Crysis Trilogy...

[Sulaco]

I felt the "suit" dynamic was one of the biggest pitfalls of Crysis; somewhat of an unnecessary gimmick that divorced you from the visceral firefights and gameplay.

It became an exercise in "Approach enemy compound--cloak--sneak a few steps--freeze--watch power regenerate--sneak a few more steps--shoot a guy--run and hide and wait for suit to regen--sneak a bit more--freeze while suit regens again, ad nauseam.

The "suit power" just felt like a completely inorganic paradigm that arbitrarily altered the flow of the game.

I still say despite it being the shortest, Crysis Warhead was easily one of the best, if not the best.

Honestly, I'd just love to see a true Far Cry sequel. No, it doesn't have to continue the same plot threads. Just the same style. An over-the-top B horror/action movie feel, with actual progression, plot, vast, open approaches to various areas, and great variety. Not going from camp to camp to camp killing humans and playing capture the flag. Heck, even the Trigen segments were done well, and could be genuinely tense and downright frightening encounters, considering how powerful they could be. In the jungle, at night, when you knew and could hear several Trigen on your tail and you're spray firing your M4 into the brush and running towards that speed boat on the water's edge just a few feet away.

THAT was some classic fun. It's just such a shame that entire subgenre of FPS has seemingly been abandoned.

 

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[bystander36]

I thought the trigens were pretty entertaining. I jumped out of my seat the first time I saw one, and continued to get startled by them sneaking up on me. Though they did not make the game for me. What did make the game, that you eluded too, is the stealth use without a suit.

The thing that made Crysis not be considered as fond to me was the suit. You say it was added spice, but as you said, the games balance made it so you pretty much could not sneak anywhere without it, like you could in Far Cry. I would have rather had no stealth mode in Crysis, and then I'd have liked it a lot more.

I also don't understand how the Trigens were so hated, but no one cared about the aliens in Crysis.

 

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[Blitzvogel]

Crysis 1 is definitely one of the greatest games of all time. Idiots love to spout the "graphics aren't everything" cliché, but I don't see what it has to do with Crysis. Sure, Crysis had spectacular visuals, but it also had superb sound, impressive physics (more than just a spectacle, actually contributing to gameplay), and excellent gameplay in general. Further, being a true flagship PC game (the last of it's kind), it had all the perks that entails such as a very flexible saving scheme, delicate PC-centric HUD, and an elegant and comprehensive set of menus/UI. It feels like a quality PC game from the moment you enter the menu, as opposed to the tacky consolized mess you'll find in something like 'Far Cry' 3.

The later Crysis games were shit by comparison. Consolized and linear. Crysis is always falsely accused of being a mere 'tech demo'. It's not, but that's exactly what Crysis 3 is.

Originally Posted by NUSNA_Moebius View Post
FEAR 2 took what made FEAR 1 great, and turned it into a console game, like what happened with Crysis 2

This makes no sense. A lot of what made FEAR great was directly dependant on it being a PC game, and the things that weren't (the truly creative scares, the superior storyline etc.) were NOT carried over. The same applies to Crysis 2. It didn't carry over the huge sandbox maps and the freedom you had in the first game into Crysis 2. Nor did it carry over things like the sophisticated destruction and physics (couldn't have on console hardware). So those half-arsed sequels didn't really inherit much of what made their predecessors great, they were just crappy consolized games period.

You disagree with me at first and then you agreed........pick a side...lol

The problem wasn't the consoles themselves, unless you take into account memory issues that prevented the original Crysis from appearing on the consoles in it's initial and superior form. FEAR 1 on 360 was pretty much the exact same game as the PC version with an extra level and weapon. It was translated beautifully I think. I even played through and beat the game on 360 before I did on PC (didn't have a PC that could play it decently in 2006).

FEAR 2's consolization I think had less to do with cheesy story and jump scares, and more to do with aim down sight mechanics (which slows down the original's fast paced combat), COD style set piece-like combat setups, the lack of lean, and most of all the AI felt incredibly dumbed down to make them easier to hit with previously said aim down sight. The melee combat was a carry/left over from the first game, as it was a defining mark of FEAR 1, but just about useless in practice with the second game. It's retention was more likely just to "prove" that it really was the sequel to FEAR 1.

Aim down sight is something that makes console stick control easier and more accurate but at the cost of rapid movement and acquisition, so killing off the AI, and making the game more of a string of set piece battles where the enemies spawn in front of you makes the game easier for console gamepads. The first FEAR was a set of set piece battles but they were still designed with move and shoot gameplay in mind, as the AI could and would stay on the move and flank you. You couldn't just stay behind cover, and often close encounters would happen as you'd round a corner, and your martial arts abilities would actually be useful.

As for the Trigens in Far Cry........

I never hated them, but I wasn't expected them either. They do make for some harrowing gameplay in a few areas as you have to mag-dump into them sometimes to kill them off. I think most people just hated how gameplay versus the mercs in the game was already quite good and trigens just became a cheap scare and distraction. It was also a time when 3-sided conflicts were already in overuse in games (that's another thread), and since then it's still a forced norm that annoys me. I prefer the Trigens to the aliens in Crysis 1 by far.

Despite not being developed by Crytek, I actually do enjoy Far Cry 2, with the exception of the recurring check points and lack of a dynamic world that changes with your actions. The conflict between the two sides and the pillaging of the country by foreign agents and mercs felt realistic and relateable to real world events without seeming too preachy. My biggest change to the game other than dynamic world changes would be the addition of a bigger world (I would've made it a coastal country) and larger towns more akin to what we'd expect in real modern African countries.

 

[Subyman]

First Crysis was fun, but the AI had super vision and hearing, so it was hard to play stealthy without going invisible all the time. Crysis 2 sucked IMO. Crysis 3 was a great game and looked amazing although I never finished it.

 

[Sulaco]

There's an easy fix for that, you know. Just don't exploit it that way. It's like the quicksave argument "spamming quicksave makes the game too easy..."; well don't spam quicksave then.

However, there is one part of it that I think is a valid concern: I believe that the emphasis on cloak mode may have caused 'classic' stealth gameplay to suffer a bit during development. Compared to Far Cry, it always seemed to be very difficult to sneak around without the cloak in Crysis.

Otherwise, I think the suit was not a bad idea. It was a little added spice on top of some already solid combat (great gunplay plus the interactive environment), whilst still keeping the controls nice and uncomplicated.



I like Crysis more than Warhead, but Warhead is still pretty good. Much better than what came after. Warhead felt less epic and cinematic than Crysis, and had some awkward cutscenes. They were trying too hard to shoehorn in some half-arsed human interest story. My main beef with Warhead is that I suspect it's the reason why Crysis wasn't patched quite as much as it should have been. Was Crysis denied some potential post-release refinement because they were rushing ahead with Warhead? Seems likely.



That's precisely what I see when I look at Crysis. They're extremely similar. I saw the corny mad evil professor/mutant monkeys storyline as a weakness, one that I thought they did a good job of addressing in Crysis, which had a much more mature feel to it. Still a weak storyline, and that was one of the least improved aspects vs Far Cry, but it was an improvement nonetheless. Improved along with dialogue and voice acting.

I think you might be the first person I've ever known to actually like the trigens. They were good for the odd adrenaline rush, I'll give you that.

The Trigens were great, up until near the end when they just began spamming them like crazy around every corner, and you'd have the "big mutant Trigens" with rocket launcher arms or whatever chasing you, along with a dozen or more of the little guys.

I think people also were in love with the human firefights in Far Cry (which were awesome), and anything that distracted from that they were annoyed by.
But that was early 2004.
Now, with "human firefights" and sandbox gameplay ALL that the series offers, and all that MOST games of this style offer since Far Cry 2, I appreciate the Trigen aspect even more. If for nothing more than at least breaking up the monotony and predictability of neverending shoot outs and capture the flag gameplay.

Plus, it was just downright FUN happening upon a squad of human mercs as a couple of Trigens surprised them and tore them apart and you watched from a safe distance.:thumbsup:

 

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[Ramses]

I need to go play C1 again, I have it and don't recall really getting into it for some reason.
C2 and C3 were both awesome games, and I'm not very moved by games anymore. They were almost exactly what I wish there was more of, a good military-ish sci-fi book turned into a game, the combat suit was icing on the cake. As was the fact that it ran and looked amazing on any reasonable hardware. I've been a FPS gamer since my first overnight 14.4 modem download of Wolfenstein, and I consider C2 and 3 to be a benchmark which I measure other games against. Not many measure up imo. The Far Cry series is as good but in a different way.

 

[Fox5]

I felt the "suit" dynamic was one of the biggest pitfalls of Crysis; somewhat of an unnecessary gimmick that divorced you from the visceral firefights and gameplay.

It became an exercise in "Approach enemy compound--cloak--sneak a few steps--freeze--watch power regenerate--sneak a few more steps--shoot a guy--run and hide and wait for suit to regen--sneak a bit more--freeze while suit regens again, ad nauseam.

The "suit power" just felt like a completely inorganic paradigm that arbitrarily altered the flow of the game.

I still say despite it being the shortest, Crysis Warhead was easily one of the best, if not the best.

Honestly, I'd just love to see a true Far Cry sequel. No, it doesn't have to continue the same plot threads. Just the same style. An over-the-top B horror/action movie feel, with actual progression, plot, vast, open approaches to various areas, and great variety. Not going from camp to camp to camp killing humans and playing capture the flag. Heck, even the Trigen segments were done well, and could be genuinely tense and downright frightening encounters, considering how powerful they could be. In the jungle, at night, when you knew and could hear several Trigen on your tail and you're spray firing your M4 into the brush and running towards that speed boat on the water's edge just a few feet away.

THAT was some classic fun. It's just such a shame that entire subgenre of FPS has seemingly been abandoned.

You played the game completely differently than me then. I almost never used the cloak, instead relying heavily on speed and strength for super human agility. Enemies had a hard time hitting you while you were running on speed, and strength gave better accuracy, silent kills (punching), and super high jumps. I felt much more like a bad ass killer, sniping from the shadows, sprinting somewhere new, smacking a guy in the face, and then escaping to a place the enemies couldn't follow.
Speed also gave you super agility in water and the ability to jump super high out of water, so you would take out the enemy boats from above and once those were gone the enemies couldn't easily follow you.

 

[manimal]

Crysis 1 I think I have replayed more than any other game save for the total war series.

With mods its still awesome. I love playing with just a shottie and a silenced handgun on the hardest setting makes the game very challenging.

I also think that Fear 1 is probably an overall better game the first playtrough. It was so revolutionary and the AI was the best ever up to that point and in some ways better than 99 percent of what is available now. Funny to think of it but I also played fear with just a shotgun and handgun ALOT to make it more challenging. Fear 1 MP was a blast for a LONG time.

Crysis 1 is incredibly re-playable because of the open nature. Two and three not so much.

 

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[Anomaly1964]

Exactly! It's wide-open gameplay (inherited from far Cry), the number of different ways you could play it, and the fact that it still had proper saving all contributed to replayability that I've found virtually unparalleled.

I was already re-loading and replaying missions before I'd even finished the game for the first time, and then after I finished it, I could go back and replay maps indefinitely. Crysis 2/3 had none of that magic. They were linear and dull. When I played through Crysis 3, not once was I compelled to replay any mission in the process, and I haven't really played it since, except for opening up Welcome to the Jungle every few months for benchmarking purposes. I got more replay value out of the Crysis demo alone than I got from the whole of Crysis 3! And even if Crysis 3'd had a few good maps, the lack of saving would still have killed replayability. In Crysis, if I see a vehicle coming I can make a save and then experiment with different ambush tactics, getting 10x the enjoyment and replay value out of one part. With checkpoint only saving that is all lost. I would have to grind from the last checkpoint every time I wanted to replay a certain sequence.

Oh, and as unfortunate as the loss of 'classic' stealth gameplay was, I reckon the game makes up for it in other ways. For example, you can do things like rig up a whole guarded area with C4, and the blow them all sky high from your choice of vantage point - impossible, if not for cloak.

Have you guys played the newest THIEF?


It's funny too, how many of us had strong enough computers to play Crysis maxed out when it first came out? Now we can...

 

[Fenixgoon]

i really enjoyed crysis 1, although the final boss was a little bit of a letdown.
i had 0 clue what was going on in crysis 2 and thought it was meh.
i also really enjoyed crysis 3, partly due to the music. it wasn't as open as C1, but more open than C2.

 

[TechBoyJK]

I felt the "suit" dynamic was one of the biggest pitfalls of Crysis; somewhat of an unnecessary gimmick that divorced you from the visceral firefights and gameplay.

It became an exercise in "Approach enemy compound--cloak--sneak a few steps--freeze--watch power regenerate--sneak a few more steps--shoot a guy--run and hide and wait for suit to regen--sneak a bit more--freeze while suit regens again, ad nauseam.

The "suit power" just felt like a completely inorganic paradigm that arbitrarily altered the flow of the game.

I still say despite it being the shortest, Crysis Warhead was easily one of the best, if not the best.

Honestly, I'd just love to see a true Far Cry sequel. No, it doesn't have to continue the same plot threads. Just the same style. An over-the-top B horror/action movie feel, with actual progression, plot, vast, open approaches to various areas, and great variety. Not going from camp to camp to camp killing humans and playing capture the flag. Heck, even the Trigen segments were done well, and could be genuinely tense and downright frightening encounters, considering how powerful they could be. In the jungle, at night, when you knew and could hear several Trigen on your tail and you're spray firing your M4 into the brush and running towards that speed boat on the water's edge just a few feet away.

THAT was some classic fun. It's just such a shame that entire subgenre of FPS has seemingly been abandoned.

go through and play Crysis without using the suit unless when necessary.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Crysis 3 is beautiful.

It was too short, and the maps were sometimes iffy, but it's a AAA title for damn sure.

The map/level 'fields' is absolutely stunning. And dealing with the aliens in tall grass, where everything, including wind, affects how the grass flows.. it's fun/challenging.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Sorry, I think I misinterpreted your post. The wording is a little ambiguous. Depending on how you read it, it can look like you're suggesting that they transferred the positive aspects of the original games into the later consolized ones.

More like they transferred a couple of key aspects that don't mean much when the overall package sucks in comparison to the original. I'll admit I enjoyed FEAR 2 (mostly), but the original is still the best by far. I haven't played F3AR (just as bad as "DRIV3R") but I don't feel like wasting my time.

 

[stockwiz]

I enjoyed Crysis for a playthrough or three but then it gets boring after awhile. I enjoyed Warhead more yet.

I enjoy Far Cry 3/4 more than both despite the simplifications in the physics engine from Far Cry 2 which I did manage to play to the end but have no desire to do so again due to the aggressiveness of the outpost guards combined with the lack of a good fast way to travel around.

 

[Ramses]

I put an hour into Crysis 1 last night.
It's still a great looking game, polished, good menu, stable, runs great (obviously), etc.
Some annoyances that may well have fixes I haven't found yet, but aren't present in 2 and 3. The toggle ADS, I really prefer an on/off button, and a fast one. The suit controls, haven't tried the whatever it was called checkbox where you can double tap a certain key for each function, but not being able to map to a specific key is annoying. The engagement range, so far, is annoying with the little RDS and the baddies seem to be damn near bulletproof. I'm OK with tuff badguys, but it's bordering on comical.
I'm not annoyed enough to stop, but I'm remembering why I went into C2 before getting far in C1.

 

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[thehotsung8701A]

And to think the Witcher 3 could have been what Crysis 1 was man years from now on. It a shame that no developer care about future proofing PC games anymore.

 

[Blitzvogel]

And to think the Witcher 3 could have been what Crysis 1 was man years from now on. It a shame that no developer care about future proofing PC games anymore.

I think "future proofing" is vastly overrated. Nothing wrong with reasonable exclusive features with PC, but the focus needs to be on being a good game first.