So, Crysis Warhead was dropped this week. It’s not Crysis 2, for those of you who were wondering, but rather a companion piece following the paralell storyline of Jason Statha-- I mean, Mikael “Psykes” Psycho.
Despite fervent protests from the fanbase and critics alike, the aliens are back, although mercifully the anti-gravity zone of their baseship’s interior has been tossed out. You start out somewhere in the middle of the Crysis storyline, after the US army has landed and are fighting the Koreans but somewhat before the aliens grow to dominate the priority list, giving you a nice few hours of sneaky-sneaky long-distance SCAR sniping or up-close Strength-Mode face-breaking clueless Korean privates.
The old guns (as well as the old Suit functions - in a somewhat disappointing turn, Psycho’s abilities are precisely the same as Nomad’s) are back, but I welcome with open arms the addition of new ones. First in the list, dual-wielded machine pistols fittable with silencers and red-dot laser, more fitting to Psycho’s warlike demeanor than the fairly useless semi-automatic pistols. A good addition to the list, since each gun can be fired independently and the reload time of one is considerably shorter than the time it takes to empty the other’s clip, meaning you can suppress and get close effortlessly.
Other additions are the somewhat useless AT and AP (claymores) mines, seeing as the open terrain makes predicting enemy vehicle paths rather hopeless and, in most cases, you’ll be rushing the enemy, not forcing them into choke-points where the claymores could be used for better effect. As for tanks - there aren’t any, barring some 55mm anti-vehicle ones late, late in the game. For the armoured APCs, rocket-launchers are plentiful enough to let tactics go in favour of brute force.
Heeding the prayers (and ritual sacrifice of small woodland animals) of the fanbase, CryTek have grounded the VTOLs this time around. (Despite coming menacingly close, a few times, to making you yet again have to pilot the avionic equivalent of a drunk moscus ox.)
Enough rambling - all in all, I quite like it. You won’t get portioned weapons and kit, most of it being available from the start, and there’s something just casually awesome about a rushing a Korean base with a fully decked-out SCAR (with red-dot laser, sniper scope, underslung grenade launcher and silencer), leading the charge with smoke- and frag grenades and punching the bejezus out of anything that comes within ten yards. The Strength mode comes fully into play in this iteration, making sniping and controlling the rampant machine guns easy.
So, anyone else pick it up yet?