One of my first impressions when I started playing Crysis was that it was a heck of a lot like Far Cry, albeit better looking. Aside from standard FPS mechanics, both titles let you toggle lying prone, and both contain a meter next to the mini-map to indicate enemy awareness of you, not unlike the Thief games. They really have a lot in common. Of course, they’re both made by CryTek.

One of my end impressions of Crysis is that it’s much much shorter than Far Cry was. That’s fine, as I’m not in need of another Oblivion or Fallout 3. My gaming hours are limited. But a lot of people will complain about that. Of course, Crysis apparently has some robust online play, but then again I tend not to play shooters online.

It’s taken me quite a long time to get to the end of Crysis. Granted, I haven’t yet completed the game. I would have completed it, except that the final hour or so of the game freezes and crashes so often that for a while I could only play in 10-minute chunks. Recently, it’s been even worse. I’m fighting what I believe to be the final boss, and I’m quicksaving every 60 seconds or so. It’s gotten to the point where I felt like I was spending more time loading the game than playing it, so I tested that theory. From desktop to actual gameplay: 75 seconds. Then, I played for 65 seconds before it froze and crashed. I may never complete Crysis.

But aside from my technical difficulties with the game, I’ve got other complaints about Crysis. Although I’ll admit that there were a couple parts in Far Cry that drove me nuts, the entire second half of Crysis was terrible. The entire zero-gravity portion of the game was simply not fun, and fighting the aliens was not nearly as fun as fighting humans. How do you try for a head shot on a creature with no discernable head? I nearly quit the game during the portion where you’re flying a VTOL, as I’d continuously crash for no apparent reason.

I should mention here that although there were Far Cry titles for consoles, namely the XBox’s “Far Cry: Instincts” and “Far Cry: Instincts: Evolution”, and later the 360’s “Far Cry: Instincts: Predator”, these were absolutely not the same game as the original Far Cry that was released only for the PC. In the original Far Cry, you played Jack Carver, who had no superpowers. I’ve never played any of these console versions, but as I understand it, you’re kidnapped and injected with a superserum of some kind. Interestingly, in Crysis, you wear a nanosuit which gives you similar powers.

The two parts in Far Cry that I’d hated were firstly the sequence where you were dropped in the middle of the jungle with something like 10 bullets, and surrounded by those mutants that can jump twenty yards and rip your head off instantly. That part took about fifty tries to get past. Secondly, the final battle of the game, which I was never able to beat. I had to type in a cheat code just to see the end of the game, and I only used invulnerability for about 45 seconds to do it. It was just harrd. Similarly, I was not able to see the end of Crysis, because it froze so much that I uninstalled it before completing the game.

So I suppose I’d say that Crytek’s games seem to be mostly good, but sprinkled with hideously annoying segments. This does not bode well for when I play Far Cry 2, but I still intend to play it eventually.