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Review: Crysis Warhead
- Title: Crysis Warhead
- Developer: Crytek Budapest
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- System: Windows
- Reviewer: Soulskill
- Score: 4/5
In the original Crysis, a team of American soldiers was dropped into combat on an island controlled by the North Korean Army. The game followed one of the soldiers, call sign "Nomad," as he made his way across the island to complete his objectives. In Warhead you control another member of the team, Michael "Psycho" Sykes, as he attempts to retrieve some cargo thought to be a nuclear warhead. While Psycho assisted Nomad throughout the first game, there is very little interaction with Nomad in this offering.
What differentiates Warhead from typical first-person shooters is the "Nano Muscle Suit," which provides limited protection and a number of enhanced abilities. You can only use one at a time, and you toggle the suit between the various enhancements through a very simple interface. It's similar to the interface used in Crysis, but slightly improved. The suit has an energy tank which runs dry quickly, but regenerates quickly as well. As a result, it's not feasible to just turn on all the goodies and annihilate everything in your path; each mode has an energy budget, which forces you to be creative, picking the right tool for the job. Armor mode will allow you to take extra hits, the damage coming out of your energy bar rather than your health bar. It drains quickly, though. It'll give you extra seconds to get to cover, but it won't let you take on a dozen guys. Strength mode will let you jump really high, throw things extra far, and land punches that would drop a buffalo. Speed mode makes you run a bit faster and gives you the ability to sprint incredibly fast for very short periods of time. Between Speed and Strength modes, you can get to a lot of interesting places. Dash up behind a building, jump to the roof, and smash your way through the ceiling to surprise the enemies inside. You also get Stealth mode, which is reminiscent of the Predator. You're camouflaged well, but not perfectly, so enemies who get close enough will still see you. Don't get caught running out of energy in the middle of sneaking through a battlefield. Through the same interface, you can add attachments to your weapon, such as a flashlight, a silencer, or different sights.
The different suit modes add a great deal of replayability to Warhead. If you want, you can literally sneak through the majority of the game, dropping out only to recharge your energy and fire your weapon. You can also just blitz your way though on Speed mode, dodging enemies and beelining from one obstacle to another for cover. Sometimes you do have to stop and shoot the roses, though. The modes combine in interesting ways. You can stealth from vantage point to vantage point, then use your Strength mode to steady your aim for sniping. You can dash past a group of enemy soldiers and get them to follow you to a group of aliens, then disappear. The two forces will lose you, see each other, and start shooting.
The AI in Warhead is definitely a step up. When you're spotted, enemy soldiers will converge on your position, calling over their friends to help. They'll flank you and use cover quite well to avoid your fire. They'll even duck behind a corner to reload. You can use stealth mode to get out of a lot of sticky situations, but even then, they'll continue to shoot at and around where you were last seen, knowing that if you're low on energy, you can't move very far without being revealed. I felt that the overall difficulty of the game was often hit-or-miss. Warhead was done in the (fairly common) style that strives for realistic aiming. In other words, holding down the trigger increases the spray radius, and headshots do more damage than shots to the center mass. It leads to fairly inconsistent encounters; sometimes you'll drop a group of three or four enemies without getting hit, and sometimes they'll absolutely demolish you. You'll also run into vehicles carrying more powerful guns that can pick you off from far away after a couple of lucky hits, and you may not have any recourse. It doesn't happen often enough that it's a major problem, but you'll almost certainly die a few frustrating deaths where you just didn't have time to cloak yourself or dive for cover. Occasionally, you'll run into opponents wearing their own version of your suit, and it can be annoying to (seemingly) pump 20 rounds into somebody and have them still kill you.
Vehicle use is a bit better, too. You get a couple new toys to ride around in, and they're easier to handle than in the original game. It's not perfect, but it's awfully entertaining once you have the hang of blazing down a road while taking out everything along the sides. The rides vary in maneuverability and firepower, but they're all useful for something. You can zoom around in an unarmed hovercraft, or putter along in a large truck. As with the normal combat, your durability usually depends on how lucky you are. Sometimes you'll feel invincible running over enemy soldiers while taking potshots at passing helicopters, and other times it seems like you have to find a new ride every hundred yards. There's nothing stopping you from taking out the gunner and driver of another vehicle and stealing it. I was a bit disappointed that you can't drop inside enemy-controlled tanks, though. It was hard enough to get on top of one. Make sure to keep an eye on your vehicle's damage meter; if they explode while you're inside, you die.
The story itself is simultaneously an upside and a downside of the game. Depending on your playstyle, you'll make it through Warhead in 5-7 hours. That said, the game is an expansion, and it's priced as such, so with the replayability and multiplayer options, the length isn't a gripe. Part of the reason the game clocks in where it does is that the pacing is excellent. The missions objectives are thrown at you quickly, and your military contacts are constantly checking in with new problems or to provide motivation. The game is designed to make you want to see what's over the next metaphorical hill, reward you for getting there with a battle or a visual "holy crap" moment, and then pointing you towards the next hill. The music contributes greatly to this with a driving, energetic, and dramatic score. In fact, it's some of the most appropriate music I've ever heard in a game. Another factor that mitigates the game's brevity is the options for replayability mentioned earlier. There's a great driving mission partway through that has you following a comrade through a hostile zone, taking a ton of heat from roadside stations and patrols. You can follow him and shoot your way to the objective on your first time through the game, and then ditch the vehicle and sneak safely through the next time. Or take the time to clear out all the enemy stations on your way. Crytek does a good job of offering you options without requiring that you take them, and pushing you toward your objectives without insisting on particular tactics.
Warhead, much like Crysis, is a very visually impressive game. The artwork is stunning, but not obtrusive; it only served to deepen the immersion for me. I found myself rubbernecking when I made an enemy vehicle crash or knocked an alien out of the sky. When I had spare moments to collect my thoughts, I was torn between watching the scenery and keeping an eye out for the next Big Thing so I wouldn't miss it. Fortunately, Crytek has us covered; they consistently give you some warning or do something to draw your eye to the big, impressive sights. The graphic settings for Warhead are either intuitive or stupid, depending on whom you ask. The minor settings (for textures, shadows, etc.) have four options: Minimum, Mainstream, Gamer, and Enthusiast. The default is Mainstream, and that's what I used my first time through the game. On a middle-of-the-road PC, it was completely smooth. I bumped it up to Gamer and noticed a performance hit, but it was still playable. At Enthusiast, the game got very choppy in graphically intense sequences. It was borderline playable — I wouldn't use it for anything but exploring or showing somebody else the game. Sure looked good, though. TechSpot did a more in-depth analysis on the relation between hardware and framerate.
Warhead's multiplayer system, Crysis Wars, is basically a refined version of what was offered in the original Crysis. There are three different types of games: Instant Action (a basic free-for-all deathmatch), Team Instant Action (team deathmatch), and Power Struggle. The latter divides players between two teams and gives them a variety of buildings to capture and vehicles to unlock on their way to destroying the enemy's headquarters. The use of vehicles adds to the gameplay without dominating it. Given the option, I was happy to hop into a truck, but it was always to get somewhere so I could hop out again. I had trouble finding servers with enough people to make Power Struggle interesting, but if you get a lot of people involved, it could be quite fun. The other, more traditional game types are well-done, but a matter of personal preference. I tend to prefer Quake-style games rather than the ones more dedicated to realism. In Crysis Wars, encounters with enemies players are often over in seconds, with very little ability to break off an encounter that's not going well, or to overcome bad odds. I enjoyed the team version more, because having teammates is synonymous with having some target dummies scouting ahead to draw enemy fire. That said, having access to your suit puts a nice spin on an old concept. Players who make full use of them are incredibly dangerous. If that style of combat is your preference, you'll enjoy it. The maps are well crafted and provide many opportunities for unique interactions, and they make good use of all three dimensions.
Crytek is a great example of a developer who produced something good and then turned around and produced something better. That's the kind of progression I like to see in a company, but so rarely do. Warhead is an improvement on Crysis in almost every way. Fans of the original will be fans of the expansion, and the price tag is appropriate for the amount of content the game provides (even more so if the multiplayer community takes off). This time around, the hardware situation is much less of an issue. The streamlining of the graphics engine is evident, and technology has had some time to catch up as well. Be aware that Warhead ships with the same DRM as Spore, which we've discussed at length recently, so if that's a deal-breaker for you, give it a pass. The game itself, however, plays quite well, and its flaws are minor. I'm definitely looking forward to the next parts of the proposed Crysis trilogy.
Crysis was known for excellent gameplay? When did that happen?
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
So is this like what they did with Half life 2: Episode 1/2?
Steam is selling Crysis and Crysis Warhead for the same price, so I'm a bit confused.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Crysis was a game? I thought it was a rendering engine.
Actually, the DRM is becoming more of an issue with me.
My friend lent me his copy of Crysis right after I upgraded my PC, but I never installed it specifically because of the packaged DRM. I'm finding that I research DRM as part of the purchasing decision these days. That and educating others about it (and if they ask, teaching them about torrents).
Too bad companies don't realize that unreasonable DRM on games actually costs them sales while not really affecting piracy.
Could God create a game with such steep requirements that he, himself, could not run it?
When Crysis was released last year, it immediately became known for two things; excellent gameplay and ...
I stopped reading right there.
Honestly, I don't get what's so impressive about these graphics. Yeah, they're "improved", but they're still rough around the edges. Look at that first screenshot, for example. The spare tire rim on the back of the jeep has 10 sides. 10. You'd think they'd spend some time working on making round things *round*. There's got to be somebody at nVidia or ATI that can figure out how to accelerate more than just triangles... Hell, the math for curves is *easier* in some ways. Everything we see in these screens is still a flat surface with a picture slapped on it to give it "texture"... Sharp intersections, and the approximation of curves....
The particle effects, etc, are fantastic, but I wouldn't call them "graphical" improvements. And the lighting effects are nice, but every game seems to overuse them.
We need people to be pushing realistic graphics in the right direction, so I appreciate a game like this, but as things stand now I'd still rather play a game with stylized graphics than be constantly distracted by all the ways they got "realistic" wrong. I prefer PS2 graphics to these screens... I certainly won't be spending hundreds of dollars to get my hardware to run this.
It's not really crysis unless you can use the mere fact your system can run it at 1+ fps on full "all the way to 11" settings to put down someone else's rig. Wasn't that the point of the game?
Well of course there is! Back in the day you had crosshairs. Now you don't have crosshairs anymore, for the sake of realism! That's pretty innovative!!
You just got troll'd!
Yes, but upon trying to run it, He would instantly become capable. Thus the paradox is resolved.
It doesn't matter how good the game is, with the insultingly restrictive DRM and Securom malware it has, I won't be buying it.
I hope enough people comment loudly in every forum and vote with their $$$ so much that EA will HAVE to notice how much they are losing in sales because of DRM.
Dude! Enemies that take cover. Groundbreaking.
FPS AI generally isn't too hot. That they have cleverer AI here than is the norm is news.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
I'm sorry, but I cleared this game within 3 hours the first night I turned it on. Length is not my only criticism though.
Not only was the game shorter over all, but the level design was much poorer than the original; not nearly as much attention to detail. The cutscenes were overly long (one being almost 45 seconds of watching a character half-off camera fiddle with something also off camera, no dialogue, uninteresting shot, completely unnecessary cutscene entirely). The cutscenes in particular screamed the desire to superficially lengthen the game, and in some sequences were so absurd, or took themselves so seriously that they just felt more like dark comedy.
What hit me the hardest was the complete lack of new content. Same bosses, same enemies, a few new environment models and situations, but overall this game felt like a massive cop-out, or a sub-par addition to an ongoing episodic series, both which make it completely not worth the price of purchase.
As usual the imagery was beautiful, even at its lowest settings, which ran fluidly on my machine. Very nice that they seem to have streamlined some of the engine, but overall the most disappointing game I've played this year. I felt the first Crysis was "pretty okay", and not once did this sequel match the first in ANY category, with the sole exception of performance.
It may have had it kept going and introduced new ideas, content and gameplay, but just as the game was wrapping up what I felt was a great ramp up intro-sequence, the credits rolled. Seriously, wtf?
So yeah, just pass on this very disappointing pseudo-sequel. If Crytek wants to make sales, they need to do better than this, instead of just blaming things on piracy this time around.
Looking at that screencap makes me think "PS2, circa 2003" not "zOMG wow let me upgrade my video card!"
Seriously, can anyone justify building a $2K rig to play that thing?
I didn't think so.
Wouldn't that be considered a sequel?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I personally really enjoyed the first crysis game and felt it had high re-playability, and will definitely be playing this. While the performance requirements were high, they were not insurmountable, a 8000+ nvidia card and 2GB+ ram would do the trick just fine. While this is in the upper end of hardware, especially for its original release date, I was really glad everything looked as good as it did, and the environment was as immersive as it was. I'm sorry you all couldn't play the game at 50FPS, but some of us really enjoyed it, and felt the effort by crytek was actually impressive, not foolhardy.
neorush
Crysis was ok, but not great. I thought it was pretty good until all of a sudden I found myself floating inside the alien chambers. That whole sequence kind of ruined it for me.
but the activation requirement is a deal breaker for me. DRM doesn't bother me - along the lines of the original Crysis - but having a limited number of activations is just WRONG.
In the 'pirating spore' topic I brought up how I bought Spore and also downloaded in order to play it properly. In that post I also stated that in the future, I'm just going to do without the game, and EA can do without my money.
Install/activation limitations are ultimately going to kill PC gaming. The few PC games that I'm interested in playing - Stalker CS, Crysis redux.. (I'm sure there will be a few others) I just don't trust buying now. From now on, my only real gaming consideration will be for the console.
Apparently the Steam version also carries the same install activation/limitation, and apparently a lot of recently released Steam games are doing the same thing. I own no less than 5 copies of Half Life 2 (original PC, original Ep1, orange box, original xbox and now 360 orange box - kinda love the game - also the HL1: Source). But I'll be damned if I spend another dime on a boxed PC game or a Steam game. I bought all of those out of 1) my choice, and 2) the upgrades or additional playability provided. I will never buy another game simply because I ran out of installs and need to 'refresh'.
RANT: Why don't activation schemes use MAC addresses, or CPU serial #s, or any of the completely unique identifiers (a la dongles)? Those I could live with. I've had too many failures/reformats/upgrades over the years, hell - over the months, to risk these crap activations.
(just a little pissed at the state of things :) )
The Crysis AI was awful. There would be guys shooting you from half way across the freaking island and ran straight at you. That was probably my favorite part, when the guys just charged at me until they were all dead.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Looking at that screencap makes me think "PS2, circa 2003" not "zOMG wow let me upgrade my video card!"
Seriously, can anyone justify building a $2K rig to play that thing?
I didn't think so.
I'm not interested in the game, but this "$2k rig" meme forced me to respond. If you want to play a game like Crysis and you have a desktop PC, as most people with an interest in PC gaming do, then you can probably add a $230 graphics card and play all the newest things very smoothly with graphics about ~4x more complex than a PS3 or 360 can handle. Even if you have to do a major overhaul, a great new CPU, MB, video card, and 2-4 gigs of RAM can all be had for $500. Let's say you've never had high end components before and you need a new PSU. Still only $550. The only people who spend $2k on a gaming rig are people who have the explicit goal of spending $2k on a gaming rig.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Could God create a game with such steep requirements that he, himself, could not run it?
I have a GTX 280, the Graphics card all modern gods prefer, and I bought Crysis last week.
It looks fabulous, but plays like crap, Seriously.
The fact that your health and armour regenerates ruins the game.
Stealthing with the knowledge that you have such a small amount of health that an unfriendly sneeze would kill you I could accept, but the very fact that all you have to do is back off a bit and wait for you health to reappear with no effort on your part is the single stupidest thing I've seen in an FPS.
I've given up on it.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
The current Universe may be an example of that. Pending proof.
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
No, as long as your negaself on Earth Minus One can pick up the computer upgrades you'll need for you...
Could God create a game with such steep requirements that he, himself, could not run it?
Yes. In fact I hear he works over at 3D Realms.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
After not having a desktop for a long time, I built one in August. The video card's a Geforce 8800 GS -- $75 USD. ... and yet it runs Crysis fine, at mid-high settings, 1440x900 (down from my panel's native 1680x1050).
Too damned short. I finish the game in about 7 hours. $30's worth of crack would probably have lasted me longer.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
then you can probably add a $230 graphics card and play all the newest things very smoothly with graphics about ~4x more complex than a PS3 or 360 can handle.
They call this diarrhea of the mouth.
Similes are like metaphors
Yeah, it's not Rainbow 6
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/21-Crysis
Enough said.
play all the newest things very smoothly with graphics about ~4x more complex than a PS3 or 360 can handle
To bad you will be playing a game that's only .25x as fun as castle crashers
So before trying to run it, he is incapable of running it? So much for omnipotence. Visit the wikipedia page... the paradox is not resolved. Unless there's no God, then it's resolved. ;)
That is absolutely wrong. From my personal opinion, you once had the chance to refresh your system by adding a new graphics card in its lifecycle. However, that still meant that you'd have to play the newer games on medium rather than on high quality. So I'd say for a real gamer PC you have to spend your 2k US$ budget initially (we're talking about Eurpoean prices here) - you can do a video card update after approx. 2 years but then it's not long until you have to build your next machine all over again.
Personally I think that the fun/cost ratio in high end PC gaming is terribly low nowadys...
Always run = ON
I've got your same card, and I just bought a 22" widescreen monitor to accompany it. I'm not impressed with Crysis, but I will eventually get through the game and the sequel as well. It's like eating straight caramel... good at first, but you can only eat so much at once.
Now I have caramel crysis cravings.
I thought the first Crysis was pretty good. I played it through several times trying different strategies via the supersuit. I couldnt tell you what my low-end graphics card is, but I just turned down the graphics options until I got a good frame rate, and enjoyed the game. But then I remember playing the original Doom in 1994 and thinking that was super brilliant.
For custom rigs maybe. For prebuilt rigs from an OEM, you'll pay 2-3 times the component cost (and get crappier components in the bargain).
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Warhead has really soured me toward the Crysis franchise.
I was actually using a really dumb argument to poke fun at it, not as a serious response. If there is a god, then he's so far out of our league that our logic can't explain or disprove him (or her). Omnipotent can mean they can literally do anything at all, or it could just as easily mean that they can do anything that we can think of.
I keep seeing people listing their FPS on what games they play on their respective systems. What exactly are people using to show the FPS on screen while they play games? I cannot find any settings in the games that will show this on screen (or at all).
Right after he ports Crysis to an unmodified Commodore 64, optimized to be played at high resolutions, maximum graphic settings, 60fps.
Nice screenshots.
The only way that Crysis ever registered on my gaming radar was that it was a DX10-only game, and therefore required Vista, and therefore I would probably not play it in the foreseeable future.
but the very fact that all you have to do is back off a bit and wait for you health to reappear with no effort on your part is the single stupidest thing I've seen in an FPS
Hunting for healtpacks is one thing I've never enjoyed, be it hearts in Zelda, meat in Caslevania, Pizza in Turtles, painkillers in Max Payne, or whatever.
Incidentally I'm enjoying Warhead quite a lot.
The Crysis AI was awful.
I'm playing through Warhead right now, it's a fun game but I'll have to agree - the AI isn't too hot. I've seen enemies run into objects and keep running, and I suspect there is spawning involved (enemies just popping out of nowhere - like on top of you... had me confused for a while)
Of the games I've played the best AI falls to either F.E.A.R or Halo 1, though level design does make a difference on how we gamers perceive the AI. Max Payne, for instance, has horrid AI - worse than Doom in some ways - but I never noticed during my first playthrough.
I take it you haven't played (or didn't enjoy) Gears of War or Call of Duty 4? Games that teach the masses that you can recover from any injury by "sucking it up" and taking a few breaths.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
"BS. Moral considerations aside, because if you're advocating piracy you obviously don't feel there's any moral ground against it, by pirating the game you encourage further repressive copy protection, as the AC said."
I have never encouraged Piracy before, but I would do so now if someone I know wants an EA game. I would first suggest another game and if I could not dissuade them, I would tell them exactly how to get a clean reliable and free copy, possibly even getting it for them.
Piracy is nothing but a smoke screen in this case. The "repressive copy protections" are broken on day 1, they are only serve to make the lives of consumers miserable, and destroy EAs public enemy number two, the resale market. Pirates don't hate repressive DRM, to them it is a challenge (well more of a race). The repressive DRM is there to screw over the honest consumer and that is all.
I consider your thesis broken about piracy encouraging more DRM because you have it absolutely backwards. Repressive DRM is encouraging more piracy and when the bean counters clue in they will eventually be forced to a more enlightened path as is happening with music DRM.
How do we wake up the Bean counters, by demonstrating a direct cause and effect relation. More DRM = less sales and greater piracy.
Do your part download Spore and make it the most downloaded game ever. I would bet Spore (repressive DRM) has been pirate at rates over 50% and Sins of the Solar empire (zero DRM) probably well under 10%.
Support Stardock and www.gog.com (I just signed up today) and other fair practice vendors. Fight those that foist oppressive DRM in any way that you can.
Aw man, you just gave me flashbacks playing RB6 and RS (that's Rogue Spear to you youngins) in the GameSpy offices in '99, when we'd fling all the doors open (including the door between the original and "new" office across the outside hall (Costa Mesa, before Irvine)). All the speaker phones would light up with a company-wide conference, just so that no one was immune to the shit-talking. Those were some of the best times gaming ever.
The rest of the GameSpy experience began to suck major ass shortly after, but the gaming (for a while, at least) was king.
Fond memories. :)
bored AC...
IOW...
Yes, God can create a game with specs so high that He can not run it. However, at the same time (neither before nor after), He also *can* run that game (on the same exact system that can't run it, no less).
Thus, the paradox *is* resolved... because the paradox is also *not* resolved... because it's God, you idiots. By definition, He's impossible.
I liked Far Cry.
Great graphics (yes, I have a high-end PC), fun gameplay - until we met the aliens. Then it rapidly turned boring.
It was exactly the same again in Crysis: great fun, nice graphics, sneaking and shooting and snipering and ramboing - nice. Until we met the aliens. Then it rapidly turned boring, even worse than Far Cry.
Now there's another game along these lines? No, thanks. Had enough of boring aliens.
Especially if I see this line in the review: "Be aware that Warhead ships with the same DRM as Spore". This alone kills the whole idea stone dead for me.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
"What differentiates Warhead from typical first-person shooters is the "Nano Muscle Suit," which provides limited protection and a number of enhanced abilities"
Yeah, because I hardly play shooters where I have some kind of super suit with shields and all that jazz.
I have to agree,I LOVED the AI in F.E.A.R. Listening in on the bad guys was half the fun! I loved it when I'd set a booby trap and hide around the corner and after the BOOM! I'd hear them calling out for help,let me know right where to get them. Now if you could just mix that with the unpredictability of SWAT 3&4,where you never knew how many bad guys there was going to be or where they were,then you would have had a perfect game IMHO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.