I was looking for a game that was a bit outside the normal style of games that I play and Crysis definitely fit the bill. I’ve never really gotten too deep into the futuristic FPS style games outside of touching into things like Modern Warfare from time to time. I remember when Crysis first came out there was a running joke about how it was developed on the Cry Engine because it would make your PC absolutely start bawling due to how hard the game ran, so I was pretty shocked when I saw that it had a playable designation on the Steam Deck. While the remastered edition of the game is 3 years old and originally released in 2007, it still made the Steam Deck run hot and burned about 1% of battery per minute or so at default settings. All that being said, the game ran beautifully on the deck itself and is highly playable from a high level concept.
The premise of the story is that you are an elite combat unit wearing an enhanced nanosuit that has all sorts of built in powers such as night vision, armor, stealth mode, and more. You are investigating a disturbance on a remote island that suddenly has a large brigade of North Korean troops who have kidnapped some scientists that were studying the island. It’s up to you to infiltrate the island, learn about what they are studying and why, and rescue the science team… all while mowing down legions of people using various automatic weapons.
The game has some stunning visuals, especially in the later portions of the game where you’re diving deep into an unknown world where the gaming mechanics completely switch from being a rails like shooter to a fully 3D world that you can move in any direction. While the visuals are extremely cool and the mechanics are different, it feels incredibly removed from the rest of the game. Almost like they built out an initial demo, then built out the game, then tried to shove this demo back in somewhere to make it make sense.
This switch in themes also brings about some of the worst bugs I think I’ve encountered in video game history. There were several instances where the game would completely break and I’d have to reload the most recent check point. Eventually it got to the point where even that wasn’t working and I’d have to completely shut down the game, then re-launch it, then I could reload the checkpoint and still have maybe a 50% chance of being able to get past it. These bugs almost got it chucked on the abandoned pile they were so frustrating because they might happen right after the checkpoint was saved or they might be right before the next checkpoint saved, meaning you had to repeat portions of the mission several times.
I bought Crysis 1, 2, and 3 in a bundle but after my experiences with the first one, I’m not sure I’m keen on diving into 2 or 3 at this point. Those may be forever doomed to reside on Backlog Mountain.