I've wrote my share of reviews in the past, I was a bit lazy at it then and I'm even worst when it comes to write them in English.

So instead of making a coherent full-fledged wall of text with intercalation of images to soften your eyes, I present you a list of review notes, divided in spoiler-free and spoilerrific parts.




I left the first Crysis unsatisfied. Sometimes being dropped in vast maps without a vehicle and the simplistic thus boring final battle didn't do it for me. So I was expecting these and other problems to be addressed in this standalone expansion.

Well, were they?

Developed by Crytek Budapest
Published by Electronic Arts, Valve Corporation (Steam)
Originally released on September 16, 2008

Yes and no, but mostly no.

I really didn't want to start negatively on this, but there's no alternative. Crysis Warhead is a short game that doesn't take the advantage of multiple approaches like the previous one did but solved some


Don't you just love train rides like this?

Spoiler-free:

- Instead of starting the game right off the airplane jump right besides your fellow squad, like in the first game, it drops you off in the middle of the main story in which I'm still having trouble trying to connect to;
- The action is always connected but the cutscenes between chapters might make you think otherwise;
- The cutscenes are boring and take you away from the action for too much time;
- Some of the action on the cutscenes could be performed by the player, like chasing and jumping to a moving train or one cool fist fight, but for some stupid reason, they decided not to give the player that fun;
- The pacing is good though, it just keeps throwing stuff at you, removing all the idle "100 miles to the next destination" runs from the previous game;
- Some chapters begin with a audio flashback to link the player to the supporting character in this game, a previous fellow soldier and old friend Sean O'Neil, will make you think he's a douche rather than showing his someone you can rely on;
- The character development is laughable;
- Their friendship is doubtable since Psycho lays so much confidence onto a person that doesn't even know him that well;
- The vehicles you pilot aren't as happy bullet and rocket magnet as they were in Crysis;
- The vehicle sections in this game are actually really fun, when you know where to go;
- When you don't, and I'm talking about the hovercraft part, they trick you for a bit and then then shit on your fun induced smiling face;
- And the hovercraft itself controls like utter bullocks, it feels and looks like the bottom of the vehicle keeps clipping through the ground and consequently pumping its nose on nothing;
- Still on the "hovercrap" subject, for some reason small wooden crates slow it down and it can't destroy large straw beach umbrellas when I can rip fucking trees with it;
- The enemy AI is better this time, but I got the feeling the friendly AI got worst, having been killed by friendly grenades 5 times when I was idle inside a tank's turret surrounded by aliens;
- The new EMP grenades are very useful against nano suited enemies but I did not take advantage whatsoever from the new grenade launcher;
- Dual welding pistols is cool but two uzis is just fucked up, you simply don't have a steady aim with that crap;
- When it's not old and tired jungle beats, the soundtrack is amazing and epic and really pulls you into the action;
- The final battle was amazing, better than the previous game;
- The game looks as good as Crysis but for some reason I was able to run the previous one at higher settings while I was still had some graphical itches in Mainstream settings;
- Did I mention they renamed the default graphical settings to "minimum", "mainstream", "gamer" and "enthusiast"? Idiots.


I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!





Spoilerrific:

- Psycho doesn't kill a unarmed enemy but he beats the crap out of him while he's taking a leak and then steals two tanks from him;
- The hovercraft part was the single worst vehicle section I remember in gaming, and I did play the first car escape sequence in Alone in the Dark. It just reeks of bad level design. For most of the time I was having fun, and there are also marks on the ice that guide you. But they finish right in between huge alien ship getting its ass kicked by the KPA. It took me a while to figure that I had to leave the hovercraft behind on that spot and continue forward on foot through a RIDICULOUS LARGE AND VAST AREA WHERE A VEHICLE WOULD DEFINITELY BE HANDY;
- There was this part in a small valley where a huge alien ship zoomed by and didn't notice my cloaked sorry ass, it then continued forward to get stuck on a fallen tree and kept into bumping it, almost crashing my game because of the colliding erroneous physics;
- The train ride level was fucking amazing!;
- They try to show you that Psycho has feelings by having a cutscene were he drowns an enemy from grief of a fallen friendly;
- Previously to that cutscene, because of crappy modeling skills, I was lead to believe that O'Neil got killed and it fitted Psychos following actions. Yes, the soldier killed looked just like O'Neil. After that, I don't see the point of the whole drowning thing;
- The PAX cannon is way more useful this time around, and I had buckets of fun within the short period I owned it;
- Sadly, I was expecting the game to end with Psycho offering support to Nomad on the ship, just like the end of Crysis, but no.





As you might have noticed, I didn't review Crysis Wars because I didn't bother playing it yet. But I've heard it's fun. I've also heard that Crysis Warhead is a 9.4 on some graphic whore website.
Crysis Warhead is a hide and shoot game disguised as a deep story branding one. I cannot recommend paying full price just for the singleplayer part. And if the multiplayer component is as derivative as the nano suit enemy battles in the game, don't bother, there are always better games out there. It's not like we don't have many FPS in the market.

If you loved Crysis, give this one a try, it's well paced but short.