When I used to play games, back in the day (you know, for enjoyment’s sake), the time when I’d never even heard of a Cynicism Cap and could quite merrily blat my way through whatever I could afford to get my hands on with what little pocket money I had left. Blinky’s Scary School was a challenge: I had to wait 10 minutes for the game to load, I couldn’t save it and it wasn’t the most inspiring thing to look at. But, who cares? It’s all I had and it was right up there with ‘fun’.

These days, what with accountants ruling the universe and all, the majority of games to hit our shelves are either sequels, mass-market titles, low budget bargains or games that have something to prove. Sure the gameplay can still be there, but does it ever feel the same like it did when you were a kid? Probably not, but we can at least claps on for dear joy to the things we love in a game.

I, for example, love my graphics. I love my gameplay too, but if I can’t have both by now, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I have to look at a game objectively to see what it was trying to achieve and score accordingly. You might thing this is an odd way of running the show, but personally I think we’re at a lack of choice, and when that one big title arrives that manages to seamlessly merge the 2 you feel that much better for it.

So, with all that said I had to wonder if Crytek would ever get off their virtual island. Their engine is bloody stunning, there’s no doubt about that, but I had hoped that after Far Cry they’d branch out a bit. Yes, yes, sure - they’ve ditched the scruffy dude and brought us an elite Marine with superhero powers, but I refer more to shifting from sand and sea to steel and glass. What? Oh ok, sure they give it a go towards the end of the game but ah, less said on that for now.

Without wanting to sound all Babylon 5, the year is 2020. You play a guy called ‘Nomad’ a.k.a. Lieutenant Jake Dunn, a US Army Delta Force member who happens to own a Nano Muscle Suit that allows him to enhance various abilities. You start off learning that North Koreans are evacuating all civilians from the Lingshan Islands apart from a research team lead by a lass called Helena Rosenthal and her dad. However, you soon learn that all’s not what it seems on this little paradise island as a highly developed technological squid attacks you and your squad.

Your main gameplay feature this evening shall be a suit that allows you to become a Super Hero! Using a radial menu you have the option to enhance a particular attribute for a period of time. You have 4 options; you can cloak yourself, enhance your strength, become mega speedy or go for maximum armour and soak more bullets. Each of these options not only comes down to personal preference and style on your part, but what each scenario presents you with. You might decide to go for high ground by using your enhanced strength to leap up onto a cliff face and then cloak and observe, or you might want to tack on maximum armour and go for all out carnage. Whatever you decide, there’s a limited amount of time you can do it for based on your energy levels. Those levels with regenerate themselves, but managing that as well as your health is the main challenge of the game.

For those of you that played Far Cry, you may’ve noticed how the AI in that game had amazing peripheral vision. Not a lot has changed for Crysis; de-cloaking yourself behind an enemy is likely to give the game away, causing him to instantly spin around and start getting his gun off. Like I said, Crysis is predominantly about the look, some of the gameplay features aren’t going to blow you out of the water. This is perhaps countered by allowing you to choose how you play with the minds of your enemies. If you wanted to cloak yourself, approach and enemy, grab him, swap to maximum strength and then throw him at his comrades you could. Or, watch him crash through the roof of a building as you lob him 20 foot in the air. That, at least, is fun.

One of the other options on your radial menu is to mod your gun. Your main gun can swap out scopes, silencers and flashlights while the weapons you pick up along your way will have fewer options. Not that this matters as your main gun has almost bugger-all ammo throughout the game so I wouldn’t cling onto it in your time of need. You’ll get a few different vehicles to use from situation to situation, but seeing as you can run like Roadrunner at times you may not bother. Still, it’s nice to have the option.

But, wow, the look of the game - it’s bloody gorgeous! Crytek can once again pat themselves on their graphical back at being ahead of the game. Sure, you’ve got to have an aircraft hanger of a computer to run it in all it’s glory, and even then it doesn’t have struggle at times. However, there are points when it really seems worth it. Thanks to the dynamic time of day on the island, seeing it coloured by the sun at dawn and dusk, it’s bizarrely realistic. I mean this from a purely positive way, if not somewhat surrealistic being camped out on the beech, cloaked in your government-supplied Venom suit, waiting for a kill.

There was a lot of hype surrounding the game for say, your ability to shoot leaves. Now, I don’t know about you lot, but that doesn’t really float my boat as far as the enjoyment factor goes. However, brushing foliage out of the way, shooting leaves, blowing up trees and swimming through tropical waters from one side of the island to another really helps immerse you Crytek’s world. So it is not without some element of despondency that a bunch of high-tech critters come along and mess things up – you’re just going to have to kill them now aren’t you.

The main feeling I take away from Crysis is that, whilst it looks stunning, the gameplay could’ve been polished a bit more. The AI doesn’t blow me away, with simple way-pointing issues to amazing vision or player detection. The helicopters are practically invincible without a couple of blasts from a rocket launcher, regardless of whether you shoot out their rockets causing them to fly around on fire. Not to mention an ending that screams “sequel!” even though we already know it’s a trilogy.

Hey, it’s a paragraph of negativity in the praise of a pretty title with a decent storyline. I’d love to make the requirement of saying you should have a decent computer before playing it, but that’s not going to happen for the most part. Grab a copy, it might not look like the back of the box but you’ll enjoy it!