izigame.me

I am flabbergasted with the positive reviews this game has. It must be nostalgia clouding these people's heads because I can confidently say that, having played this for the first time in 2025, this was one of the most miserable gaming experiences I've ever had. The story was just not good, the gameplay was even worse, but I guess it holds up decently in the way of graphics. Spoilers ahead.

TL:DR DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME. LOOK UP A STORY SUMMARY, SAVE THE MONEY, SAVE THE TIME, SAVE THE HEADACHE.

The story:
It is both uninteresting and frustrating. There's so much random crap happening all at once, it's hard to even follow at times despite it STILL boiling down to "we need to do this! we need to kill this guy! get to this area! oh no this guy was bad the whole time! oh but we saved the day at the end! oh and a beloved character is still alive despite dying in the intro of the game!" Why is Prophet back in the end?? Did he just hijack Alcatraz' body?? I mean what?? No explanation but I guess I'll find out when I play the apparently more-disappointing Crysis 3. Seriously some of the laziest, disinterested writing I've seen in a video game. Also the dialogue is written badly, making it sound like a parody of itself most of the time. The biggest thing that threw me off when I started the game, however, was the either complete redesign or retcon or something or the aliens?? They went from being blue squid things to being red fungus virus squid android things!? Like with no explanation either. Guess I should have read the comics right? I know they changed to humanoid shaped aliens because that was a criticism of the first game, but there is literally ZERO explanation in game. Now that I think about it though, not much of the tomfoolery in this game is explained.

The gameplay:
I spent most of the second half of this game sighing out loud in disbelief and agony that I had to kill yet another group of 3-5 normal aliens with 1-2 red shield guys and 1 big guy. The normal aliens take too many bullets to kill, and the special types take an ungodly amount. Gun play is slow, boring, and repetitive. I played through 95% of the game on soldier difficulty (or something other than easy I don't care enough to go back and check) but switched to the recruit difficulty at the very end because I was just so, so, so tired of killing these stupid bullet sponge aliens. NOTHING about the gun play is satisfying, the (alien) enemies are boring and tanky, suit upgrades really do not matter, the cutscenes drag on so much, cramped map design limits creativity in your approach, etc. Going back to the unexplained human alien thing, the humanoid traits of the aliens don't do anything to bring back that magic of tactically advancing through North Korean camps. It's still just shooting aliens for an exhausting amount of time throughout the entire game. Despite sighing in relief whenever I encountered more human enemy sections, those weren't good either because of map design. Crysis 1 was great because of the massive, open areas that allowed you to do whatever you want and be very tactical with your approach. This game just boils down to "kill one enemy before you get spotted and then have to cloak-hop between different places picking a couple off at a time." It's more fun than the aliens, but still not fun, which says a lot about the aliens. There's so much more I could say, but I feel no need.

The graphics:
Admittedly, the graphics are pretty good. That's kinda what the franchise is known for. They aren't exactly trying to be photorealistic so they hold up well in 2025. Central Park raising out of the ground and blotting out the sun was beautiful. Not much else to say, look up screenshots or cutscene clips on YouTube if you wanna experience the only decent aspect of this game.

All in all, a really rough start to 2025. I am dreading playing Crysis 3 but I have to now because I'm already this deep into the series. This is not a good or fun game, please spare yourself the headache.