Crysis Warhead Spoiler Laden Thoughts

written by Blain Newport on Friday, January 17, 2010

THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

I didn't review Crysis Warhead. It's Crysis. I played Crysis on the easiest difficulty and Warhead on the hardest difficulty, and didn't notice a difference. Mechanics aside, there were a few things I wanted to mention.

First, you never see Nomad, the character you play in Crysis. I thought the point of an expansion was to expand on what happened in the original game. There are some black screen voice-overs between major sections of the game which give some backstory, but I didn't care enough to bother to make sense of them. It felt like they ran out of money to make proper cut scenes. Based on Crysis' initial sales figures, that may be the case.

Second, you never see Prophet. In Crysis, something crazy happens to Prophet, and Psycho seems to know about it. You learn nothing about it in Warhead.

Finally, although the cut scenes had sound bugs and horrible pacing, there was one scene that may have been improved by these problems. There's a scene where things go very wrong. The McGuffin is stolen by the bad guy. Psycho, a friendly soldier, and an enemy soldier fall from a bridge and land in a stream.

Psycho tries to give CPR to the unconscious friendly. It takes a long time. It fails. Psycho looks at the injured North Korean, propped up against a rock in the river, and begins moving towards him. The soldier tries to shoot Psycho with his sidearm (conveniently not bothering to aim for the face). Psycho grabs him by the throat, holds him underwater, and kills him. It takes forever, and there's almost no sound during the entire sequence.

Since other cut scenes that obviously should have had sound didn't and other scenese that should have been fast paced with quick edits drug on interminably, I don't think Crytek made this scene so effectively on purpose. It also didn't connect to any motif or characterization (other than the name Psycho). But accident or no, it was probably the one thing I'll remember about Warhead (besides the disappointment).