Crysis’ amazing graphics and physics technology brought many a beastly PC to its knees last year, but underneath that glossy visual coat lay a pretty solid first person shooter experience. Sure, the game was poorly optimised and went completely off the rails with its anti-gravity alien boxing matches, but it was still a load of fun. Nomad’s mission might be over, but Crytek isn’t done with the Crysis story yet. Get ready to suit up once again as you take on the role of Sergeant Michael “Psycho” Sykes in the standalone Crysis expansion, Crysis Warhead.

Crysis Warhead runs parallel to the events of the original Crysis, but takes place mostly on the other side of the island. You basically get to play through the events Psycho experienced while he and Nomad were separated (but not any of those they experienced together). Psycho’s mission mostly deals with capturing the alien container recovered by the KPA. The package also includes Crysis Wars (which is also a standalone game), which adds a new team Deathmatch mode and a bunch of new maps to the Crysis multiplayer experience.

Those who had a bit of trouble running Crysis will be happy to know that Crysis Warhead will run noticeably better (well, provided your hardware was capable of running Crysis in the first place), though it still requires a bit of raw power to run. The game looks a little bit better, but most of the work has gone into making CryEngine 2.0 more efficient. For some odd reason, Crytek Budapest saw it fit to rename the various detail settings – rather than high or low, they’re now gamer and mainstream, which can be confusing. My test rig (E8400, 3GB Ram, Radeon 4870, Vista 32-bit, DX10) ran Crysis on high settings (at 1680x1050) with occasional slowdown, but only took exception to Crysis Warhead in one particular later section of the game. It seems to handle the wider open areas much better than the original game, which is great given some of the amazing landscapes you’ll come across through your travels.


Character development and story seemed fairly secondary in the Crysis experience, perhaps due to the relative silence of Nomad. Psycho, on the other hand, is a much more developed character (through your interactions with him in Crysis, and a lot of the back story presented here) than Nomad, making Crysis Warhead’s narrative more central to the gameplay experience. There’s a lot more dialogue exchanged between the game’s main characters – the rather gruff, but can-do way that Psycho interacts with his superiors and fellow soldiers ends up making him into a pretty likeable character. He’s confident, without being too grating, like many of today’s bald space marine protagonists. One sequence in particular towards the end of the game goes a long way towards making Psycho seem more human than you’d expect. There’s even a few between-level sequences that expand on the backstory of Raptor Team.

For all intents and purposes, Crysis Warhead plays very much the same way as the first game. You’re still a nanosuit clad soldier with strength, speed and armour boosting powers, along with a rather handy stealth camouflage. Your suit power provides you with multiple options for taking on a given situation. You can take everyone straight on, punching through walls and tossing everybody every which way with increase strength, or you can hide in the shadows and pick the enemy off one by one with your stealth and speed. Psycho even gets a few new toys to play with, including EMP grenades (that cancel out the abilities of KPA nanosuits), anti-tank mines, the experimental plasma cannon, deadly twin submachine guns and a rather handy six shot grenade launcher. There’s even a few new enemy types to take on, like an alien which generates a shield to protect his cohort.

Level design is probably the main differentiating factor between Psycho and Nomad’s missions. Crysis had a really large scope, meaning that there were several points during the game where you were travelling to your next objective without any pressure from the enemy. Crysis Warhead is much more focused, delivering balls-to-the-wall action from the moment you touch the ground, with very little down-time in between. The experience is much more linear, but you still have the freedom to choose how you’ll tackle a particular objective. The situations in Crysis Warhead always seem stacked against you (particularly in the later missions), but that only serves to make it more exciting. There are some truly awesome set pieces and boss battles during the game. Perhaps the only disappointing moment in the game comes when you have to make your way through an abandoned mine shift, with little direction or opposition.


There are a few other notable improvements featured in Crysis Warhead. Vehicle control has been tightened up considerably; a mandatory fix given the increased number of vehicle-based sequences. They’re not perfect, though – the hovercraft sequence later in the game could give players a bit of grief with its more momentum-focused control system. Enemy AI has also noticeably improved, particularly on the alien enemies, who are a bit more tenacious than before. The regular KPA soldiers are slightly less daft than before, but are still not much more than cannon fodder, unless the numbers are substantially in their favour. The KPA nanosuit soldiers seem to be the most bastardly, mostly thanks to their acquisition of EMP grenades, which shut off your nanosuit powers and drain your energy.

One side effect of Crysis Warhead’s intensity is its shorter length. A player of average skill should be able to blast their way through the game in around five hours. When you add up all of the elements in the equation; the tight, well-paced gameplay, the game’s price, multiplayer component and replay value, five hours doesn’t really seem that bad, especially when compared to other games on the market that charge double the price for half the fun spread over a longer period.

The single player game is only half of the package – Crysis Warhead also contains the standalone multiplayer game Crysis Wars, which combines the multiplayer modes of the original game with a new Team Instant Action mode. The total number of maps is also increased, with 21 included in the package. Team Instant Action is just a fancy way of saving Team Deathmatch, but it’s a welcome addition given its baffling omission from the original Crysis. Online multiplayer is pretty fun, but only one of the maps in the package currently has vehicles, so here’s hoping Crytek delivers on their promise of providing more maps. While it’s possible to get a nice competitive match going, the hefty technical demands of the game really work against it when playing online.

Crysis Warhead is easily one of the best shooters on the PC this year. For half the cost of the original game, you receive a more refined, focused and exciting single player adventure, and a more robust multiplayer component. It’s a little on the short side (though very replayable), multiplayer is a bit of a novelty, and it’s still very demanding on your hardware (despite some much needed optimisation, and a few enhancements), but these issues aside, Crysis Warhead is one of this year’s must-play PC games.