Crysis: Good Game, Gone Bad

I’ve been looking forward to Crysis as far back as August 4th, 2006. Oh silly me, why should I have expected the game to be finished merely a year and a half later? If my first couple of hours with the game are any indication, it looks like the developers could have used a few more months to fix all the bugs.

Sure, the game looks great and you can’t fault them significantly for the game’s high hardware requirements, pushing pixels is heavy labor. But these bugs are expected and should have been taken care of with even the most basic of QA.

Just Kill Me Now

Here’s where my drama begins. Just the second chapter into the game mind you, I’ve fought past dozens of angry North Koreans to find a captured archaeologist. (My pal Psycho shows up at the last second just to grab some spotlight… fame whore.)

My next task, as verbalized by our loving commander, is to take out a couple of incoming Korean People’s Army (KPA) tanks that have been alerted to our presence. No problem. I merrily head off to do my job.

After this, I head back to find another missile launcher and after a brief hide-and-seek, I blast the 2nd KPA tank to smithereens.

Well, it appears I only thought the objective was met. My game says the objective has been met, but the game is lying to me.

But when I try to talk to Psycho or the scientist chick, they both give me the cold shoulder treatment? I thought we were outta here?

Ok. So I scan the area for any baddies that I didn’t take care of yet. And “Viola!” I find one.

Depending on how many times you Save and Load, this guy can’t be killed. On this particular occasion, a direct hit from a shoulder-mounted, missile launcher to the temporal lobe took him out.

Head back to the only target on my nav map and “Crap!” the scientist is still not moving. What else could it be?

I did accidentally blow up their gas station.

But that shouldn’t be it, right? After 30 minutes of hunting around, looking for more undead KPA, scouting potential “next map” routes and generally being thwarted by the true evil in this game, Electronic Arts, I head to the Internet to see if others have been experiencing the same problem.

It didn’t take long.

When I go to reply to his thread and share my similar frustration, EA stabs me in the eye kicks me in the junk does me the honor of having either crappy message board software or a planned server outage. Either way, I have no way to voice my complaint. Nice.

I bet their silently laughing at us all as they collect a totally bogus Game of the Year award. You’ve heard about how publishers “push” editorial groups, right?

(Vote for Bioshock, it was awesome!)

The Moral of the Story?

Don’t get your hopes up. That, and if EA is involved, understand that their primary aim is making money, not good games.

Update: Well, at least it’s not a total loss. I found the following “fix” and thought I’d share.

So here is what you need to do:

When you get to the village, cross over the bridge at the far end. It is well guarded but this seems to be a trigger point. DO NOT rescue the hostage, yet. Wait on going anywhere near the school. There are few mission updates that need to happen. Go to the middle building that looks like a political office (flags out front). You will be told to do this, before you go in. Go in near computer on first floor, hear another update, then go the second floor and look near computer (there is nothing there, but there seems to be an invisible trigger at that point) That is where I was finally told again to go get the hostage in the school. As soon as you rescue the hostage, you should be told to go up into the woods. If this doesn’t happen, restart the level form the beginning (it is an option in your menu screen), don’t waste your time looking around.

You never see the girl and your partner come out of the room, so don’t wait. When you get the mission up date to move into the woods just go. And hang on to your hat, cuz you are in for a fire fight or flight.

Hope this helps!

Kevin Carney | GameDemo.com