Crysis Warhead Review - Review Of Crysis Warhead by CryTek Studios

Page content

Weapons of High Definition

Let’s talk about Crysis Warhead - the new game from CryTek, probably (and sadly) their last PC game thanks to the piracy that the first game attracted, proving once again that pirates aren’t afraid to shell out 1000+ dollars for a PC that can run Crysis, but paying $50 for the game is simply unacceptable. Anyway, you’re here to read the Crysis Warhead review, not to hear about piracy (if that’s what interests you, feel free to check out this article.

Crysis Warhead falls into that “more of the same” category of game. At the end of the day, whether or not you should buy this one is determined exclusively by how much you liked the first Crysis, in the event that you didn’t play Crysis, it’s a pretty cool FPS - assuming you have a computer from 5 years in the future, you should be able to run it at full speed with all the settings on high.

Warhead does one thing exceptionally well - it listened to the criticisms of the first Crysis. First thing the developers fixed was their engine. The original Crysis ran on an engine that was (literally) ahead of its time - so much so that only a few people in the world were capable of running it on DX10 at full speed with all the settings on “high”. The engine’s been severely tweaked - so much so that my PC was able to run 30 fps with the settings on high at DX10, something that in the original Crysis brought me down to 10-15 fps.

The second fix the developers employed was regarding the gameplay. Warhead takes place on the same island that the original game took place, except that you follow the story of “Psycho”, an elite commander with an advanced nano-suit capable of giving him enhanced abilities (just like Nomad, the main character in the original). However, the original had some big pitfalls in regard especially to the suit’s invisibility feature. I remember multiple times where a helicopter would follow me, I would become invisible, and the thing could still gun me down from a distance. Suffice it to say, not only did that get very old very quickly, it also made the game lose some of the charm of its environment and great set-pieces.

Warhead is a perfect side-story in that sense. While you won’t care too much about what’s going on, thanks to the improved AI and the improved suit-environment interactions, there’s no longer any need to crouch around the environments while being invisible - it is easier than ever before to feel like you’re this amazing military man.

To level with you, reader, if you liked the original Crysis, you’re going to definitely like this game - it’s the same engine, the same type of gameplay, and the same type of story, assuming all the stars align for you the same way, you should glean just as much enjoyment from it as you did from the original.

Crysis Warhead (4 out of 5)

Pros

CryTek 2 Engine Improvements

Nano-suit interactions

Enemy AI

Open Game World

Cons

Generic Story

Linear Mission structure