Think of Crysis Warhead as an action based mod for Crysis, what I consider to be the best game ever made. Although more confined than Far Cry 2, Warhead features an open ended 'sandbox' environment, giving the player more freedom than most First Person Shooters of today.
Crytek Budapest (Crysis was made by Crytek Frankfurt) has done a good job of keeping the tactical element of Crysis in all its glory, while also including intense, action-based gameplay. Many found Crysis' game play to be too slow, but if you want it to be, Crysis Warhead is a start-to-end full on action game. However, the option remains for those who like to take it slowly and plan out every move to do so.
Warhead is not a sequel to Crysis, more a parallel game, which focuses on events happening on the other side of 'the island'. You play as British Sergeant Michael 'Psycho' Sykes. There is no real beginning or end to Warhead, it is all about fleshing out the storyline that Crysis commenced, Building Psycho as a character, and bringing new a new game play style to the Crysis universe.
At the beginning of Warhead, you witness a cinematic sequence that is basically a montage of Psycho and his awesomeness. He beats people up, jumps off cliffs, and is generally brutal. Speaking of cinematics, these are one thing that Warhead features more heavily than its predecessor, while third person cut scenes also make an appearance.
Once again your armour is the all-conquering nanosuit, which allows you to run really fast, gives you superhuman strength, and also has a cloak mode. The sandbox game play together with the games sandbox game play give the player many options when attacking each and every objective.
For instance, when attacking a base, you can either sneakily snipe the enemies from long range and limit the risk of being killed, or go the 'run-and-gun' route. Choosing this option can be risky, especially on harder difficulty levels, as the enemies will call in reinforcement. The AI in Warhead is superb. While it doesn't learn your behaviours, enemies will work together as a team, and adapt tactics on the fly among other advanced techniques.
Some of the guns in Warhead are fairly epic. However, your most important weapon is your nanosuit. Strength mode can be used to hurl grenades ultra long distances, steady your aim, and limit recoil. Speed mode allows you to get up close an personal before the enemy has time to react and regroup, while cloak mode allows you to skulk off after a not so successful attack, or to sneak up on your opponents. The standard suit mode is armour mode, which puts all power into stopping incoming projectiles. All of these actions drain suit power, although it recharges very quickly even on Delta (very hard), meaning that its not too hard to adapt your tactics mid-assault.
Conflict wise, there is more of an emphasis on large all or nothing battles, which can be tricky, but also exciting. The first major battle tacks place on a beach resort teaming with North Koreans. Later on you will experience a truly enjoyable car chase of sorts, which sees you escorting an ally. Your job is to wreak as much havoc as possible. Actually it’s to defend your ally, but as it turns out, the two go hand in hand.
Unlike Crysis, in Warhead there is very little downtime between battles, something that was the focus of many people’s complaints about the original. On occasion, in an attempt to escape from one battle, you will put yourself in the path of another, particularly towards the end of the game.
The alien battles are much improved over those in Crysis from my point of view. In Crysis, the alien battles were far more linear than the rest of the game play, making it fell out of place. But in Warhead the freedom returns. The alien AI has been improved to be more aggressive, although if they are losing, they will regroup. There are also new types of aliens, including one that creates a shield its team mates. Taking this one out is the key here, but as it will be accompanied by some buddies, it's not always easy.
There are quite a few new guns in Warhead, including a six-shot grenade launcher which is uber cool. There are also submachine guns which can be dual-wielded, and in the very last mission, you get the experimental PAX, or Plasma Accumulator cannon. The PAX is a short range weapon of doom. It has unlimited ammo, as it 'accumulates' plasma from the surrounding environment. It sounds and looks powerful enough to destroy small planets as well. You also get various new bits of equipment, although these will play a smaller role.
The frozen island is much more fun that before, although it doesn't feel as cold as it did in Crysis. Emerging from the alien structure in Crysis into the frozen environment sent a shiver down my spine, but I didn't get that with Warhead.
The hovercraft chase is put simply epic. There is just something oddly cool about jumping over frozen waves and dodging mines in a hovercraft in pursuit of a crazy Korean guy. The jungle environment becomes a 'handle with care' forest when frozen. Everything shatters into a million pieces when shot. It isn't ultra realistic, but it is a nice touch.
Warhead is a lot shorter than Crysis, which wasn't a long game in itself. Warhead is a Call of Duty 4 sized experience. Playing through on Delta will push playtime to around 7 hours, otherwise you'll be all done and dusted within 6 hours, and if you’re a good player, as little as 4 hours.
However, seeing as it costs half as much as most normal games, and you also get Crysis Wars, the expanded Crysis online, it is hard to match value. However, the graphics remain the best ever, and even make slight improvements over Crysis'. The game is more optimized than Crysis, and even on a dual core computer with 512mb graphics and 4 GB of ram, I was able to get the graphics running at high with a more than stable frame rate. On Enthusiast the game is simply stunning, as I'm sure you all know, and by now a relatively cheap computer can be purchased that will pump the graphics up to max, albeit without the insane level of AA that the game supports (16xQ, most games support 4-8x).
In summing up, Warhead is a value packed experience. It isn't long, but it doesn't need to be. The open ended game play gives the game great replay value, and there is room for experimentation. There are a few minor bugs, but nothing major. The game did not crash on me once, although on a later play through, it appeared to overheat a RAM card causing my PC to blue-screen at-will.
You won't find yourself reacting to events in Warhead, but you will have to think on your feet, and use you nanosuit, and the environment to your advantage. While Crytek still has an unfair reputation as just a technology company, and its games are often called technology showcases, only someone who hasn't played Crysis or Warhead could say that. Warhead is intense, challenging and above all a refreshing new shooter with some brilliant game play techniques.
DSOGaming writes: "The new 2019 version of this mod will allow you to play the single-player campaigns of both Crysis and Crysis Warhead in co-op. The mod will also replace Gamespy with Steam."
Replies(3)
Really hoping that tease from their latest tech demo turns out to be a new game or maybe remaster/remake of the first game. The first and warhead are still my favorite in the series
I can’t even get Warhead to boot up on windows 10. None of the fixes I found online helped, at best it hangs at the loading screen for the first level
Crysis and Crysis: Warhead are often described as some of the best first-person shooters of modern-day. Contrary to the next parts of the series, these two titles offered really large environments in which players could cause havok and approach their objectives via different routes. And we are happy to report that both of these games are now available on GOG, completely DRM-free.
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Personally I thought Warhead was much better than Crysis. The only thing Crysis has on Warhead is that it is longer and more fleshed out, but in any case, I prefer Warhead's characters (Psycho, Emerson, O'Neill) to Crysis's (Nomad, Prophet, whoever the hell the commander is...). The pacing is better as well, Crysis had a lot of areas with "weird" pacing, I felt. In any case I enjoyed both titles a lot. Can't wait for Crysis 2.
Good review.
I'm awfully disappointed that Crysis is still the visual measuring stick of this generation.
Consoles are definitely becoming a hindrance in advances.
Good review, not entirely comfortable with the review score itself however it's not me reviewing it! Job well done.