Crysis, You make Gamers Cry.

There used to be a time, not too long ago when gaming was about just that, the gameplay. Not too long ago the gamer played games like Duke Nukem, or the legendary Doom, and didn't judge them because of the fancy graphics that they didn't have, rather how the mechanics of the game worked, and how fun each alien kill was. I find myself more and more so comparing newer complicated fps games, to things like Quake. We seemed to be so interested in the future of gaming at the time, that some gamers failed to realize they were living in the golden age of gaming. The Crysis beta seems to have neglected that in its recent beta release. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy nice looking games as much as the next guy, but Crysis takes what had the hype and prestige to be a legend, and substitutes the "fps" for fancy textures and "realistic" physics. (Not to mention lag)

How could Crytek seem to have put gameplay last? Lets see.

MAXIMUM GAME!
Crysis is only advertising to the gamer with the best hardware and biggest pocketbook. Not everyone has quad core rigs with 8800 GTX's in them, and assuming your playing Crysis to begin with, its for the quality. Sure, one might be able to get away with some lower power parts, but then your missing out on the entire point of crysis in my view. When a game only advertises to a very select group of people it is bound for failure.

Motion Blurs? Realistic? Get out of town!
After recently witnessing the power the motion blur effect had on Team Fortress 2, I has only higher expectations for what Crysis had in store. What I got was an over-exaggerated effect, where a slight turn results in a temporary screen blur. Let alone, a quick turn to face an enemy results in the entire screen blurring up and twisting around. (Needless to say I died in that encounter) But for trying to simulate a realistic visual effect, My whole vision has never blurred out from looking around, and I don't know what Crytek was smoking that led them to interpret that effect as realistic.

First Impressions
Starting up the game for the first time only started my disappointment. Expecting something similar to the high quality screenshots I have been boggling at for months, I was surprised to encounter some reflecting yellow things, and some black. I'm thinking the games broken yet sure enough, a minute or so later the game looks similar to Id software's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, with a nice yellow sticker for everything with reflection on it. Eventually though, it ended up looking nice, and it is a beta, thus some slowness is understandable but just as soon as I actually pick up my first gun, does the game continue its plunge.

I'm confused, What exactly am I doing?
I start off with a low volume voice trying to tell me what to do (Constantly interrupted with an insane North Korean announcer dictating every capture and movement that happens in the game) A then, realize that I need to spend "points" to play a different class, meaning to play the fun classes, I need to deal with the horrible shooting mechanics and somehow capture things on the entry level "grunt" classes. This all being compounded with the motion blurs, lag, and yellow things flying around. I'm beginning to feel the urge to quit and launch up a Valve or Id fps. I settled on a Quake 3, and lost my headache. It all ended well with a few frags.

We'll see what happens when the game is released, I'm still awaiting the amazing game that I know Crysis can be, and Crytek certanly demonstrated with Farcry, that they know what "Gameplay" is. Simple is better.


-Floodge