[Ed. Note: Overdue blog is overdue. I'm a periodic person who enjoys his life in small chunks at a time. Sometimes that involves blogging about gaming and its surrounding culture, and sometimes it doesn't. A lot has happened since the last time I even visited Destructoid nor blogged here. My education is bugging me and intriguing me at the same time as my first game is coming along in Action Script 2.0 (lol?) (I'm never making another game in my life, I swear). I've sold my PSP and my 360 to upgrade my computer, and this is the story that followed those events.]


Don't take the title too literally. It's a pun, but as we all know, behind every pun lies a bit of truth. Crysis is a game that relies heavily on graphical flare to make it the "emerging experience" it so desperately tries to be. And it is. With the settings set to "High" it blows every other game out of the water, graphically that is. And that works to fool me for about an hour before I realize what the game actually is. With the settings set to "Medium", it's hard to see what the fuzz is all about. This, among other things, made me want to upgrade my computer. So I did. Into this:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 4Ghz OC:ed
GPU: 8800 GTS 512Mb
RAM: OCZ 2x 2Gb DDR2 @ 800Mhz

Can I play Crysis on High setting now? No, I can't. I get around 20 FPS in the ordinary jungle levels in 1280x1024. I just don't want to think about what it'll drop to in the ice level and later parts of the game. So, now my PSU is making a weird peeping noise all the time, although it's more than adequate to handle the new set up. I'm blaming the mobo. And I'm actually considering going SLI in the future if Far Cry 2 is as choppy as Crysis.

All this forced my compulsive self to spend more time in the settings menu than in the actual game tweaking it to "perfect performance". Double that with all the constant re-installments of the game and OS, and imagine how many times I've played through the first four levels of the game. Quite a few. And the fact that keeps coming back to me is that this game has managed to do two things incredibly well: fuck up every computer out there with its poorly optimization and graphical wonders, but also giving the player enough freedom in a controlled environment to actually make him personalize his own story and progression throughout the game.



This is the balance that so many games strive toward and fails miserably at it. This is also the balance that all games should strive toward to truly separate games as an art form. It is the essential nature of interactivity that lets a person mold his own way through a number of set pieces of story elements that makes me want to play games.

What Crysis' multiple playthrough's taught me was that I never did the same thing twice. I was dropped in an open world that certainly had its limitations, but I was free to do whatever I wanted within the confines of those limitations. I was free to think of new tactics to kill Koreans who thought I was a "dog-man" for some reason. Three takes on the same event:

The first time I would lure as many NPC's i could into a shack, then jump on top of it and smash its roof down upon them, jumping out in surprise of the remaining squad and take them out with my assault rifle.

The second I would steal a truck, drive it all the way into their center base, take cover behind it enough for the enemies to gather around only to set my nano-suite to maximum speed, run the hell away and blow the truck to pieces.

The third time I would use my cloaking ability and silencer to quietly take out the NPC's one by one, constantly staying in the shadows.


I was constantly surprised at the different approaches the game afford me, and that ultimately made me mold my own "Nomad". Bioshock did exactly this and tacked on a rather shallow morality system and mild RPG elements on top of its free corridor combat scenarios (a contradicting statement that only testifies to the game's strength). Instead of trying to be other genres, instead of trying to be like other mediums, this is what games should be about.

Games need to offer the player options to mold his avatar into a projecting self-image of a fantasy self. Be that in terms of stats and feats, or in terms of open world combat and multiple solutions to problem solving, games will always have something other mediums don't: choice.

When open worlds fail they fail hard and fast. I couldn't stand Assassins Creed and never finished it. Crackdown gave its fare share of fun for about two hours of trying to be an alternative take on GTA (which I don't like, either). It is certainly personally preference, but I can't help but feel that there is a fundamental design issue that allows certain games to create this balance of control and freedom at the same time.

Basically, if one aspect is completely out of balance, the games falls like a shit house. Give the player too much freedom but nothing to do and it falls. Give the player no freedom without even tricking him into believing he is in control and it falls. Give the player a certain aspect of freedom to trick him into thinking he is making his own destiny, only to pull the plug and laugh at him, and you'll have Bioshock.

We are all tools. Every game designer should study the work of Edward Bernays and the following PR culture, because that is essentially what games are dealing with: mind-control.

A man chooses, a gamer obeys...