I'm gonna be honest, the plot thread of "The suit slowly turns your main character _into_ Prophet because that's the guy in the suit's internal memory" is actually kinda cool, even if it is a bit confusing. Like that's some really creative and existential sci-fi stuff you got going on there. Too bad it's duct-taped to a plot that's otherwise as stupid as a burnt pancake.
Seriously!! That is a *gold* premise that they completely threw away. The idea that your would-be savior who rescued you from a mortal wound (and gave you a cool suit) has actually damned you to eventually lose all sense of self as his mind and body overwrite your own. That’s horror movie material.
and that you don't even notice because, as Player 1, it doesn't even matter to you. Alcatraz is already devoid of personal agency, he's already controlled by somebody else. At some point the villain calls him "Theseus" which is a nice nod, too. Really is a shame that's the one cool thing about Crysis 2
What's hilarious is Cyberpunk proceeded to do the exact same premise but actually made it the main point of the story and it was vastly successful and a great story
@@dylanv.4970IDK; my life is slipping away; I'm losing my consciousness and my very being. No matter what I do, my days are numbered... Time to collect up all these cars for Duncan, fix this rollercoaster and do 10 side jobs so I can afford those cars I wanted. I feel like its not a good plot point to graft onto an open world
Apparently after Nomad defeated the alien threat he started buying skinny jeans, driving fast cars and got a diamond earring. His friends said he had a mid-life Crysis
I know this is a 2 year old comment, and I try not to respond to ones anywhere near that old, but just, you have the best comment on youtube and I might start a religion around it
The real tragedy of it all is that after they sold Far Cry, Ubisoft took it in the big open-world direction that Yerli and Crytek was so afraid wouldn't appeal to the console market and was met with huge success. Had Crytek stuck to its guns and kept going in the direction Crysis 1 started, it could have been something special and certainly more successful.
Well, I believe going in the direction of ridiculous system requirements was a major part of their downfall. A big open world would only make that worse.
Regarding the dilution of what made Crysis so good in the first place, there's a really pertinent quote by Alan Moore that I think summarizes it perfectly: "It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need. "
huge problem with that. comics books are usually made with just a writer and artist. If you hate alan moore's stuff you CAN go out and make your own comic. Games on the other hand, take years of dozens and maybe hundreds of people's time and have budgets in the millions. If you hate a game you probably don't have the means of doing it yourself.
I kind of enjoyed Crysis 2 honestly. It didn't succeed at all in the areas where 1 and 3 succeeded but it also paced itself really well, not in the sense that the story had me on the edge of my seat or anything but that there was a really well established dichotomy between small scale firefights and epic setpieces that a lot of linear action shooters don't really have. It's not like one of the newer COD or Halo campaigns where every five seconds something has to explode in the background there are more down to earth moments where you're just basking in the atmosphere. The level design also wasn't as bad for me as it was for a lot of people, I think the problem is that the levels at first glance are painfully generic but Crytek really tucked away a lot of cool vantage points if you look around. The difference is while in 1 and 3 a lot of the more advanced approaches were further away in horizontal space, i.e. going around the objective, in 2 they were in vertical space i.e. climbing around buildings and finding sniping points, and I think that a lot of people missed those useful vantage points and blitzed down the main roads like in a COD game when really you're supposed to play it like you're in the first Avengers movie climbing around between buildings and pouncing on enemies (I also quite enjoy the Avengers vibe I get from that game). I also think that Crysis 2 has the best feeling of empowerment of the 3 games, the first time you fight an alien it feels intense and difficult but by the end you've gotten enough upgrades to where you feel much more powerful than the aliens. I think that in contrast Crysis 3 made you way too overpowered from the beginning and Crysis 1 made you too fragile and encouraged you to spam the cloak and exploit the fact that enemies are totally blind to you if you go prone in a bush (which is a huge AI exploit that ruined the game for me when I discovered it). Also, I don't quite agree with the idea that the nanosuit was dumbed down. They didn't take away Strength and Speed from Crysis 2, they're just activated contextually and can be combined with other abilities. Speed kicks in automatically by sprinting and you can use the Strength version of any basic move just by holding the button instead of tapping, i.e. strength jump is done by holding the jump button, strength melee is done by holding the melee button, etc. In reality you can do anything in Crysis 2 that you could do in the first game except for going prone and sprinting without activating Speed, and I don't know if you found this out but Crytek actually went out of their way to prove that by releasing a one to one remake of Crysis 1 made in CryEngine 3 exclusively on XBLA and PSN (except without the flying level) that used Crysis 2's control scheme and it actually worked pretty well. Either way this was a great review, Noah. You're making some my favorite videos on UA-cam these days, keep it up!
the epilogue of Crysis 3 is literally just the dril tweet "the conflicted supersoldier stares over the horizon as he smokes a cigarette. "war is the most fucked up thing ever." he takes a sip of beer"
I love that your over 4 year old videos are still thoughtful and enjoyable in the same way your recent ones are. Thanks for giving me a way to enjoy the best parts of old games without actually having to *play* old games!
Crysis (all three) does everything that makes Hollywood movies good, while also replacing what makes them bad with what makes an indie passion project so good. It's literally the best of both worlds, and I don't know any other game that does it this well.
Crysis 2's biggest flaw for me, other than the ending, is the level that seems to be completely missing from it. One minute, you're fighting your way into catacombs beneath a cathedral. As you enter the tunnels, an alien disappears around a corner. You continue on, to a loading screen. (this was the part where on my first playthrough I'm getting hyped up for a change of pace, maybe some cool dark tunnels and stealth action) Next level loads and you're suddenly and inexplicably on top of a partially collapsed building. What the hell? Where's the entire level in between these two points? It's one thing if it wants to be cheesy hollywood action, sure. But if it's not going to even bother with connecting even the most basic dots then why even make a plot or storyline at all? Why not just teleport the player some random place every level, who cares. Plus they could have improved the missing level problem with zero effort if they just removed the alien right before the loading screen.
Right? I noticed this too. My friend whom ibwas playing with, he tried making up some bullshit but i was was like nah you saw that we straight up teleported.
In way late, but that particular alien is one of the four high-powered cloaking Ceph you fight at the very end of the game and that's just one of many times you can notice them following and watching you throughout the game. I mean, it's the most noticeable time but yeah, YMMV on how well done it is as foreshadowing.
the more crysis retrospectives and reviews I watch the sillier I feel that Crysis 2 is my favorite can't help it, the desolate, recently-deserted new york atmosphere in C2 is just so good for me
Same here man, it's just so beautiful. I like the combination of deserted yet preserved parts of the city with the utterly destroyed and collapsed parts. Favorite setting of the three games.
Thank god someone else feels it. I was a little disappointed myself that Noah dislikes it so much since I usually agree with him completely and yet... I love Crysis 2. I just find it so much fun to play. The multiplayer I'd also sink hours into. Crysis 3 was a fun ride first time around but I can complete that game in 3 hours on the hardest difficulty, and I just found a lot of it monotonous and frustrating. But I guess we're all allowed to like some fast food from time to time! I never kid myself it was anything more. I even enjoyed the ridiculous plot elements.
The worst part is that "New York City as it's being ripped apart by a PMC crackdown on an alien plague" is an INCREDIBLE setting for a sandbox game like Crysis. The breakdown of the nanosuit plot, a.k.a. "oops we asked an AI to 'make our soldiers better' and it replied by creating gestalt consciousnesses that merge the strengths of multiple different humans into a single posthuman body" is a GREAT plot if well executed... which it is not.
The hilarious thing about the justification for dumbing down the nanosuit in C2 is that they ported the original to console and it plays/controls fine.
CRYSIS 2 PERFECTED THE NANOSUIT. The “strength” and “speed” mode are passive actions you only need to JUMP HIGHER, PUNCH PEOPLE and RUN FASTER. Seesawing from ARMOR to CLOAK mode using the shoulder buttons is far more intuitive and easier to handle. I successfully played through Crysis and Warhead using mouse and keyboard. It was HARD AS FUCK and using the suit function dial - especially when selecting weapon customization was fuckin silly. Xbox One’s controller just made the whole thing easier
@@PassportBrosBusinessClass The suit function dial is just pressing the scroll wheel and choosing your augmentation how is it hard or silly Was Crysis your only PC game and you're not used to kb+m ?
@@Igneeka doesn' negate his main argument that there is literally no down side to the new controls and are simply more streamlined and more intuitive without removing any of the features, the only downside being "but muh pc gayme controls"
Noah Caldwell-Gervais, please, add subtitles to your videos. For me as a non-english speaker it's easy to get lost after only half-hour, and your videos are twice as much. Thanks :) P.S. You make a great job.
I feel this comment may get buried under all the others but i want you to know that As a console gamer when Crysis 2 came out exclusively i enjoyed Crysis 1 far far more then i did at all Crysis 2. Crysis 1's openness to everything set it apart from every other game that basically came out at the time and was completely different. It made Crysis 2 feel...bad in comparison. I also want you to know that i was the only one of my friends to play Crysis 1 on PC as this is fairly important and i'm not sure if you knew but i feel it's fairly important you do know: Crysis 1 was ported to 360 and PS3 The same year Crysis 2 came out. Most people i know actually played Crysis 1 on 360, in fact even my friends who do play on PC exclusively never played it. The people i know who loved and enjoyed it from my personal life were all console players who enjoyed the game on Console. Crysis 1 was memed into popularity by the PC sure but that doesn't mean it was exclusively popular on PC and also doesn't mean console plebs only played the second game. The multiplayer was fun enough to keep Console Players going but after seeing how great Crysis 1 is, most of them just kind of stopped playing 2 in comparison. I only say this as you mostly mention that Crysis 1 was hailed by the PC master race but it was just as loved on console.
If were completely honest here, Graphics and Frame rates are something only pc gamers really care about. as long as its not like 10 fps most console gamers just are kinda okay with it. any pc game that low is unplayable a console game at that...isn't honestly.
Ok, so I get 20 fps. MGS Peace Walker runs at 20 fps, the original Ocarina of Time, and quite a few other games on console run at low frame rates. That said I'm also not the kind of person that believes if a game has first person shooting it should run at 60 fps. I just can't imagine playing an FPS all the way through with constant drops to 20 fps. It's just me really I'm glad you were able to enjoy the game I just think there should be at least slightly higher standards for performance on console. Why can't we all just enjoy games, right? P.S. sorry for the paragraph I just feel strongly about this topic.
Crysis 2 was one of the first games I played post Atari, and so, obviously, I was blown away. Love that game dearly, I've always been dismayed by the hate it gets. It's no Prey or Dishonored of course, but it's a rollicking good time... to me. I love the whole series. Plus Far Crys three through five. And the new Sniper Ghost Warrior games. And Homefront: The Revolution... maybe it's a Cryengine thing! Anyway, keep up the good work, sir.
I enjoyed Crysis 3. Played through multiple times, and I prefer it over the original Crysis. I'm the kind of person who doesn't really mind the blockbuster movie cliches in video games, I do mind them in movies ironically, but I can have fun playing them in a video game.
A little Did You Know before I watch the video: Korean dub for KPA soldiers in the first Crysis is atrocious. They became a bit of a meme in Korea because of that, along with some other games with horrible voice acting.
Fun conspiracy theory about the last tover level of Crysis2. Years ago I got into game moding. To be specific - I started moding with FarCry and moved on to CryEngine2 and 3. I just realized that the central park tower level was probably inspired by a moder. Some time before the release of Crysis2 - Crytek made a level design contest, where I too took part. If I remember right - the dude who got the first place had a similar level concept. Also, the grand price of the contest was a job in CryTech.
@BulgaroSlav They kinda dropped the ball licencing the engine. When CE2 come out it was pretty much the best and most easy to use engine on the market. But they didn't provide stand alone SDK to community, and licence was unacessible to indie developers and enthusiasts. When CE3 come out(crysis2) Crytek finally made somewhat flexible licensing and SDK was availible to everyone. But by the time that happened - Most developers allready had adopted and using Unreal Engine and Unity. Personally I quit modding scene was because I started somewhat big map/mod for Crysis2 - but it stopped because Crysis2 had a AI spawning bug, that broke my work. And altough the bug was well known in community and quite a few modders were fucked over by it - Crytek were abondened updating the game because they started working on Crysis3.
I know that many people were disappointed in Crysis 2 as it didn't focus on the things that the established fanbase liked about the first game. However when i got Crysis 2 i didn't know a thing about the game. It also was the first game i got for my new console and to this date remains the most graphically impressive game in my Xbox 360 library. It had great setpieces, great action with multiple ways to approach combat and had a long campaign. It still holds up and is one of my favourite shooters to come back to. When i played Crysis 1 afterwards i was really disappointed. I think the stunnning graphics at the time led people to ignore that the original crysis was an empty borefest with a pretty backdrop
I'm going to take a moment to make a sappy comment since I don't think I've ever done so on one of Noah's videos: you are at the very top echelon of long-form video game content creators on the internet. The quality of your scripts are just incredible - unlike a lot of other content creators, you have genuinely good writing technique. Your analyses also dive deep into the "whole" of a video game, rather than just attempting to either be "objective" and miss the entire point of an entirely subjective analysis, or focusing in on one narrow segment. Plus I appreciate how you cover content that, while not "unknown," most similar content creators don't tackle. Keep up the amazing work Noah
It's interesting because Richard Morgan, a Sci Fi writer with a decent bibliography, wrote the script for Crysis 2. I wonder if the issues Noah is having with the plot are a result of transferring Morgan's writing into gaming as an interactive medium?
@Farldie Maine I enjoyed the story as well. It's a big exciting action blockbuster whose action set pieces feel earned. (unlike some 2011 shooters I know...Battlefield 3 and MW3) @Chis Smout It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.
Crysis 3 somehow managed to take a fairly simple and cliched story and present it in an almost completely incoherent, baffling way. It's kind of impressive, really. Despite that, I thought it was a great game, and I would totally buy a Crysis 4. Crysis was awesome, and although Crysis 2 was massively disappointing but I still kind of enjoyed it. Crytek really just need to accept that they're never going to be totally mainstream, and embrace what sets the Crysis series apart from other games.
"you get a general idea where the objective is, and by the time you get there it's moved" That's like the synopsis of the entire plot of the first two FEAR games.
your the only person on youtube that makes me ecstatic when I see an upload, keep up the amazing work man! your a massive inspiration to me as a hobbyist developer, your videos help me see games from a perspective I don't usually consider, and its extremely enlightening. Thanks Noah!
Excellent video as usual. Surprised how the transformation of the aliens never came up when comparing Crysis 1 to 2. They went from these flying, ice spewing octopus creatures to generic bi-pedal humanoids complete with the lazy writing of "giving them the bipedal suits so they could live in the heat of NYC." It's not really an important point but goes along quite well with all of the mistakes that Crysis 2 did when trying to garner the "console attention."
In really late and YMMV on whether it justifies things, but that IS explained in 3 :P . What you're fighting in the trilogy aren't really even the actual Ceph, they're automated bio/synth-constructs the Ceph send out to conquer places and then build wormholes back to the Ceph's home galaxy, they're very smart tools. The Ceph lifeforms that send them out are so much more advanced than humans that they're effectively eldritch abominations to us. The ships on Earth got there ages back when the environment and biosphere were very different, but for some reason didn't activate on arrival. Basically the enemies in 1 are powerful but resource-intensive units designed to initially secure a foothold on a new world but were expensive to build/grow and so couldn't be used in large numbers. I can't recall but maybe they couldn't make more at all and were even limited to the octopus mechs originally packed onto the ships? Then the Ceph in 2 and 3 are much cheaper units produced in response to the actual environmental conditions and meant to counter the most successful lifeforms on their own terms. It's a similar looking organic being operating both the octopus mechs and the combat exoskeletons, too, aside from the colour, which 3 brings closer to the original blueish. They made the wormhole early in 3 because that's what they're programmed to do in situations where local life presents an actual serious problem, get the owners to come in with the ant poison themselves. :P
The whole Alcatraz morphing into Prophet thing is incredibly disturbing. It's body horror type stuff. It speaks volumes about how incompetent the writers were that they didn't see anything wrong with it.
I was literally just worrying the other day about your VW breaking down or crashing or something bad like that since you hadn't posted in a while. Glad things are still going well for you!
Yeah, I read somewhere that the controls for the gunship were to hard to convert to controller. Also I believe that mission is one of the few complaints that people had about the first game.
Crysis 1 is one of my favorite Games of alltime, but it was rushed at the end. Some Features never made it into he Game and the last 20% of the Game were made in a few Month. The Gunship Level was on of it, not needed, unfinished and clunky. Cant Imagine a Crysis 1 as is was planned with all Features and more polished.
While there were literally dozens of bad design choices made with *Crysis 2* as opposed to the original *Crysis*, removing the strength and speed modes and trying to bake them into your core moveset or contextual actions was not one of them. Personally I never used those modes other than to haul ass in a straight line somewhere and to do some high jumps or throws, and had the developers not been pants-on-head they could have sensitively integrated those actions with an energy cost into your core moveset. Having those two be complete modes when their utility was limited to a tiny handful of options never made much sense.
Also to mention how little "alien" the aliens of crysis 2 were. Basically standard riflemen with some cosmetic addition. The tactical variety of facing a conventional army with conventional weapons or a completely unknown and unpredictable enemy in the first game was completely lost.
In really late and YMMV on whether it justifies things, but that IS discussed in 3 :P . What you're fighting in the trilogy aren't really even the actual Ceph, they're automated bio/synth-constructs the Ceph send out to conquer places and then build wormholes back to the Ceph's home galaxy, they're very smart tools. The Ceph lifeforms that send them out are so much more advanced than humans that they're effectively eldritch abominations to us. The ships on Earth got there ages back when the environment and biosphere were very different, but for some reason didn't activate on arrival. Basically the enemies in 1 are powerful but resource-intensive units designed to initially secure a foothold on a new world but were expensive to build/grow and so couldn't be used in large numbers. I can't recall but maybe they couldn't make more at all and were even limited to the octopus mechs originally packed onto the ships? Then the Ceph in 2 and 3 are much cheaper units produced in response to the actual environmental conditions and meant to counter the most successful lifeforms on their own terms. It's a similar looking organic being operating both the octopus mechs and the combat exoskeletons, too, aside from the colour, which 3 brings closer to the original blueish. They made the wormhole early in 3 because that's what they're programmed to do in situations where local life presents an actual serious problem, get the owners to come in with the ant poison themselves. :P
@@thomasjoychild4962 Well, yeah, it may be justified lore-wise, it's just that in crisis 1 fighting a "conventional" enemy like the koreans first and then meeting the aliens was an interesting dynamic, both thematically and in gameplay. In crisis 2 every engagement with humans and aliens alike feels the same, much more similar to standard shooters
I actually quite enjoyed suit streamlining of C2, I think it was one of the most clever moves they did. The trugth is, they did not exclude strength or speed options, they just made them automatic. I enjoyed C2 more than C1 actually exactly because of the suit being streamlined, though I did miss the jungle.
In Crysis 1, you could run faster than a jeep, go full fisticuffs and punch and throw your way through many enemies, those things blew my mind when I played it. The second game was much more underwhelming, generic sprint, less throwable items, unsatisfying melee and no environment destruction, you could should trees down and punch houses apart in the first game!
@@arif8621 To be fair, the nerfing of the suit has nothing to do with the streamlining of the controls for the suit. I'd wager to guess you run slower because of the tighter environments of C2, running too fast would have lead to you just running into the environment all the time. As for strength, no idea... Perhaps it was console hardware limitation in the tight and detail environments. Or maybe it was gameplay balance? Who knows haha But the actual streamlining of the controls has nothing to do with the nerfing of the abilities.
Great video, Noah! It's always an eventful day whenever you release new content! Thanks for the hours and hours of high-quality, in-depth games criticism!
I'm surprised you didn't mention the tessellation/Nvidia fiasco regarding Crysis 2. I don't rightly agree with your entire assessment of Crysis 2. You again and again said it was much like its contemporaries at the time, but failed to name any names. The only time you brought up names was in reference to the interview with Yerli where he mentions Halo and Call Of Duty. But in Halo and Call Of Duty - at the time, mind you - I could not jump 10 feet in the air. I could not jump 10 feet in the air and then ground pound my enemies, grab my enemies; even up until that Call Of Duty where you can run on walls, Crysis 2 was completely unique in its movement as far as single-player FPS are concerned besides Crysis 1 of course. Off of the top of my head I can think of set pieces and gimmicks that differentiate Crysis 2 from its contemporaries like fighting up the parking structure with cars to kick around. There's the night street battle where the striders from Half-Life 2 show up. I remember it being quite tense and you do not even have any footage of it. The level design also becomes more open the minute the aliens show up, I remember this distinctly because I remember the exact moment I thought to myself "hey the levels are more open than when fighting the corporation soldiers." Otherwise it was indeed a weak sequel.
Man, this is one of those times where I agree with what you're saying about Crysis 2, but I can't deny the amount of enjoyment I've gotten with that game. I find it very enjoyable and have even beaten it three times.
Great video Noah. I loved playing through the trilogy... you really captured the disappointment I felt when playing the sequels.... Also love your prophet impression! Thankyou for making this!
Crysis is one of the games that, to me, defined the era it was made in; 1. Initial game shows lots of promise and build a following. 2. Second game dumbs down core mechanics and alienates original fans in an attempt to build mainstream appeal. 3. Third game tries to either pander to both audiences, failing miserably, or dumb down the game even more. with the story in the series ending on a terrible cliffhanger or a badly written resolution.
Ever since I saw your cod franchise analysis, I've been hooked on your stuff. May seem odd, but your stuff pulled me through some pretty bad times. Thanks for everything, man. Can't really support you on patreon, due to financial issues on my end, but when that passes, I plan to help in any way I can.
you're my kinda gamer...could listen to you talk about games all day. i hope your road trip is helping to grow your skills as well as your self...all the best!
God, going through the crysis 2 part and any time I recognise a part I just flash back to Legion and have the warm embrace of actual writing embrace me
I mean, I didn't hate the game's plot as presented ingame, it's written by a Sci-fi author I quite like, Richard Morgan. But yeah, Peter Watts providing commentary on the story (though an earlier draft of the script I think?) just improves things immensely.
I liked the slow shift in Crysis 1 from unstoppable Predator type to being pushed onto the backfoot by an overwhelming alien force flying around in armored ships. Knocking these ships out the the sky with a Gauss cannon in the deck of the last level was the great climax of that I think. I liked Crysis 2 the best. It's story and pacing was the best and the gameplay was slightly more refined and the increased linearity didn't take away too much for me. The extra suit modes weren't removed, they were just incorporated into the regular controls so you didn't have to mess about with the little menu all the time making the combat flow better. The way Alcatraz is seriously injured the whole way through and was just the first guy Prophet could save yet with the suit can still be an unstoppable badass, is a great plot point as was the reveal that the suits are not just suits and bond with their wearers making them partially alien. There were also quite a few nicely well rounded characters throughout with the possible exception of that commander guy. Oh, and the badass soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. Crysis 3 was still fun and had the best gameplay with the smoothness of Crysis 2 and the open levels of Crysis 1 but it was so short that none of the more interesting plot points had any room to really develop any momentum or potential for payoff. They should have also either stuck with the vulnerable injured Alcatraz from Crysis 2 or had a jaded and weary Nomad come back because it is rather laughable how obvious it is that Psycho is the only character with heart. Prophet is just unstoppable as far as the plot goes. It could have easily been an expansion pack as it is.
I mean, it's literally true when Psycho tells Prophet he has no heart :P The nanogear literally did consume that body's heart for resources/because it could circulate and oxygenate blood better than the organ. Same with most of the organs that were Alcatraz's IIRC, it was basically all either too damaged to be worth rebuilding or the nanogear could do the function better. Hargreave wanted POST-HUMAN warriors fighting the Ceph, after all.
Honestly, Crytek shot themselves in the foot. They cultivated the wrong kind of customer. Sure, Crysis 1 is great for pushing the boundaries of graphics in games, but if only a small number of people can play your game, then you won't be a commercial success. Video games is a business, studios shut down if they don't hit sales targets. Sure Crysis as a series is kind of a tech demo for marketing cryengine, but unfortunately Epic and Unreal won that battle. As business Crytek has not been doing well, that there was that whole period were they weren't paying their staff. Ok, yes pissing off your customer base is not a good idea, but Crytek was not wrong to change to an urban environment with Crysis 2. Three games of tropical jungle gets boring, and I never found jungles interesting to begin with. Oh boy what a mess, but I actually enjoyed Crysis 2 and its multiplayer.
I'm surprised you didn't like Crysis 2's story. I thought the way it dealt with the nanosuit, the ceph, and transhumanism was pretty interesting. One of the most interesting depictions of transhumanism I've seen in a video game, really.
The book's story, perhaps. So much of it is glossed over in the game, or retconned in 2, that treating them as the same narrative feels almost disingenuous.
If you want to find out the most _fun_ way to play Crysis 1 (and a ton of cool nuances in the nanosuit's functionality), I highly recommend watching just a few videos of NanosuitNinja (I think his channel's now called NsN). The guy's a genuine virtuoso with the mechanics of the first game and even made his own "Epsilon" difficulty setting with which he does permadeath runs. I'm not a great FPS player by any means but playing the first half of Crysis on Epsilon, knowing a lot of the suit's "creative" potential, was one of the most fun FPS experiences I've had. Must've replayed each of those first levels at least a dozen times since then (every few months) and it remains spectacularly entertaining. Also very highly recommended: install the Natual Mod. It makes the lighting system a lot more realistic. Darkness becomes genuinely dark so night vision goggles and gun flashlights become (somewhat) useful. Massive improvement in immersion and also makes the game look even better at relatively minimal FPS cost.
I was a huge fan of Crysis 1, it has some of the best users made levels I’ve played for anything. Without adding any new assets they proved just how versatile the AI and mechanics were. A great foundation for varied and interesting levels. And then Crysis 2 and especially 3 destroyed not just my enthusiasm for the series, but the spirit of the studio. All for the sake of chasing the imaginary wider audience.
There are so many franchises that suffer from the same problem Crysis did. The first game is good but maybe a little clunky and not very accessible so it appeals to a niche market and is just successful enough to justify a sequel so the Devs try to appeal to the more mainstream (usually console) market so they take what they think appealed to fans in the first game while making everything else fall in line with what is common in other AAA games in the same or similar genre. That game sells better but pisses off the fans of the first game who were expecting something closer to the first game. Then the third game tries to marry the two previous games while keeping the polish and base mechanics of the second game while reintroducing some of what fans of the first games were complaining was missing from the second. This sometimes works with games like Mass Effect 3 or Witcher 3 or you get a Crysis 3 which appeals to no one because it's still not as good as Crysis 1 and it's not as simple and easy to understand as Crysis 2.
Brock English - Yyyup, similar thing happened to Dead Space, almost tit for tat... I say almost cus DS3 had none of that attempted return to form you mention, rather it just did that other thing that happens when they double down on the misguided direction of the demographic-grab sequel... what is that thing called again? Oh yeah - it sucked.
Dead Space 3 is what happens when the mainstream sequel still doesn't sale as well as the publisher thinks it should so they push it even harder into mainstream mediocrity and completely leaving behind what was good about the first game. Bioshock, for example.
For a decade old game, Crysis still looks great even without graphics mods. And Crysis is one of the best and most underrated fps franchises out there IMO.
I played Crysis 2 remastered recently, and I honestly laughed out loud at some of the dialogue that I took so seriously when I played Crysis 2 when I was younger. Man I think Crysis 2 is a solid shooter but my word is it also one of the blandest stories ever made in any medium of fiction.
2, 3 and 5 also (and Revengence if you want to add it). Though I have heard that all the three first games are really horribly ported and require a lot of work to get running and controlling properly.
2 is technically available, but it's a really bad port that is also really hard to get working properly on modern machines. V is a pretty good port, though.
You're probably not going to see this, but it's interesting to consider the wider industry in regards to the decisions around crysis 2-3, notably that scaling the graphical fidelity of the first game onto the contemporary consoles (remarkably low ram, vastly different architectures) and producing a very developer friendly SDK allowed them to pivot around to become basically renderware for HD gaming. They've probably made more money licencing their technology than publishing games, it's an interesting story, from PC darlings to a Valve equivalent for the locked down corporate landscape of console studios.
Personally; looking back, I find that kind of tragic, when you look at the first game you see a lot of ambition and passion that was worked on when it came to graphics. Granted, looking at it today and even comparing to other shooters at the time it's more or less a glorified tech demo gameplay wise, more so than Far Cry 1 because at least the game cheesy silly pulp inspired personality and tone made it forgivable. However, you could see the potential of fun sequels with not just a engine like this but I premise to boot. And instead of playing with their strengths then they fucked it all up with 2 & 3 by downgrading down their engine in nerfing the nanosuit their only two big selling points of the original, just for the sole reason to simply appeal to the console market, a market that they had no experience, desire and business being in, and they failed miserably to top it off. I don't know it any other video game franchise that had everything and squandered it all for the short term rewards so quickly apart from FEAR anyway.
My fondest (?) Crysis memory was fiddling with the setting from beginning to end of the game depending on how large the environment was at the time. When you get to the innards of the alien's lair at the end I could crank it to almost max. My teenage breath... it was taken.
"Okay so this area is way to big to do 4x anti aliasing but maybe I can scale up the resolution... no we're definitely around 20 fps now but if I drop the particle settings and go zero anti aliasing... oh and take the shadows down to minimum... yes I can pull off full resolution now...... as long as I don't fight anyone..."
I remember enjoying Crysis 2 immensely, but that was when I was a lowly console gamer (gasp), so I wasn't running a 1080ti. Maybe if I went back to it I'd see the stitches, but I think I'll let it stay in the beautiful rosy past.
Sean Cavanaugh i think he hates on Crysis 2 way to much. I first played Crysis 2 on console and loved it, than played Crysis 1 on PC and was vastly disappointed. The game felt so empty and boring. Without the bonus of great graphics and open world design only being featured in the first few missions there was not much left. Crysis 2 is definitely more exciting to play
btw, i just got nostalgic after watching this video and played Crysis 1 again. it was really disappointing. Nowhwere near as open as i remembered and very standard gameplay. the game really didn't hold up well.
I am kinda one of those people who stops at the aliens. Was never my bag. Kinda liked the direction far cry 2 went, but that game has all its own short coming as well. I just want a guerilla war simulator with weighty combat/authentic/realistic gun play. I like the super powers in crysis, but I like being the hunted under dog more. So kinda like the later parts, but open world, and no aliens.
Crysis 2 is a blockbuster, and it doesn't care about been anything more than that. As a blockbuster works pretty well. I mean, is one of the most spectacular games i ever played, everything in this game is beautiful and Hollywodian, what else can you ask? is a rollercoaster and if u can put that fucker to max settings is a hell of a rollercoaster. 3 in the other hand is weird, its a mix of 1 and 2 and doesn't know what wants to be, as a result its not that good. You can critique something for not being "your something" but if the creator has a pretty specific idea of what he wants and he achieves then you cannot blame anybody for anything. You can only say: "I don't like that"
38:20 I really appreciate that they made sure the audience knew when he said “Sub” he was in fact referring to a submersible vehicle and not in fact a submissive, or a subway sandwich.
My computer could run Crysis at 30+fps using mostly medium settings when it came out in 2007 and i have to say that it was a pretty great experience. Considering that i spent 3000 euros on that computer (not including the monitor, mouse or keyboard), i was hoping for more. But the main reason why i got all that computing power was Flight Simulator X and i had worse performance on that than i did with Crysis... EDIT: I was one of those people who after the first full play through of the game only played until the aliens came, then restarted the whole game just to try new stuff. I did this over and over again.
God as a console gamer I always wondered what is was all about, and even I was surprised they screwed PC gamers with 2. This gave me some chuckles and was awesome as always, I can really tell you put a lot of work into these. Also the island of Dr.Moreu is such a great book!!
To be fair, gaming laptops do get pretty hot on a regular basis when running modern games, it's the nature of the beast and not necessarily a dangerous thing for their health; being able to feel the hotness through the keys is nothing special, the question is of course HOW hot it gets and feels. Do you use a cooling pad of sorts? And what gamer laptop do you have?
That's why I like the fat ASUS rog gaming laptops, lol. They design the cooling system to direct heat towards the back vents and keep the entire keyboard cool even at max load.
This is way after the fact of course but just in case anyone is reading this, the idea of "pro-consumer" doesn't have anything to do with what sells better. A game can sell gangbusters and still be anti-consumer based on its marketing, design, and monetization practices. If being anti-consumer meant that a product didn't sell, nothing would ever be anti-consumer. Anti-consumer just means that it's a product which exploits consumers in a way which is deemed unfair or manipulative, rather than selling their product based on the merits of said product
So on point and yet sadly becoming a common practice for large companies nowadays. What makes matters worse that a lot of AAA games publishers usually spend half if not quarter their budget onto advertising and other forms of marketing and make most of the money from that.
The first Crysis reminded me alot of Battlefield Bad Company. Openish world with destructable environments, freedom to approach objectives how you want. And their sequels were both heavily dumbed down to appeal to the mass CoD market.
Yeah. To me that was one of the biggest draws. Once you moved on from shooting Korean soldiers cannonballing into shacks (maximum speed, jump, maximum shield, crouch) wasn't available anymore. I don't blame them for changing the style of game throughout the campaign. But it was changed into something I was already bored with.
![Imaginary Monsters: Alan Wake vs. The Evil Within [Franchise Spoilers]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Jjfm4ths2J0/mqdefault.jpg)
"Psycho gets dialogue; he gets emotions, but only manly man emotions like anger, or maybe anger." LMAO That is such a good, Ebert-esque zinger.
Pyscho and Kratos (pre 2018) should hang out. They could be anger bros.
I'm gonna be honest, the plot thread of "The suit slowly turns your main character _into_ Prophet because that's the guy in the suit's internal memory" is actually kinda cool, even if it is a bit confusing.
Like that's some really creative and existential sci-fi stuff you got going on there. Too bad it's duct-taped to a plot that's otherwise as stupid as a burnt pancake.
Seriously!! That is a *gold* premise that they completely threw away. The idea that your would-be savior who rescued you from a mortal wound (and gave you a cool suit) has actually damned you to eventually lose all sense of self as his mind and body overwrite your own. That’s horror movie material.
and that you don't even notice because, as Player 1, it doesn't even matter to you. Alcatraz is already devoid of personal agency, he's already controlled by somebody else. At some point the villain calls him "Theseus" which is a nice nod, too.
Really is a shame that's the one cool thing about Crysis 2
What's hilarious is Cyberpunk proceeded to do the exact same premise but actually made it the main point of the story and it was vastly successful and a great story
@@dylanv.4970IDK; my life is slipping away; I'm losing my consciousness and my very being. No matter what I do, my days are numbered... Time to collect up all these cars for Duncan, fix this rollercoaster and do 10 side jobs so I can afford those cars I wanted. I feel like its not a good plot point to graft onto an open world
Apparently after Nomad defeated the alien threat he started buying skinny jeans, driving fast cars and got a diamond earring. His friends said he had a mid-life Crysis
It's been a year, but someone needs to congratulate you for that pun.
I know this is a 2 year old comment, and I try not to respond to ones anywhere near that old, but just, you have the best comment on youtube and I might start a religion around it
Ik this is a 3 n a half year old comment but um.....that was a good one 👍
Good stuff buddy
This joke is 4 years old at this point but it's too good not acknowledge
The real tragedy of it all is that after they sold Far Cry, Ubisoft took it in the big open-world direction that Yerli and Crytek was so afraid wouldn't appeal to the console market and was met with huge success. Had Crytek stuck to its guns and kept going in the direction Crysis 1 started, it could have been something special and certainly more successful.
And FarCry *did* work on console, both technically and commercially.
Well, I believe going in the direction of ridiculous system requirements was a major part of their downfall. A big open world would only make that worse.
Regarding the dilution of what made Crysis so good in the first place, there's a really pertinent quote by Alan Moore that I think summarizes it perfectly:
"It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need. "
huge problem with that. comics books are usually made with just a writer and artist. If you hate alan moore's stuff you CAN go out and make your own comic. Games on the other hand, take years of dozens and maybe hundreds of people's time and have budgets in the millions. If you hate a game you probably don't have the means of doing it yourself.
@@yabo_san well, you can make a game, but you'll probably give up half-way through.
No offense, but given what else Alan Moore has said, I don't know if HE knows what anyone wants anymore.
I kind of enjoyed Crysis 2 honestly. It didn't succeed at all in the areas where 1 and 3 succeeded but it also paced itself really well, not in the sense that the story had me on the edge of my seat or anything but that there was a really well established dichotomy between small scale firefights and epic setpieces that a lot of linear action shooters don't really have. It's not like one of the newer COD or Halo campaigns where every five seconds something has to explode in the background there are more down to earth moments where you're just basking in the atmosphere. The level design also wasn't as bad for me as it was for a lot of people, I think the problem is that the levels at first glance are painfully generic but Crytek really tucked away a lot of cool vantage points if you look around. The difference is while in 1 and 3 a lot of the more advanced approaches were further away in horizontal space, i.e. going around the objective, in 2 they were in vertical space i.e. climbing around buildings and finding sniping points, and I think that a lot of people missed those useful vantage points and blitzed down the main roads like in a COD game when really you're supposed to play it like you're in the first Avengers movie climbing around between buildings and pouncing on enemies (I also quite enjoy the Avengers vibe I get from that game). I also think that Crysis 2 has the best feeling of empowerment of the 3 games, the first time you fight an alien it feels intense and difficult but by the end you've gotten enough upgrades to where you feel much more powerful than the aliens. I think that in contrast Crysis 3 made you way too overpowered from the beginning and Crysis 1 made you too fragile and encouraged you to spam the cloak and exploit the fact that enemies are totally blind to you if you go prone in a bush (which is a huge AI exploit that ruined the game for me when I discovered it).
Also, I don't quite agree with the idea that the nanosuit was dumbed down. They didn't take away Strength and Speed from Crysis 2, they're just activated contextually and can be combined with other abilities. Speed kicks in automatically by sprinting and you can use the Strength version of any basic move just by holding the button instead of tapping, i.e. strength jump is done by holding the jump button, strength melee is done by holding the melee button, etc. In reality you can do anything in Crysis 2 that you could do in the first game except for going prone and sprinting without activating Speed, and I don't know if you found this out but Crytek actually went out of their way to prove that by releasing a one to one remake of Crysis 1 made in CryEngine 3 exclusively on XBLA and PSN (except without the flying level) that used Crysis 2's control scheme and it actually worked pretty well.
Either way this was a great review, Noah. You're making some my favorite videos on UA-cam these days, keep it up!
the epilogue of Crysis 3 is literally just the dril tweet "the conflicted supersoldier stares over the horizon as he smokes a cigarette. "war is the most fucked up thing ever." he takes a sip of beer"
"He shows emotions like anger or maybe...anger."
I grinned.
I anger
@@adamfrisk956 i RAGEQUIT THE VIDEO
Cevat Yerli got very creative when it came to paying his employees.
54:20 I think Alkatraz was allready lethally wounded at the start of crysis 2, and without nano suit he would die immediatly as his comrades.
That is correct
I love that your over 4 year old videos are still thoughtful and enjoyable in the same way your recent ones are. Thanks for giving me a way to enjoy the best parts of old games without actually having to *play* old games!
In Crysis 3, Prophet does mention Nomad ONCE offhandedly to Psycho. I'm just annoyed that Alcatraz never gets a mention.
Yeah that was in the video.
Who tf ate these people anyway?
Crysis (all three) does everything that makes Hollywood movies good, while also replacing what makes them bad with what makes an indie passion project so good. It's literally the best of both worlds, and I don't know any other game that does it this well.
"Porno mad"? What the... ahhh, wait "poor Nomad".
Crysis 2's biggest flaw for me, other than the ending, is the level that seems to be completely missing from it. One minute, you're fighting your way into catacombs beneath a cathedral. As you enter the tunnels, an alien disappears around a corner. You continue on, to a loading screen. (this was the part where on my first playthrough I'm getting hyped up for a change of pace, maybe some cool dark tunnels and stealth action)
Next level loads and you're suddenly and inexplicably on top of a partially collapsed building. What the hell? Where's the entire level in between these two points? It's one thing if it wants to be cheesy hollywood action, sure. But if it's not going to even bother with connecting even the most basic dots then why even make a plot or storyline at all? Why not just teleport the player some random place every level, who cares. Plus they could have improved the missing level problem with zero effort if they just removed the alien right before the loading screen.
Right? I noticed this too. My friend whom ibwas playing with, he tried making up some bullshit but i was was like nah you saw that we straight up teleported.
In way late, but that particular alien is one of the four high-powered cloaking Ceph you fight at the very end of the game and that's just one of many times you can notice them following and watching you throughout the game. I mean, it's the most noticeable time but yeah, YMMV on how well done it is as foreshadowing.
I think it was a GDC talk that said "It's better to be loved by a few than liked by alot."
Less profitable, though.
the more crysis retrospectives and reviews I watch the sillier I feel that Crysis 2 is my favorite
can't help it, the desolate, recently-deserted new york atmosphere in C2 is just so good for me
Same here man, it's just so beautiful. I like the combination of deserted yet preserved parts of the city with the utterly destroyed and collapsed parts. Favorite setting of the three games.
Same here, haven't played warhead or Crysis 3 though. Not intend to either : p
Thank god someone else feels it. I was a little disappointed myself that Noah dislikes it so much since I usually agree with him completely and yet... I love Crysis 2. I just find it so much fun to play. The multiplayer I'd also sink hours into. Crysis 3 was a fun ride first time around but I can complete that game in 3 hours on the hardest difficulty, and I just found a lot of it monotonous and frustrating. But I guess we're all allowed to like some fast food from time to time! I never kid myself it was anything more. I even enjoyed the ridiculous plot elements.
It is the best IMO as well
The worst part is that "New York City as it's being ripped apart by a PMC crackdown on an alien plague" is an INCREDIBLE setting for a sandbox game like Crysis.
The breakdown of the nanosuit plot, a.k.a. "oops we asked an AI to 'make our soldiers better' and it replied by creating gestalt consciousnesses that merge the strengths of multiple different humans into a single posthuman body" is a GREAT plot if well executed... which it is not.
The hilarious thing about the justification for dumbing down the nanosuit in C2 is that they ported the original to console and it plays/controls fine.
Oh hell no, framerate there is shiiiit.
@@n484251 Tioscha said plays/controls well not runs well
CRYSIS 2 PERFECTED THE NANOSUIT.
The “strength” and “speed” mode are passive actions you only need to JUMP HIGHER, PUNCH PEOPLE and RUN FASTER.
Seesawing from ARMOR to CLOAK mode using the shoulder buttons is far more intuitive and easier to handle.
I successfully played through Crysis and Warhead using mouse and keyboard. It was HARD AS FUCK and using the suit function dial - especially when selecting weapon customization was fuckin silly.
Xbox One’s controller just made the whole thing easier
@@PassportBrosBusinessClass The suit function dial is just pressing the scroll wheel and choosing your augmentation how is it hard or silly
Was Crysis your only PC game and you're not used to kb+m ?
@@Igneeka doesn' negate his main argument that there is literally no down side to the new controls and are simply more streamlined and more intuitive without removing any of the features, the only downside being "but muh pc gayme controls"
Noah Caldwell-Gervais, please, add subtitles to your videos. For me as a non-english speaker it's easy to get lost after only half-hour, and your videos are twice as much. Thanks :)
P.S. You make a great job.
Adding subtitles to hour-long videos is not fun.
Good news, there's auto-generated subtitles now
I feel this comment may get buried under all the others but i want you to know that As a console gamer when Crysis 2 came out exclusively i enjoyed Crysis 1 far far more then i did at all Crysis 2. Crysis 1's openness to everything set it apart from every other game that basically came out at the time and was completely different. It made Crysis 2 feel...bad in comparison. I also want you to know that i was the only one of my friends to play Crysis 1 on PC as this is fairly important and i'm not sure if you knew but i feel it's fairly important you do know:
Crysis 1 was ported to 360 and PS3 The same year Crysis 2 came out.
Most people i know actually played Crysis 1 on 360, in fact even my friends who do play on PC exclusively never played it. The people i know who loved and enjoyed it from my personal life were all console players who enjoyed the game on Console. Crysis 1 was memed into popularity by the PC sure but that doesn't mean it was exclusively popular on PC and also doesn't mean console plebs only played the second game. The multiplayer was fun enough to keep Console Players going but after seeing how great Crysis 1 is, most of them just kind of stopped playing 2 in comparison. I only say this as you mostly mention that Crysis 1 was hailed by the PC master race but it was just as loved on console.
I first played the whole series on my PS3 and loved it.
Grant Mikaelian how did you get through crysis 3 at 20 fps?
@CynicalSheep I was so immersed I never felt that ='D That's a testament to that games worldbuilding and gameplay I guess.
If were completely honest here, Graphics and Frame rates are something only pc gamers really care about. as long as its not like 10 fps most console gamers just are kinda okay with it. any pc game that low is unplayable a console game at that...isn't honestly.
Ok, so I get 20 fps. MGS Peace Walker runs at 20 fps, the original Ocarina of Time, and quite a few other games on console run at low frame rates. That said I'm also not the kind of person that believes if a game has first person shooting it should run at 60 fps. I just can't imagine playing an FPS all the way through with constant drops to 20 fps. It's just me really I'm glad you were able to enjoy the game I just think there should be at least slightly higher standards for performance on console. Why can't we all just enjoy games, right?
P.S. sorry for the paragraph I just feel strongly about this topic.
Crysis 2 was one of the first games I played post Atari, and so, obviously, I was blown away. Love that game dearly, I've always been dismayed by the hate it gets. It's no Prey or Dishonored of course, but it's a rollicking good time... to me. I love the whole series. Plus Far Crys three through five. And the new Sniper Ghost Warrior games. And Homefront: The Revolution... maybe it's a Cryengine thing! Anyway, keep up the good work, sir.
I enjoyed Crysis 3. Played through multiple times, and I prefer it over the original Crysis. I'm the kind of person who doesn't really mind the blockbuster movie cliches in video games, I do mind them in movies ironically, but I can have fun playing them in a video game.
it takes away control from too many times, and takes itself waaay too seriously
A little Did You Know before I watch the video: Korean dub for KPA soldiers in the first Crysis is atrocious. They became a bit of a meme in Korea because of that, along with some other games with horrible voice acting.
So it’s safe to assume they didn’t hire actual Koreans?
Fun conspiracy theory about the last tover level of Crysis2. Years ago I got into game moding. To be specific - I started moding with FarCry and moved on to CryEngine2 and 3.
I just realized that the central park tower level was probably inspired by a moder. Some time before the release of Crysis2 - Crytek made a level design contest, where I too took part. If I remember right - the dude who got the first place had a similar level concept. Also, the grand price of the contest was a job in CryTech.
Also: I have spent hundreds of hours in CryEngine3 level editor, but I haven't finished Crysis2 and 3 even once.
@BulgaroSlav They kinda dropped the ball licencing the engine. When CE2 come out it was pretty much the best and most easy to use engine on the market. But they didn't provide stand alone SDK to community, and licence was unacessible to indie developers and enthusiasts. When CE3 come out(crysis2) Crytek finally made somewhat flexible licensing and SDK was availible to everyone. But by the time that happened - Most developers allready had adopted and using Unreal Engine and Unity.
Personally I quit modding scene was because I started somewhat big map/mod for Crysis2 - but it stopped because Crysis2 had a AI spawning bug, that broke my work. And altough the bug was well known in community and quite a few modders were fucked over by it - Crytek were abondened updating the game because they started working on Crysis3.
I know that many people were disappointed in Crysis 2 as it didn't focus on the things that the established fanbase liked about the first game. However when i got Crysis 2 i didn't know a thing about the game. It also was the first game i got for my new console and to this date remains the most graphically impressive game in my Xbox 360 library. It had great setpieces, great action with multiple ways to approach combat and had a long campaign. It still holds up and is one of my favourite shooters to come back to. When i played Crysis 1 afterwards i was really disappointed. I think the stunnning graphics at the time led people to ignore that the original crysis was an empty borefest with a pretty backdrop
I'm going to take a moment to make a sappy comment since I don't think I've ever done so on one of Noah's videos: you are at the very top echelon of long-form video game content creators on the internet. The quality of your scripts are just incredible - unlike a lot of other content creators, you have genuinely good writing technique. Your analyses also dive deep into the "whole" of a video game, rather than just attempting to either be "objective" and miss the entire point of an entirely subjective analysis, or focusing in on one narrow segment. Plus I appreciate how you cover content that, while not "unknown," most similar content creators don't tackle. Keep up the amazing work Noah
A Noah Gervais and Joseph Anderson review in a single day, both over an hour long. Looks like Christmas came early for me!
Thanks to your comment I now have found a new channel :D Cheers mate
+Jente van Rooij Raycevick is pretty good too.
Just found a new channel
New channel found. Merci beaucoup, Brian.
Except that Joseph is a sad clown compared to Noah
It's interesting because Richard Morgan, a Sci Fi writer with a decent bibliography, wrote the script for Crysis 2. I wonder if the issues Noah is having with the plot are a result of transferring Morgan's writing into gaming as an interactive medium?
Chris Smout I really enjoyed crysis 2's story
@Farldie Maine I enjoyed the story as well. It's a big exciting action blockbuster whose action set pieces feel earned. (unlike some 2011 shooters I know...Battlefield 3 and MW3)
@Chis Smout It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.
Crysis 3 is so forgettable I remembered while watching the video I actually finished the game once. I thought I had never played it!
Crysis 3 somehow managed to take a fairly simple and cliched story and present it in an almost completely incoherent, baffling way. It's kind of impressive, really.
Despite that, I thought it was a great game, and I would totally buy a Crysis 4. Crysis was awesome, and although Crysis 2 was massively disappointing but I still kind of enjoyed it. Crytek really just need to accept that they're never going to be totally mainstream, and embrace what sets the Crysis series apart from other games.
A lot of work went into this video. Excellent job. Love the first Crysis and still play it off and on to this day. Liked and subbed!
"you get a general idea where the objective is, and by the time you get there it's moved"
That's like the synopsis of the entire plot of the first two FEAR games.
Good to hear him give Titanfall a shoutout, hope we get a review someday.
your the only person on youtube that makes me ecstatic when I see an upload, keep up the amazing work man! your a massive inspiration to me as a hobbyist developer, your videos help me see games from a perspective I don't usually consider, and its extremely enlightening. Thanks Noah!
Excellent video as usual. Surprised how the transformation of the aliens never came up when comparing Crysis 1 to 2. They went from these flying, ice spewing octopus creatures to generic bi-pedal humanoids complete with the lazy writing of "giving them the bipedal suits so they could live in the heat of NYC." It's not really an important point but goes along quite well with all of the mistakes that Crysis 2 did when trying to garner the "console attention."
In really late and YMMV on whether it justifies things, but that IS explained in 3 :P . What you're fighting in the trilogy aren't really even the actual Ceph, they're automated bio/synth-constructs the Ceph send out to conquer places and then build wormholes back to the Ceph's home galaxy, they're very smart tools. The Ceph lifeforms that send them out are so much more advanced than humans that they're effectively eldritch abominations to us. The ships on Earth got there ages back when the environment and biosphere were very different, but for some reason didn't activate on arrival. Basically the enemies in 1 are powerful but resource-intensive units designed to initially secure a foothold on a new world but were expensive to build/grow and so couldn't be used in large numbers. I can't recall but maybe they couldn't make more at all and were even limited to the octopus mechs originally packed onto the ships? Then the Ceph in 2 and 3 are much cheaper units produced in response to the actual environmental conditions and meant to counter the most successful lifeforms on their own terms. It's a similar looking organic being operating both the octopus mechs and the combat exoskeletons, too, aside from the colour, which 3 brings closer to the original blueish. They made the wormhole early in 3 because that's what they're programmed to do in situations where local life presents an actual serious problem, get the owners to come in with the ant poison themselves. :P
The whole Alcatraz morphing into Prophet thing is incredibly disturbing. It's body horror type stuff. It speaks volumes about how incompetent the writers were that they didn't see anything wrong with it.
I was literally just worrying the other day about your VW breaking down or crashing or something bad like that since you hadn't posted in a while. Glad things are still going well for you!
Interestingly, the flying mission near the end of Crysis 1 was completely omitted from the Xbox 360 version.
Yeah, I read somewhere that the controls for the gunship were to hard to convert to controller. Also I believe that mission is one of the few complaints that people had about the first game.
Crysis 1 is one of my favorite Games of alltime, but it was rushed at the end.
Some Features never made it into he Game and the last 20% of the Game were made in a few Month.
The Gunship Level was on of it, not needed, unfinished and clunky.
Cant Imagine a Crysis 1 as is was planned with all Features and more polished.
While there were literally dozens of bad design choices made with *Crysis 2* as opposed to the original *Crysis*, removing the strength and speed modes and trying to bake them into your core moveset or contextual actions was not one of them. Personally I never used those modes other than to haul ass in a straight line somewhere and to do some high jumps or throws, and had the developers not been pants-on-head they could have sensitively integrated those actions with an energy cost into your core moveset. Having those two be complete modes when their utility was limited to a tiny handful of options never made much sense.
Also to mention how little "alien" the aliens of crysis 2 were. Basically standard riflemen with some cosmetic addition. The tactical variety of facing a conventional army with conventional weapons or a completely unknown and unpredictable enemy in the first game was completely lost.
In really late and YMMV on whether it justifies things, but that IS discussed in 3 :P .
What you're fighting in the trilogy aren't really even the actual Ceph, they're automated bio/synth-constructs the Ceph send out to conquer places and then build wormholes back to the Ceph's home galaxy, they're very smart tools. The Ceph lifeforms that send them out are so much more advanced than humans that they're effectively eldritch abominations to us.
The ships on Earth got there ages back when the environment and biosphere were very different, but for some reason didn't activate on arrival.
Basically the enemies in 1 are powerful but resource-intensive units designed to initially secure a foothold on a new world but were expensive to build/grow and so couldn't be used in large numbers. I can't recall but maybe they couldn't make more at all and were even limited to the octopus mechs originally packed onto the ships?
Then the Ceph in 2 and 3 are much cheaper units produced in response to the actual environmental conditions and meant to counter the most successful lifeforms on their own terms. It's a similar looking organic being operating both the octopus mechs and the combat exoskeletons, too, aside from the colour, which 3 brings closer to the original blueish.
They made the wormhole early in 3 because that's what they're programmed to do in situations where local life presents an actual serious problem, get the owners to come in with the ant poison themselves. :P
@@thomasjoychild4962 Well, yeah, it may be justified lore-wise, it's just that in crisis 1 fighting a "conventional" enemy like the koreans first and then meeting the aliens was an interesting dynamic, both thematically and in gameplay. In crisis 2 every engagement with humans and aliens alike feels the same, much more similar to standard shooters
@@leoskini Totally agree. The larger aliens are also a bit too spongey.
I actually quite enjoyed suit streamlining of C2, I think it was one of the most clever moves they did. The trugth is, they did not exclude strength or speed options, they just made them automatic. I enjoyed C2 more than C1 actually exactly because of the suit being streamlined, though I did miss the jungle.
In Crysis 1, you could run faster than a jeep, go full fisticuffs and punch and throw your way through many enemies, those things blew my mind when I played it. The second game was much more underwhelming, generic sprint, less throwable items, unsatisfying melee and no environment destruction, you could should trees down and punch houses apart in the first game!
@@arif8621 completely agree, streamlining of the suit is the only good thing about C2. Even aliens look shit.
@@arif8621 To be fair, the nerfing of the suit has nothing to do with the streamlining of the controls for the suit. I'd wager to guess you run slower because of the tighter environments of C2, running too fast would have lead to you just running into the environment all the time.
As for strength, no idea... Perhaps it was console hardware limitation in the tight and detail environments. Or maybe it was gameplay balance? Who knows haha
But the actual streamlining of the controls has nothing to do with the nerfing of the abilities.
Great video, Noah! It's always an eventful day whenever you release new content! Thanks for the hours and hours of high-quality, in-depth games criticism!
I love the two for one upload structure, this has been one of the most rewarding subscriptions I've gotten
I'm surprised you didn't mention the tessellation/Nvidia fiasco regarding Crysis 2.
I don't rightly agree with your entire assessment of Crysis 2. You again and again said it was much like its contemporaries at the time, but failed to name any names. The only time you brought up names was in reference to the interview with Yerli where he mentions Halo and Call Of Duty. But in Halo and Call Of Duty - at the time, mind you - I could not jump 10 feet in the air. I could not jump 10 feet in the air and then ground pound my enemies, grab my enemies; even up until that Call Of Duty where you can run on walls, Crysis 2 was completely unique in its movement as far as single-player FPS are concerned besides Crysis 1 of course. Off of the top of my head I can think of set pieces and gimmicks that differentiate Crysis 2 from its contemporaries like fighting up the parking structure with cars to kick around. There's the night street battle where the striders from Half-Life 2 show up. I remember it being quite tense and you do not even have any footage of it. The level design also becomes more open the minute the aliens show up, I remember this distinctly because I remember the exact moment I thought to myself "hey the levels are more open than when fighting the corporation soldiers." Otherwise it was indeed a weak sequel.
Man, this is one of those times where I agree with what you're saying about Crysis 2, but I can't deny the amount of enjoyment I've gotten with that game. I find it very enjoyable and have even beaten it three times.
Great video Noah. I loved playing through the trilogy... you really captured the disappointment I felt when playing the sequels.... Also love your prophet impression! Thankyou for making this!
Crysis is one of the games that, to me, defined the era it was made in;
1. Initial game shows lots of promise and build a following.
2. Second game dumbs down core mechanics and alienates original fans in an attempt to build mainstream appeal.
3. Third game tries to either pander to both audiences, failing miserably, or dumb down the game even more. with the story in the series ending on a terrible cliffhanger or a badly written resolution.
Ever since I saw your cod franchise analysis, I've been hooked on your stuff. May seem odd, but your stuff pulled me through some pretty bad times. Thanks for everything, man. Can't really support you on patreon, due to financial issues on my end, but when that passes, I plan to help in any way I can.
At 16:30 I was almost sure that 'porno mad' was an insult from the last decade I forgot about
you're my kinda gamer...could listen to you talk about games all day. i hope your road trip is helping to grow your skills as well as your self...all the best!
I love this man's in-depth reviews!!! I wish there were more UA-camrs like him. People with honest insight and new ideas to games we love!
God, going through the crysis 2 part and any time I recognise a part I just flash back to Legion and have the warm embrace of actual writing embrace me
I mean, I didn't hate the game's plot as presented ingame, it's written by a Sci-fi author I quite like, Richard Morgan. But yeah, Peter Watts providing commentary on the story (though an earlier draft of the script I think?) just improves things immensely.
Noah saying "pleb"
my life is complete
Dude these videos are so good, keep it up! I would've never expected a Crysis video
Noah's dog during the Patreon namings is adorable tho.
A Plinkett review, a new YMS and a Noah series retrospective all in the same week! Goddamnit, life's been good to me!
I liked the slow shift in Crysis 1 from unstoppable Predator type to being pushed onto the backfoot by an overwhelming alien force flying around in armored ships. Knocking these ships out the the sky with a Gauss cannon in the deck of the last level was the great climax of that I think. I liked Crysis 2 the best. It's story and pacing was the best and the gameplay was slightly more refined and the increased linearity didn't take away too much for me. The extra suit modes weren't removed, they were just incorporated into the regular controls so you didn't have to mess about with the little menu all the time making the combat flow better.
The way Alcatraz is seriously injured the whole way through and was just the first guy Prophet could save yet with the suit can still be an unstoppable badass, is a great plot point as was the reveal that the suits are not just suits and bond with their wearers making them partially alien. There were also quite a few nicely well rounded characters throughout with the possible exception of that commander guy. Oh, and the badass soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.
Crysis 3 was still fun and had the best gameplay with the smoothness of Crysis 2 and the open levels of Crysis 1 but it was so short that none of the more interesting plot points had any room to really develop any momentum or potential for payoff. They should have also either stuck with the vulnerable injured Alcatraz from Crysis 2 or had a jaded and weary Nomad come back because it is rather laughable how obvious it is that Psycho is the only character with heart. Prophet is just unstoppable as far as the plot goes.
It could have easily been an expansion pack as it is.
I mean, it's literally true when Psycho tells Prophet he has no heart :P The nanogear literally did consume that body's heart for resources/because it could circulate and oxygenate blood better than the organ. Same with most of the organs that were Alcatraz's IIRC, it was basically all either too damaged to be worth rebuilding or the nanogear could do the function better. Hargreave wanted POST-HUMAN warriors fighting the Ceph, after all.
Honestly, Crytek shot themselves in the foot. They cultivated the wrong kind of customer. Sure, Crysis 1 is great for pushing the boundaries of graphics in games, but if only a small number of people can play your game, then you won't be a commercial success. Video games is a business, studios shut down if they don't hit sales targets. Sure Crysis as a series is kind of a tech demo for marketing cryengine, but unfortunately Epic and Unreal won that battle. As business Crytek has not been doing well, that there was that whole period were they weren't paying their staff. Ok, yes pissing off your customer base is not a good idea, but Crytek was not wrong to change to an urban environment with Crysis 2. Three games of tropical jungle gets boring, and I never found jungles interesting to begin with. Oh boy what a mess, but I actually enjoyed Crysis 2 and its multiplayer.
I'm surprised you didn't like Crysis 2's story. I thought the way it dealt with the nanosuit, the ceph, and transhumanism was pretty interesting. One of the most interesting depictions of transhumanism I've seen in a video game, really.
Crysis 2's story is shitty, the voice acting is just about the worst and the gameplay felt "weak". This is why he didn't like it.
The book's story, perhaps. So much of it is glossed over in the game, or retconned in 2, that treating them as the same narrative feels almost disingenuous.
Play Deus Ex: Human Revolution
If Noah read only one of my comments it’d be to play Titanfall 2’s campaign. Its really great and don’t worry about connections to the 1st game.
I love your videos. Really really love your videos. I don't understand why you are not getting millions of views.
Being a huge fan of the series with a ton of hours in every game, I can honestly say 2 is my favourite.
If you want to find out the most _fun_ way to play Crysis 1 (and a ton of cool nuances in the nanosuit's functionality), I highly recommend watching just a few videos of NanosuitNinja (I think his channel's now called NsN).
The guy's a genuine virtuoso with the mechanics of the first game and even made his own "Epsilon" difficulty setting with which he does permadeath runs.
I'm not a great FPS player by any means but playing the first half of Crysis on Epsilon, knowing a lot of the suit's "creative" potential, was one of the most fun FPS experiences I've had. Must've replayed each of those first levels at least a dozen times since then (every few months) and it remains spectacularly entertaining.
Also very highly recommended: install the Natual Mod. It makes the lighting system a lot more realistic. Darkness becomes genuinely dark so night vision goggles and gun flashlights become (somewhat) useful. Massive improvement in immersion and also makes the game look even better at relatively minimal FPS cost.
I was a huge fan of Crysis 1, it has some of the best users made levels I’ve played for anything. Without adding any new assets they proved just how versatile the AI and mechanics were. A great foundation for varied and interesting levels. And then Crysis 2 and especially 3 destroyed not just my enthusiasm for the series, but the spirit of the studio. All for the sake of chasing the imaginary wider audience.
I love ho Noah plays with a 16:10 monitor. 5:4 and 16:10 are forgotten heroes of compter history.
good guy Noah...
choosing "Bungle in the Jungle" as intro track...
well, that's all right by me!!!
man i love this guys reviews they are so long and in depth awesome man!
You know, I came here for the in-depth critiques, but I stayed for the incredibly cozy bits with you in your home.
There is actually a game that succeeded in making you feel powerful and cool within the first 10 seconds without then becoming a mess: 2016's DOOM.
here 6 years later to implicate regular old doom in this statement also
THE ALPHA CEPH!!!!!11!!
Really like the comic touch taking more and more place in your writings and videos. Keep it coming.
I thoroughly recommend reading the crysis 2 novelisation 'Legion' by peter watts, its objectively one of the best game book tie-ins ever made
That's Watts for you.
There are so many franchises that suffer from the same problem Crysis did. The first game is good but maybe a little clunky and not very accessible so it appeals to a niche market and is just successful enough to justify a sequel so the Devs try to appeal to the more mainstream (usually console) market so they take what they think appealed to fans in the first game while making everything else fall in line with what is common in other AAA games in the same or similar genre. That game sells better but pisses off the fans of the first game who were expecting something closer to the first game. Then the third game tries to marry the two previous games while keeping the polish and base mechanics of the second game while reintroducing some of what fans of the first games were complaining was missing from the second. This sometimes works with games like Mass Effect 3 or Witcher 3 or you get a Crysis 3 which appeals to no one because it's still not as good as Crysis 1 and it's not as simple and easy to understand as Crysis 2.
Brock English - Yyyup, similar thing happened to Dead Space, almost tit for tat... I say almost cus DS3 had none of that attempted return to form you mention, rather it just did that other thing that happens when they double down on the misguided direction of the demographic-grab sequel... what is that thing called again? Oh yeah - it sucked.
Brock English how about something that suffers same problems with current seasons of Pokemon Anime?
Dead Space 3 is what happens when the mainstream sequel still doesn't sale as well as the publisher thinks it should so they push it even harder into mainstream mediocrity and completely leaving behind what was good about the first game. Bioshock, for example.
(knock knock)
Oh, I wonder who that is?
(opens door)
Oh my God, it's... it's... THE ALPHA CEPH!!!
For a decade old game, Crysis still looks great even without graphics mods. And Crysis is one of the best and most underrated fps franchises out there IMO.
I played Crysis 2 remastered recently, and I honestly laughed out loud at some of the dialogue that I took so seriously when I played Crysis 2 when I was younger. Man I think Crysis 2 is a solid shooter but my word is it also one of the blandest stories ever made in any medium of fiction.
Can you please do a retrospective on the Metal Gear franchise?
utubrGaming would like that as well, but he only plays games on pc, and as to my knowledge only the 1 mgs is available on pc
2 and 5 are too, and you can emulate 3. kinda screwed on 4 atm
SuperBunny Hop has done some great videos on the series.
2, 3 and 5 also (and Revengence if you want to add it). Though I have heard that all the three first games are really horribly ported and require a lot of work to get running and controlling properly.
2 is technically available, but it's a really bad port that is also really hard to get working properly on modern machines. V is a pretty good port, though.
I played Crysis this year, and the water still looks and feels better than almost every other game I've played.
You could be reading my obituary and for some reason, I'd still love it . Thanks Noah.
A Noah Gervais video? Looks like today's gonna be a good day!
Seeing a video from you always makes my day!
Hmm, noah hasn't uploaded in a wh-
Nice, real nice
"Boy am I maximum irritated by it" fucking hilarious Noah.
Wonderful video.
You're probably not going to see this, but it's interesting to consider the wider industry in regards to the decisions around crysis 2-3, notably that scaling the graphical fidelity of the first game onto the contemporary consoles (remarkably low ram, vastly different architectures) and producing a very developer friendly SDK allowed them to pivot around to become basically renderware for HD gaming. They've probably made more money licencing their technology than publishing games, it's an interesting story, from PC darlings to a Valve equivalent for the locked down corporate landscape of console studios.
Personally; looking back, I find that kind of tragic, when you look at the first game you see a lot of ambition and passion that was worked on when it came to graphics. Granted, looking at it today and even comparing to other shooters at the time it's more or less a glorified tech demo gameplay wise, more so than Far Cry 1 because at least the game cheesy silly pulp inspired personality and tone made it forgivable. However, you could see the potential of fun sequels with not just a engine like this but I premise to boot.
And instead of playing with their strengths then they fucked it all up with 2 & 3 by downgrading down their engine in nerfing the nanosuit their only two big selling points of the original, just for the sole reason to simply appeal to the console market, a market that they had no experience, desire and business being in, and they failed miserably to top it off.
I don't know it any other video game franchise that had everything and squandered it all for the short term rewards so quickly apart from FEAR anyway.
My fondest (?) Crysis memory was fiddling with the setting from beginning to end of the game depending on how large the environment was at the time. When you get to the innards of the alien's lair at the end I could crank it to almost max. My teenage breath... it was taken.
"Okay so this area is way to big to do 4x anti aliasing but maybe I can scale up the resolution... no we're definitely around 20 fps now but if I drop the particle settings and go zero anti aliasing... oh and take the shadows down to minimum... yes I can pull off full resolution now...... as long as I don't fight anyone..."
Crysis: Legion, the novelisation of Crysis 2 by Peter Watts is the saving grace of the series to me, honestly.
Omg!!! Crysis retrospective! I didn't know it was my birthday!!! So excited to watch!!!!
I remember enjoying Crysis 2 immensely, but that was when I was a lowly console gamer (gasp), so I wasn't running a 1080ti. Maybe if I went back to it I'd see the stitches, but I think I'll let it stay in the beautiful rosy past.
Sean Cavanaugh i think he hates on Crysis 2 way to much. I first played Crysis 2 on console and loved it, than played Crysis 1 on PC and was vastly disappointed. The game felt so empty and boring. Without the bonus of great graphics and open world design only being featured in the first few missions there was not much left. Crysis 2 is definitely more exciting to play
I played and finished Crysis 2 and it was garbage. Linear and boring.
btw, i just got nostalgic after watching this video and played Crysis 1 again.
it was really disappointing. Nowhwere near as open as i remembered and very standard gameplay. the game really didn't hold up well.
I could go back to Crysis 2 without a problem, was the 1st I played in the series. 3's my favorite tho.
I am kinda one of those people who stops at the aliens. Was never my bag. Kinda liked the direction far cry 2 went, but that game has all its own short coming as well. I just want a guerilla war simulator with weighty combat/authentic/realistic gun play. I like the super powers in crysis, but I like being the hunted under dog more. So kinda like the later parts, but
open world, and no aliens.
Crysis 2 is a blockbuster, and it doesn't care about been anything more than that. As a blockbuster works pretty well. I mean, is one of the most spectacular games i ever played, everything in this game is beautiful and Hollywodian, what else can you ask? is a rollercoaster and if u can put that fucker to max settings is a hell of a rollercoaster. 3 in the other hand is weird, its a mix of 1 and 2 and doesn't know what wants to be, as a result its not that good. You can critique something for not being "your something" but if the creator has a pretty specific idea of what he wants and he achieves then you cannot blame anybody for anything. You can only say: "I don't like that"
38:20 I really appreciate that they made sure the audience knew when he said “Sub” he was in fact referring to a submersible vehicle and not in fact a submissive, or a subway sandwich.
Man, as always amazing material. But still I am gonna wait for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: A Franchise Retrospective :)
My computer could run Crysis at 30+fps using mostly medium settings when it came out in 2007 and i have to say that it was a pretty great experience.
Considering that i spent 3000 euros on that computer (not including the monitor, mouse or keyboard), i was hoping for more.
But the main reason why i got all that computing power was Flight Simulator X and i had worse performance on that than i did with Crysis...
EDIT: I was one of those people who after the first full play through of the game only played until the aliens came, then restarted the whole game just to try new stuff. I did this over and over again.
Even your ostensible holidays are productive. Bless you, Noah.
God as a console gamer I always wondered what is was all about, and even I was surprised they screwed PC gamers with 2. This gave me some chuckles and was awesome as always, I can really tell you put a lot of work into these. Also the island of Dr.Moreu is such a great book!!
That book didn't make for a good movie. The production of the movie is hilariously disastrous.
Love me some Crysis, great video Noah!
To be fair, gaming laptops do get pretty hot on a regular basis when running modern games, it's the nature of the beast and not necessarily a dangerous thing for their health; being able to feel the hotness through the keys is nothing special, the question is of course HOW hot it gets and feels. Do you use a cooling pad of sorts? And what gamer laptop do you have?
That's why I like the fat ASUS rog gaming laptops, lol. They design the cooling system to direct heat towards the back vents and keep the entire keyboard cool even at max load.
Noah, your work is true art. Thank you.
I think this was your best work so far.
This is way after the fact of course but just in case anyone is reading this, the idea of "pro-consumer" doesn't have anything to do with what sells better. A game can sell gangbusters and still be anti-consumer based on its marketing, design, and monetization practices. If being anti-consumer meant that a product didn't sell, nothing would ever be anti-consumer. Anti-consumer just means that it's a product which exploits consumers in a way which is deemed unfair or manipulative, rather than selling their product based on the merits of said product
So on point and yet sadly becoming a common practice for large companies nowadays. What makes matters worse that a lot of AAA games publishers usually spend half if not quarter their budget onto advertising and other forms of marketing and make most of the money from that.
The first Crysis reminded me alot of Battlefield Bad Company. Openish world with destructable environments, freedom to approach objectives how you want. And their sequels were both heavily dumbed down to appeal to the mass CoD market.
I hate the fact that the first bad company was only published on console
Yeah. To me that was one of the biggest draws. Once you moved on from shooting Korean soldiers cannonballing into shacks (maximum speed, jump, maximum shield, crouch) wasn't available anymore.
I don't blame them for changing the style of game throughout the campaign. But it was changed into something I was already bored with.