The original Crysis was a pretty fun game, but damn were the system requirements harsh. Playing that on a laptop's GPU was not a fun adventure. This game was its first standalone expansion, meaning that it didn't require the original game to play. Market price was a little cheaper, only around $30 instead of the regular $50. Was it worth it even at the reduced cost? For me, no.Story
The plot followed one of the other soldiers from the original, but its timeframe ran parallel to the first. So what you got to play was more of the same action, but on a different part of the island.
Cinematics
There weren't any CG cinematics, only cutscenes using the regular game engine. The videos helped the plot along but that was about it.
Gameplay
The game functioned exactly like the original. It was fun messing with all of the gun attachments as well as the cryosuit, but even with these perks, you still had to deal with overly-skilled mobs who were able to shoot a pistol from a 500 yards out and tag you, or those with super-spidey hearing who would start shooting you even before they were on radar or within visual range.
Graphics
It has been a year since the release of the original so that's a plus for all of us. Video card GPU technology has moved along fine and a lot of systems are now able to boost up the visual settings. Surprisingly enough, I had to reduce my graphics down by 2 notches (out of 4) in order for the frames-per-second (FPS) to be completely consistent. I don't have a clue as to how beefed up a person's rig would have to be in order to handle it maxed at the 4th notch. But since this game used the same engine as the original, all the visuals were great.
Sound & Music
Sound was good, but the music only kicked in at certain "exciting" portions of the plot. This was a nice bonus in terms of placement, but that meant that the rest of the gameplay time was spent with no background theme and thus less immersion.
Bugs
The only real bug I ran into were mobs being able to shoot through walls. This wasn't COD4, where it was built into the engine. Also, a lot of times when you killed a guy, their body would disappear immediately, taking their dropped weapon and ammo away with them.
Overall
Even though this was a cheaper, shorter version of the original, it still wasn't worth the $25 cost (I had a $5 discount from Circuit City). I've never finished a game in one evening, but I did with this one. I didn't install the multiplayer addition, called Crysis Wars, from disc 2, so maybe that's where it was supposed to shine. But from the standpoint of just a single-player game, I'd say that it was definitely mediocre.
Rating - Mid
