The first Far Cry (may God have mercy upon this brand) was a good game. And contrarily to what seems to be the majority (to me anyway), I appreciated the second half of the game when the mutants start to show up. It's also a product that few PCs at the time could actually run (or run fast enough).
I still remember the clerk at my local store at the time telling me that he had many Far Cry returns due to "technical difficulties" (he actually air-quoted that himself when he described the situation). The truth is that most of the gamers that returned the game just didn't have a good enough PC to run it well, or to run it at all. But that's not the gamers' fault, because I'd argue that Far Cry pushed / forced an acceleration in hardware evolution (that many just didn't see coming, certainly including gamers themselves). That evolution would have happened over time nonetheless, but I'm just saying that Crytek just made it happen faster; the gaming industry had to actually react to the arrival of such demanding games. And yes, I know, at the time we also had Half-Life 2, but that one ran on a much more forgiving (and very optimized and modular) engine (not to mention that the physics was its main [selling] feature).
And it didn't take that long for Crytek to just repeat the accomplishment again with the first Crysis. That one surprised everyone as well. For the gamer, it was a visual spectacle the likes of which had never been seen before, anywhere (anyone with memories of the first Crysis - when it was freshly released - would still to this day remember their reaction when they saw that sunrise in the first level by the beach). For the game designer / engineer it must have been quite a revelation and a surprise. The gaming industry was shocked and once again hardware was on its knees for something like two or three years following the release of the game. How many benchmarks relied on Crysis to establish the power of a new GPU / CPU? All of them? (of course, other games were used, but we ALL looked at those Crysis scores didn't we?). And how many new generations of GPUs it took us to finally get to a point where we could run the game at maximum settings on a single card at constant smooth frame rates with anti-aliasing and all the shenanigans applied? And, perhaps more importantly, how many upgraded their entire system(s) specifically for Crysis?
I remember reading an article about Crysis (and Crytek) that argued that what they managed to do with Far Cry and Crysis (and to the PC gaming industry) was the equivalent to what id Software did with DOOM and Quake in their days. It set things in motion at an accelerated (and unprepared) pace. It took us by storm and we loved it too (well, perhaps the wallet didn't, but our brain just asked for more).
Now with all this said, I have to admit that I stopped playing Crysis 2 after what I think is the second or third "map" since I got bored of it that fast, never touched it again since. But I kept my saved game intact, I might give it another try at some point. I'm not "hating" it by the way, it just got boring; maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it at the time. As for Crysis 3, it's definitely one of the best-looking game out there right now and in my opinion the best looking Crysis game (without texture mods, because that in itself can be a complete game changer, quite literally). However, I didn't buy Crysis 3 and I have zero interest in playing it (only saw footage on YouTube and review sites, it looks awesome but the game-play doesn't pique my interest).
I really liked the first Crysis (and side note: loved the zero gravity alien level, I'm probably part of a minority on that one), and I thought that Warhead's campaign was even better in many aspects. But for now I'm "done" with the Crysis series. The CryEngine, however, is of course still very capable. It's a shame that the industry didn't end up using it to produce hundreds of games like it has been the case with the Unreal Engine since... since forever? (I.E. since the engine's existence obviously). How many games run using UE3? A crap load, can't even count them (just Google that, find a list of games powered by the Unreal Engines, not just 3.0 but even previous versions and look at your jaw drop). And how many games run with CryEngine? 15 or so? Yeah... and also, which games are powered by CryEngine? Popular ones besides... the Crysis series? Ok, we'll have Star Citizen, and yes it looks absolutely fantastic, but will it bring the massive players base like... say... Call of Duty or Halo does? Of course not.
So, now we have UE4 and Frostbite (2, 3, whichever the version is) and it does look like those two engines will be the ones running the majority of our (upcoming and future) games. And CryEngine games will occasionally pop out here and there, will always look good, and then will be forgotten in a matter of months (and that's very unfortunate).