad luck, because the KI gets as a rule detection problems if we strike with silencers from the concealed. In particular if we shoot about big distances, our opponents practically never know where the balls come, even if we meet the guys several times in the back. If they have spotted of us, the Koreans often choose the direct way our position – the Far Cry-mercenary were more skilful there. Now, however, we have first with the both here a problem.

Danger in the suit

We rush at the first soldier and pack him by keystroke in the throat. Now he serves us as a living shield. At least briefly, because his colleague fires without for hesitation. However, we hold our hostages only without any trouble, with on the right we can shoot furthermore. Korean A meets Korean B, afterwards we switch off Korean A – an exciting, quick duel! Prophet advises us to use in future the camouflage mode of our suit. How could we forget only the Nanosuit? At the touch of a button a ring menu opens around our crosshair about which we call not only the weapon box of building blocks but also four special modes of the suit: Strength, tempo, armour plating and camouflage. In the strength mode we would have not only strangled the fellow from just, but also would have flung metre far by the air.

Moreover, as a powerhouse we can jump up very much, lift heavy objects and hit corrugated sheet huts to Klump. The tempo mode lets us run like the wind, the camouflage makes us nearly invisible, and the armour plating stops itself heavy calibers. All four modes use the restricted energy stock of the suit. The faster we move possibly in the camouflage mode, the earlier are away juice and with it invisibility. Nevertheless, the Nanosuit regenerates rather fast – we have a few seconds verschnaufen and already again full achievement.

Play guidance

By the Nanosuit we adapt Crysis to our playful predilections: Splinter Cell fans possibly creep around in disguise, strangle her enemies unconsciously and disappear again, shooting friends attack armoured in the enemy's camp and shoot around themselves. Besides, the service functions so well that we can switch over even quick as a flash between the modes. When we should penetrate possibly into a camp of the Koreans, we sprint in the tempo mode by a mine field, change in full run in the strength mode and jump over the mg nest with occupying at the other end of the death stripe, during behind us the explosions loose boom – fantastically!

Generally the choice very often leaves us Crysis whether and how we want to switch off opponent. At least in the first half of the play. The densely covered jungle levels are very open there and it stays empty to us to dart through the undergrowth or to pinch a jeep to us and with it directly by hostile road blocks hindurchzurauschen. Besides, a climax of the play is the fifth level in which we are thundering as an armoured commander along a picturesque valley and hunt hostile vehicles. Differently than in Battlefield 2 the tanks waltz in Crysis directly by the wood. Branches crack, trees fall, this makes mood! This unobstrusive, almost secondary realism makes Crysis so reliably. The play does not shout constantly: Look! With me things break! «. If here a tree falls down, and nobody is there to hear it, there is, nevertheless, a noise.

Camera work

In Far Cry the guidance was absent every now and then. The player not always knew where his next aim lay and what he had to do there generally. Crysis makes this different: Here we get always understandable orders, radar and map indicate us in the big levels where we have to go there.
Crysis: Although we can protect any time our progress, the play offers, in addition, well positioned memory points. As soon as we pass them, Crysis releases atmospheric sequences relevant for action, begins, for example, the dynamic time of day change, so that the sun rises exactly when we step just from the jungle and overlook a picturesque bay. At such moments Crysis like at the beginning of the play briefly takes over the control of Nomad and lets us by his eyes experience overpowering intersequences – almost like cinema.

Crysis: Then from half of the play Crysis becomes more linear, more produced. From the initial Kommandoeinsatz a right, small war between Americans and Koreans has become meanwhile, we find ourselves in mass battles à la Call of Duty 2. However, then a menace steps on the plan which is by far bigger than the Koreans: Our enemies have woken an extra-terrestrial culture to the life which was apparently hidden since thousands of years in the island. Now the extraterrestrial want to feel on the earth completely like at home and transform them, therefore, into an ice lump. Now must show of the Nanosuit that he can also keep in.

Story guidance

We find ourselves suddenly inside of a weird spaceship – or is it a gigantic, extraterrestrial organism even? Crysis: Here Crysis reminds optically a little of Prey, and now it is over also with the free Herumwandern up to next. The story around the ice-cold extraterrestrial, a pretty young scientist who can save the world before the invaders, but no hearing finds, and the headstrong military to whom again nothing better occurs, than to atomise the whole island simply needs a leading hand. Crysis everything unites with it what gave particularly a lot of pleasure to us up to now with Ego-Shootern: Time an open world with many possibilities, sometimes a rapidly produced roller coaster journey by linear inside levels, here on foot, because by vehicles, here against soldiers, there against aliens, everything in unfathomable graphics and with plausible physics, and all around an exciting history which takes second place Hollywood productions like Independence Day in nothing.

Up to one: the open end. When will the play developers of this world see that we want an adequate end for our adventures? Well, so we have at least something that we can accuse this excellent play if sometime sometimes next Shooter-landmark comes: »Crysis? The end was stupid!« Until any action play Crysis can hold a candle, however, it might still last quite a while.