Whether by chance or by design, Crysis quickly endeared itself to me, and my blood pumped with a ferocity not often induced by a PC based game.

Now, I’m not saying Crytek’s jaw-dropping new FPS engine, remarkable visuals or high-octane gameplay are all centred around a deliberate reimagining of my favourite film of all time – it simply shares many similar concepts and happens to implement them as dynamically as the film did all those years ago. If anything, this comparison is a strong compliment.

And, maybe this will seem like a strange and unrevealing parallel to draw to any philistines out there who don’t like my favourite film – especially when using it to convey the experiences of a top class computer game - but I’m about to make it anyway.

If you loved Predator (the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie), you’ll love Crysis. I can say that with certainty, as a bigger fan of Predator there is not, and I’ve spent the last few years playing the barrage of FPS games that have been forcibly turned out, one after the other.

That’s not to say Crysis doesn’t have its faults, or that it leeches from a slightly skewed take on the Pradator plot. But as a spiritual successor, or an expansion on a high concept theme, Crysis and Predator are members of the same deadly, invisible, unstoppable, awe-inspiring species. Well, enough about Predator. On to Crysis.

Waging war against the North Koreans, followed by an alien invasion squad, the player powers through four different environments in their tricked out “nano muscle suit”. This snug fitting body armour is the core essential of Crysis, and allows the player to adopt several different modes. Strength mode, which allows for incredible hand-to-hand power but reduces defensive qualities; speed mode, which allows for short bursts of (very) high velocity running; armour, which (as you already guessed) increases defensive capabilities but also recharges the suit; and cloak, which camouflages the player against their environment (now you see why I’ve been going on about Predator so much).
 
The weaponry adapts to the suit’s mode system and other add on mechanics, too, and even allows for a little hand to hand combat which is especially cool during cloaked periods when stealth becomes a valuable addition to the warrior’s arsenal. The look of agonised surprise when an invisible hand grabs a Korean soldier and throws him through a shack’s wall is priceless, and brings us to what’s probably the most talked about aspect of Crysis in the media; the visuals.

Making use of Microsoft’s DirectX10 API, a high end PC will be graced with some incredible, eye straining details in the jungles and ice spheres of Crysis. The physics of this new system also add a great deal of realism, as even the tiniest features interact with each other, making gamers regularly stop playing simply to admire the impressive scenery. That said, it takes a properly equipped DirectX10 graphics card to really milk the best from Crysis, and a pretty high spec rig to really get the maximum effect from the game as a whole. Hardware wimps beware.

The multiplayer functions seems to keep pretty much to the basics, which is no bad thing in this reviewer’s opinion. Too many games these days attempt to either do too much online, or fabricate strange and often disjointed multiplayer modes simply to add online content to their games. Here we see a couple of excellent, addictive and fun modes of multiplayer action (which remain relevant to the theme and style of Crysis) by way of “death match” and “power struggle”.

Up to 32 nano-suit equipped players can either war it out Battle Royale style in death match mode, or split up into two teams for a power struggle; whereby both teams race to destroy the opposing team’s heavily armoured headquarters. Requiring each team to upgrade their minimal weapons during combat and to take control of alien weaponry to succeed, this royal rumble is fraught with high-octane action and the kind of nonstop warfare that’s sometimes found lacking in the extended travelling, stealth and cloaked aspects of the single player game.

Ultimately, Crysis is a game that aims for a very specific target, and hits it accurately. There’s none of the usual war torn cityscapes we’re so used to these days, and little in the way of squad based action, but Crytek clearly makes no apology for attempting to craft an FPS that’ll stand out amid the white noise of sci-fi and mystical shooters currently vying for shelf space.

Showing an admirable awareness of its intended audience, Crysis is likely to be the sleeper hit of high end, PC shooters this year, and coming in at the eleventh hour as it has, that’s no small achievement.