Crysis Warhead is a "sequel" to 2007's big hit Crysis, by German developer Crytek where we play the original story again, but this time from the perspective of Sergeant Michael Sykes (a.k.a. Psycho). Although honestly that's a lie, Warhead isn't really a sequel, or a prequel, but a parallel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequel]. In fact, let's not beat around the bush, Warhead is a stand alone expansion: If you didn't play the original Crysis you're likely to feel lost and miss the story entirely, the game expects you to be familiar with most ins and outs of the original Crysis and in essence the game is the same, down to the storyline, but played from a different perspective. In other words, if you haven't played the first Crysis, you can probably stop reading here and go play the original one first. If you have played the original Crysis and enjoyed it, then it is time to cover what really matters: The game.
First impressions were good. It was no secret that Crytek's biggest achievement in Crysis was their CryEngine2 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryEngine_2], which was a gigantic landmark in the industry yet to be surpassed almost a year later in both quality and performance, which makes it all the more amazing that they somehow managed to enhance and optimize it further so it manages to dish out better graphics and performance on equal specs. I do feel the change of name in the quality control is a bit unnecessary and pretentious, but that's not exactly a deal breaker.
On to the actual game, the good impressions continue. The Koreans' A.I. was revamped and reworked in order to make them react more "intelligently" to situations: They'll drop to the ground if they see a grenade, they'll try to avoid you and shoot at you if you dash at them, they're smart picking their targets, and they still have lethal aim although tweaked down to "realistic", i.e. they can no longer hit head shots from across the map with both their eyes closed and one hand behind their backs while jumping on a pogo stick. On top of that the suit functions were also tweaked and balanced: Dashing with speed mode doesn't burn out your whole energy in half a second now so it becomes a realistic option to run from cover to cover or to just tackle out enemies; Strength mode seems to have been minimally tweaked in energy consumption as well, but it's bigger tweak comes from having speed fixed, as it is now possible to dash into a group of solders and have enough energy left over to switch to strength mode fast and plow through them.
Another notable change was that the vehicles no longer handle like a pile of ass. They're still difficult to maneuver, but if we consider that these are all heavy and clunky war machines, it would be unreasonable to expect them to handle like, say, a sports car in a racing game. They also no longer blow up if anything larger than a fruit fly hits them, which is a rather welcome change, making vehicles more viable to move around in.
Although these changes don't seem that big in paper they actually balance out the nanosuit and add a lot to gameplay by allowing more varied approaches to how you play the game: You can play through almost the whole game in shield mode and basically play it like any other FPS; you can use mostly stealth mode to play the "silent assassin" route; you can "run n' gun" in speed mode, or you can go berserk with speed and strength mode for takeout...etc, etc, etc. This effectively ensures that gameplay is never repetitive as now every approach you take is equally plausible and balanced.
The new weapons are also remarkable, particularly the EMP grenade which makes the nanosuit-Korean soldiers much more manageable by disabling their suits and temporarily turning them into normal soldiers and not the boring pain in the ass "behemoth tanks" they used to be. This is probably one of my favorite changes as the nanosuit-Koreans were the thing I most despised in Crysis: They broke game flow by forcing you to pull to a halt every time and enter "conservative mode" to deal with them without having your face filled with bullets.
My first negative point, however, goes towards the story, and more specifically the cutscenes. One of my favorite things in Crysis was that the game almost never (if ever) took you away from Nomad's eyes, nor did they take control from you with cinematics. You spent the whole game playing as Nomad, in the first person, you always saw what Nomad saw, and most cinematics were replaced by scripted scenes, which granted a huge level of immersion, as you would really start feeling like you were Nomad. This was pretty innovating and exceptional in my book and it managed to blend story telling and gameplay perfectly. However it seems Crytek thought this aspect of Crysis could go fuck itself and now we're back to the "same'ol method" of having the camera switch to third person to tell you a cinematic story when need be. It feels like a step backwards to be honest, even as far as displaying the engine's potential. The CryEngine2 is powerful enough to do away with most cutscenes altogether and remain beautiful, which it did in Crysis, and having the camera yanked out and slammed in 3rd person feels disruptive and it brings you back down to reality just as you were starting to feel like the main character.
Another negative aspect of the storyline is that it feels broken and a bit disconnected at times. Again, something that didn't happen in the original Crysis where you played basically every moment of Nomad's life in the island from the point where he's first dropped from a plane thousands of miles above land. In Warhead you get control yanked from you at somewhat random occasions. I remember during one mission I had the "mission completed" notice and the screen black out to a cinematic while a Korean soldier was still alive and shooting at me, and then I regain control in a completely different place with no apparent connection between them whatsoever. And this happens a lot throughout the story, specially at the beginning. However, a noteworthy point in this story is that it mixes up the enemies better, after about halfway through you get to fight both the Koreans AND the aliens, which is an improvement over Crysis where you'd fight the Koreans for the first half of the game, and then the Aliens for the second half. In Warhead you fight both, at the same time, most of the time, this ensures a constant need to change and adapt your tactics, which consequently ensures boredom and repetitive gameplay is kept at bay.
Another negative point goes towards the single player campaign's duration. It's approximately 4 to 6 hours long depending on how sandbox happy you are, which isn't all that bad considering this game is actually a stand alone expansion. I must note, however, that the inclusion of "secondary objectives" on basically all missions (that already existed in the original Crysis, but to a lesser extent and not as well done) that you can choose whether or not to complete and that you get no penalty for passing up, but generally get an easier time doing the mission if you complete them, detract from the linearity of the game and add to gameplay.
However, sadly, the game as a whole is still fairly linear, which is still a bit of a waste of the amazing game engine.
Overall, though, if you played and enjoyed the original Crysis, you should definitely play, and enjoy, Warhead as you're unlikely to be disappointed. If you haven't played Crysis though, you might want do that first and then decide whether or not you'd like it to be 4 or 5 hours longer.
First impressions were good. It was no secret that Crytek's biggest achievement in Crysis was their CryEngine2 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryEngine_2], which was a gigantic landmark in the industry yet to be surpassed almost a year later in both quality and performance, which makes it all the more amazing that they somehow managed to enhance and optimize it further so it manages to dish out better graphics and performance on equal specs. I do feel the change of name in the quality control is a bit unnecessary and pretentious, but that's not exactly a deal breaker.
On to the actual game, the good impressions continue. The Koreans' A.I. was revamped and reworked in order to make them react more "intelligently" to situations: They'll drop to the ground if they see a grenade, they'll try to avoid you and shoot at you if you dash at them, they're smart picking their targets, and they still have lethal aim although tweaked down to "realistic", i.e. they can no longer hit head shots from across the map with both their eyes closed and one hand behind their backs while jumping on a pogo stick. On top of that the suit functions were also tweaked and balanced: Dashing with speed mode doesn't burn out your whole energy in half a second now so it becomes a realistic option to run from cover to cover or to just tackle out enemies; Strength mode seems to have been minimally tweaked in energy consumption as well, but it's bigger tweak comes from having speed fixed, as it is now possible to dash into a group of solders and have enough energy left over to switch to strength mode fast and plow through them.
Another notable change was that the vehicles no longer handle like a pile of ass. They're still difficult to maneuver, but if we consider that these are all heavy and clunky war machines, it would be unreasonable to expect them to handle like, say, a sports car in a racing game. They also no longer blow up if anything larger than a fruit fly hits them, which is a rather welcome change, making vehicles more viable to move around in.
Although these changes don't seem that big in paper they actually balance out the nanosuit and add a lot to gameplay by allowing more varied approaches to how you play the game: You can play through almost the whole game in shield mode and basically play it like any other FPS; you can use mostly stealth mode to play the "silent assassin" route; you can "run n' gun" in speed mode, or you can go berserk with speed and strength mode for takeout...etc, etc, etc. This effectively ensures that gameplay is never repetitive as now every approach you take is equally plausible and balanced.
The new weapons are also remarkable, particularly the EMP grenade which makes the nanosuit-Korean soldiers much more manageable by disabling their suits and temporarily turning them into normal soldiers and not the boring pain in the ass "behemoth tanks" they used to be. This is probably one of my favorite changes as the nanosuit-Koreans were the thing I most despised in Crysis: They broke game flow by forcing you to pull to a halt every time and enter "conservative mode" to deal with them without having your face filled with bullets.
My first negative point, however, goes towards the story, and more specifically the cutscenes. One of my favorite things in Crysis was that the game almost never (if ever) took you away from Nomad's eyes, nor did they take control from you with cinematics. You spent the whole game playing as Nomad, in the first person, you always saw what Nomad saw, and most cinematics were replaced by scripted scenes, which granted a huge level of immersion, as you would really start feeling like you were Nomad. This was pretty innovating and exceptional in my book and it managed to blend story telling and gameplay perfectly. However it seems Crytek thought this aspect of Crysis could go fuck itself and now we're back to the "same'ol method" of having the camera switch to third person to tell you a cinematic story when need be. It feels like a step backwards to be honest, even as far as displaying the engine's potential. The CryEngine2 is powerful enough to do away with most cutscenes altogether and remain beautiful, which it did in Crysis, and having the camera yanked out and slammed in 3rd person feels disruptive and it brings you back down to reality just as you were starting to feel like the main character.
Another negative aspect of the storyline is that it feels broken and a bit disconnected at times. Again, something that didn't happen in the original Crysis where you played basically every moment of Nomad's life in the island from the point where he's first dropped from a plane thousands of miles above land. In Warhead you get control yanked from you at somewhat random occasions. I remember during one mission I had the "mission completed" notice and the screen black out to a cinematic while a Korean soldier was still alive and shooting at me, and then I regain control in a completely different place with no apparent connection between them whatsoever. And this happens a lot throughout the story, specially at the beginning. However, a noteworthy point in this story is that it mixes up the enemies better, after about halfway through you get to fight both the Koreans AND the aliens, which is an improvement over Crysis where you'd fight the Koreans for the first half of the game, and then the Aliens for the second half. In Warhead you fight both, at the same time, most of the time, this ensures a constant need to change and adapt your tactics, which consequently ensures boredom and repetitive gameplay is kept at bay.
Another negative point goes towards the single player campaign's duration. It's approximately 4 to 6 hours long depending on how sandbox happy you are, which isn't all that bad considering this game is actually a stand alone expansion. I must note, however, that the inclusion of "secondary objectives" on basically all missions (that already existed in the original Crysis, but to a lesser extent and not as well done) that you can choose whether or not to complete and that you get no penalty for passing up, but generally get an easier time doing the mission if you complete them, detract from the linearity of the game and add to gameplay.
However, sadly, the game as a whole is still fairly linear, which is still a bit of a waste of the amazing game engine.
Overall, though, if you played and enjoyed the original Crysis, you should definitely play, and enjoy, Warhead as you're unlikely to be disappointed. If you haven't played Crysis though, you might want do that first and then decide whether or not you'd like it to be 4 or 5 hours longer.
