In Review: Crysis

I remember when they were just tricks. "First Person Shooters" were exercises in finding high concept in vaudeville until somewhere in the dark recesses of 1995: a man sat down and saw that the box could actually be rendered. In finding a 2D map with a "height" variable was no longer the necessary form, he became enthusiastic -- perhaps too enthusiastic for the sake of his determined concept, for Quake would turn out to take function from form. It was a raw, visceral exercise in premature genre work. The player moved from box to box, whether those boxes took the form of gothic cathedrals or the sky itself became less relevant as the sense of actual motion began to sink in. Some players vomited with dizziness, others with joy. Carmack sat in his Ferrari while a smile slowly crossed his face.

Quake is not "best-in-genre" by any means, but its watermark is stamped firmly and invariably into the faces of its successors. When I bore witness to the first true vista of Crysis (necessarily reminiscent of the game's dark uncle, Far Cry), the potential sense of pure giddiness was beaten down by the realization that I was standing in a massive fucking box that someone was able to make only because his computer was more capable than Mr. Carmack's. Crysis, though, has the opportunity to be free of Quake's chains, despite being essentially an expansion pack to the Beautiful Game: I'm used to being in a box now and Crytek knows it. It's what's inside that will count.

I step into the open, consciously aware of the box. Somewhere in my head there's a derisive laugh: "Here we go again!" I shoot at some foliage out of sheer spite, as if hoping that the explicitly-encouraged behavior would somehow damage the game into changing my way of thinking. The leaves move in response to the shots: I stop, staring at their now-gentle swaying in disbelief. I walk up to the leaves, cutting through two layers of genre abstraction and attempting to touch the foliage with what I am told is my "body". Again, a response. Not the perfect response, we can never look for the perfect response, it won't come anytime soon: but it was the sort of response that makes one stop thinking about the box. Crysis, it seems, had set me up. The joke was on me for thinking I couldn't be impressed again. I slowly remove my hand from Alt-F4 position where it had hovered since the title screen. I was in this for the long run.

I have for you here my thoughts and score, but I will need to guide you back 11 years to the Beautiful Game one final time. Quake held 3-Dimensionality in its womb next to the "high concept from vaudeville" motto of Doom but the former was too monumental: it consumed its brother and was born alone. The same can be said of Crysis: its desire to transcend its constraints is lovably earnest but not without victims. Strap yourselves in, kids, you're in for an ultimately rather basic ride through a lenient professor's genre-by-the-numbers lecture. What matters is that the tools are present such that plenty of daydreaming can be done. 9.13 (Charmed)