Crysis Warhead Review!

Everybody knows about the original Crytek game Crysis. Yes, the one that melts computers everywhere and requires a NASA Mainframe to run. Well, Crysis has spawned a legitimate heir and it looks absolutely beautiful. Crytek (makers of Far Cry, Crysis and “I Cry when my PC can’t run this damned game”) has made this version of Crysis, known as Crysis Warhead, more optimized and can now run on most PCs!

The first thing you’ll notice when you run Crysis Warhead is how gorgeous it is. It is so pretty that if it were a contestant in Miss Universe all other contestants would seem like cross breeds between a cow and a rat. It is that good looking. Just take a look at the screenshots we’ve taken.

Crysis Warhead features enhanced textures, bump mapping, all the environment is FULLY interactive. The leaves sway as bullets wizz past them, trees get cut with gunfire, and yes, blood blood blood. It is safe to say you will NOT find a game more good looking in the market today. As far as graphic achievement when it comes to First Person Shooters, this is the ultimate, thanks to CryEngine2.

The game makes you wade through different types of environments, from cold marshes, sunny beaches and yes, frozen tundras. Gameplay is pretty standard fare though. You use your nano suit to evade, eliminate and navigate through the different terrain and complete missions provided by radio. You’ll rescue downed pilots, infiltrate enemy HQs, destroy important targets and at times just basically KICK major buttocks. The game claims to be open ended but there are times you feel that you are being funneled towards something and that’s disappointing. I don’t want to go in a cave, but I guess I have to, which sucks. The nanosuit you’re wearing provides variety though. You can rush in guns a blazing, ride a vehicle and basically crash through enemy camps or use cloak (parang predator bebeh!) and silent kill the lot of koreans.

Storywise, the game doesn’t excel quite as well as it does graphics. It’s pretty much the Sci-Fi flick you’d imagine it to be. There’s no feel of immediate danger or tension, even when everything is starting to come apart. I guess that’s in part thanks to your nanosuit which basically makes you Superman with guns. It does however show a character of pure potential. Sargeant Sykes, also known as Psycho. Psycho is absolutely badass but without being a dick (if you know what I’m saying). He doesn’t kill when a person is unarmed but will break everysingle bone in your body in hand to hand combat.

The game sounds great too. Especially when you’re fighting in the jungle. You can hear bullets hit wood, twigs snapping, leaves rustling and Koreans screaming for reinforcements and yelling for dear life.

Now for some bad news. The game is buggy. Very buggy. I can compose a list of bugs a page long but I’ll just mention a few. Enemy AI has been improved from the original Crysis but still there are times when they don’t react as you’d expect at certain distances. I also noticed this bug that NPCs slide across the ground instead of take steps and walk (naka roller skates ata yokyokyok). Another time my car exploded with me in it. It kept rolling on without wheels and all charred up from the explosion (parang cartoons). And finally a very silly bug, I threw a nade at some Koreans, their clothes remained standing but they all fell to the ground naked. The battlefield was full of naked koreans. Kinky if I were gay.

Despite being more optimized than the last Crysis, Crysis Warhead still takes one hell of a PC to max out. Although it scales better now to less powerful PCs. Here’s the minimum as Crytek would tell you.

CPU – Intel Pentium 4 2.8Ghz (3.0Ghz for Vista), Intel Core 2 2.0Ghz (2.2Ghz for Vista), AMD Athlon 2800+ (3000 for Vista)

RAM – 1GB (1.5GB for Vista)

Video Card – Nvidia Geforce 6800GT, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 for Vista) or better cards

Storage Space – 15 Gigs

OS – Vista, Vista SP1, XP, XP SP2, XP SP3

You can run Warhead with this gear but we here at Pinoygaming.net will recommend you to have more powerful hardware than the minimum to run Warhead.

I wish the next Crysis (logically Crysis 2) would still look as beautiful or better and run on lower end PCs better at max. All in all it is a good game, over the top graphics and all, but could have used a little more polishing with all the bugs.

Graphics – 10 (puede pa nga 11 eh. yokyokyok)

Sound – 9

Gameplay – 8 (BUGS!)

Replay Value – 9