“Crysis: Warhead” is the second instalment from Crytek, who’ve previously made “Far Cry” and “Crysis”, using their new CryEngine 2 (whoa! that’s too many “Cry”s)

It’s basically just an expansion to Crysis that has a story that runs alongside the original. You aren’t really given anything more in regards the main storyline, rather it’s main goal is to expand on one of the other members of “Raptor Team”, namely Sergeant Michael Sykes (aka Psycho). In the original you play as the Raptor Team member, First Lieutenant Jake Dunn (aka Nomad) and, like some other protagonists in FPS’s, you never get to see his face and his background is never fully expanded on throughout the game. In Warhead however, you have already been shown Psycho’s face in the original so there is no need for it to be hidden. Also his personality has already been established, as a brash, jovial individual with a thick British English accent. This allows them to do something unseen in recent FPS’s and show cut scenes 3rd person to the lead protagonist.

In my opinion I think this worked a lot better than the original as you get to see the emotive reactions on the protagonists face, it also allows for some very dramatic cut scenes throughout the game where you can see the whole scene unfold rather than being tied to seeing everything through your characters eyes. I found that by the end of this expansion, the character of Psycho had a lot more depth than Nomad had been given. In fact It would be nice to be given the option to play as Psycho, instead of Nomad, in Crysis 2 (here’s hoping)

The game itself is excellent. I’ve read some differing reviews on it but overall it’s been praised, and I’d agree. I never really got into the original, I kindof just wrapped it then used it as a glorified graphical benchmark for my PC, but with this one I’ve already wrapped it once and have started right back into it again to play through it differently.

You are given various options on how to approach the levels. You can go all Arnie, change your suit mode to armour, pick up dual UZI’s, a grenade launcher and a minigun and blow up every Korean, Alien, Crab, Grouse, Vehicle, Red Barrel and poorly put together shack you can lay your eyes on. Or you can go all Ninja, use stealth and stick a silencer on all your weapons, change their firing mode to only fire one shot or tranq dart and use your suits cloaking mode which makes you invisible. I went through it first as Arnie and had a blast, I’m now playing through it using stealth and it’s just as much fun, albeit longer as it requires a bit more crawling along the ground and waiting for patrols to pass by.

This expansion fixes a lot of problems with the gameplay that I felt let Crysis down so much. The gaps between areas of combat where too large so if you accidentally blew up that parked Humvee you ended up having to change your suit to speed mode and run down the road for a few minutes until you got to the next outpost or base. This is all fixed in Warhead, no sooner have you cleared out an area then you are on to the next outpost to do it all over again. It really keeps the action rolling and some of the set pieces are absolutely fantastic. This close proximity though has it’s downside (or upside depending on how much of a masochist you are). If you are trying to play through the game in stealth you really can’t make 1 mistake, as if one of the outposts gets alerted, they are close enough together that it starts a domino like chain of alerting the next Outpost of your presence. Also, if you try to run away chances are you’ll run into another patrol and end up having to fight 2 sets of patrols. Thankfully the weapons provided are more than adequate. Every automatic weapon can be switched to single fire mode, and once you install a sniper scope on them they can be used as a sniper rifle instead. So regardless of which weapons you find, you are given enough configuration options so that pretty much any weapon can suit the type of game you want to play.

Visually, it’s simply stunning (see the gallery of screenshots I took below). If you play this game with the graphical options set to very high you’ll be blown away. The only downside is that you’ll have set the bar to a level that most other games probably won’t match for another year at least. I find that when i’m playing other games now that I can’t help but notice how inferior they look in comparison to Crysis. But still don’t let that stop you, hopefully more games and mods will be developed that make use of the excellent CryEngine 2 (I hear there’s a Jurassic Park mod in the pipeline). The other downside is the system requirements you’ll need to run this game at acceptable framerates. Crytek have thankfully utilized a few sneaky features that make running the game at even 20fps playable. There is plenty of blurring in place so that when you are running or turning around the environment doesn’t need to fully render for every inch you move. But still, I was running this game with everything at very high, 2xAA @ 1680×1050 and I was getting ~35fps, here are my system specs:

CPU: E8500 @ 4Ghz
RAM: DDRII 8GB @ 1Ghz
GFX: ATI 4870×2 @ 770/1800
HDD: 128GB OCZ SSD

This game is a HUGE ram hog, in some of the more intense areas of the game it would spike up to ~2.8GB’s of RAM usage. It was one of the main reasons why I upgraded from 4GB’s to 8GB’s of RAM. Still, I’d rather the game utilize my hardware resources then not and run badly, but still, the average Joe PC gamer will not have a PC like mine, which makes you wonder who Crytek are releasing this game for? As a technical achievement it’s amazing, but it won’t be properly acknowledged by the majority of the gaming public for at least another year. Yes you can run the game with the graphics disabled but you aren’t going to be getting the full experience. I’ve a feeling Crytek are slow releasing the individuals games of a package they will release in a year or so, much like Valves Orange Box. There are 3 parts of the main Crysis storyline and who knows how many expansions like Warhead will be released between then and now. I’ve a feeling that by the time the full Crysis story is released that the average PC will be at a stage that they can run this game comfortably. At which point they’ll bundle all the Crysis games into a nice package and sell it at a discount price to all the gamers who where previously sitting on the fence.

Overall, Warhead is definitely a game that should not be passed up by any respectable gamer. It holds it’s own, even as an expansion, amongst the likes of Call of Duty and Halo. You’ll find your dissenters of it, no doubt, but personally, I really liked it. It took the aspects that made Crysis good and removed the aspects that made it bad, they’ve also optimized the engine and also made the story a lot more dramatic. If your PC can’t handle it now then wait, don’t play it with anything disabled, a year from now a €500 PC will be more than capable of playing this the way the developers and game designers meant it to be played.

[ad#postdescription]

12►