Cry-sis.

The following is a tale of a lone man who endeavored to play one of the most graphically demanding games on a laptop that couldn't handle it, a game with a humble metascore of 91, which I only mentioned because I like to talk bad things about good games because it makes me feal analytically superior to the rest of the gaming race; also, I like long sentences.

Crysis (2007)
- Firstly, let's talk about the graphics, which is the main issue of Crysis. Even running on low-medium, the graphics still look excellent in most places while I was getting a framerate of (10-40). I ran on medium-ish graphics for the first half of the game and I was limited to less than twenty frames-per-second which was not a pleasant experience. However, despite the quality of the graphics, some things still look ugly and worse than half-life 2 on medium settings, and there were numerous graphical glitches (flashlights anyone?) and tearings that were just bad.

-Next, let's move onto the gameplay. The nanosuit is not a bad idea in theory, but every aspect of it has been so much more fun in other games where they are devoted to that section. And since you are so powerful, it's less unnerving when being chased by fifty enemies in the jungle. In Far Cry that was scary; in Crysis, you just turn on your cloak and run away.
And then there are a bunch of weird gameplay design decisions that are totally unfair and annoying to the player. For some reason, a ton of the enemies in the game have these special one-hit kills that kill you over and over even when you have 100 health. This would constantly be annoying as I didn't know what killed me, or how, or why it could when I had max health. And then there was that awkward alien level, which was a pain to navigate, and I don't see how anybody could have fun being disoriented for hours trying to find a locked door. There were also so many things that were unclear about goals, weapons, and what I was trying to do in each section. Remember what the dog trainer said: there are no bad players--only bad designers. Listening to the commentary for Half-Life, I learned the designers for that game tried to train the player in each aspect of the gameplay with specific sections. Crysis did no such thing really. It just threw me in after they told me I could do all this stuff and I forgot half of it and then I was left wandering in the jungle.
Finally, to top all that off, there were ridiculous amounts of game-ending bugs and odd things happening. I would die by touching a box, and aliens would freeze in mid-air after I killed them, thus not triggering the "victory event" so I couldn't continue into the next arena.

- Story: the story is bland, boring, predictable, and short. Here's the story: "Some high-tech commandos go to an island where they find aliens who try to kill the humans. The humans fight back but nobody wins. THE END!" And most of the characters and scenes in the game are just so cliche and melodramatic.

In conclusion, Crysis is a game with good graphics, enjoyable gameplay (if you can get a decent framerate), but a lackluster story, cliched characters, tons of bugs, unhelpful design to us newbies, a boring first half, and a great second half. But then the game decides to end without really finishing the fight. It was fun though.

Crysis:

8.3/10.0

Not as good as Half-Life, not as good as Halo, not as good as Call of Duty.