When you get past the stealth-themed missions early on, and move onto missions with full use of tanks, helicopters, rockets, and airstrikes, the tactical gameplay plus the production values turn Crysis into a love letter for military combat.

Having a big bag of tricks and the complete freedom to approach each encounter from so many different strategic angles is a great thing. Each individual area of the game is overwhelmingly impressive, but when considering what Crytek has accomplished with the game as a whole package it's hard not to be blown away.

Destined to be a classic, Crysis is a creative and technological marvel that eclipses every other shooter released this year. [Holiday 2007, p.60]

Crysis is visually stunning, packed with intelligent, thrilling gameplay, and easily one of the greatest shooters ever made.

Even without the picture-perfect graphics and spectacular technological prowess, Crysis is a great action game that can stand up against any great FPS. The acting and story aren't spectacular, but using the Nanosuit makes this open-ended adventure one that is fun from start to finish.

This is some fast, well designed gameplay with enough options to allow players to use their own style of attack with satisfying suit abilities and weapons. Crytek has upped their attention to detail in presentation and dropped the worst parts of "Far Cry’s" story.

Crysis thrives on putting the onus on you to create your own brand of action and adventure in its stunningly beautiful locations. You and the game can haphazardly create moments of such gaming brilliance that often you pretty much have to stand up and applaud. [Christmas 2007, p.44]

Everything that made "Far Cry" good was successfully taken to the next level in Crysis (with the possible exception of the AI). Even if we are looking at one of the biggest hardware hogs ever to grace the PC platform, and despite the AI issues, this first-person shooter comes highly recommended from us.

A game that feels supremely engineered, like a precision machine, or a German automobile. It's makes "Half-Life 2" seem old and frail, but by the same token it does nothing to diminish the imaginative achievements of that series. Crysis is impressive, but not imaginatively bold. Nor does it engage us like some other great shooters - such as "BioShock" - have done with their world and their personality. It's far better than "Far Cry."

Gamers looking for the most technologically sophisticated game of the year should head directly for Crysis. The artificial intelligence can be quirky, but the open-ended gameplay, spectacular graphics and incredible nanosuit powers more than make up for it.

Fast forward through scraps of miserable story and melodramatic dialogue, along with a "boss battle" inherited from the coin-op class of '88 (see: "Contra"), and the ordeal is done -- beautiful throughout, mostly amazing, but vegetative by the end.