Welcome back boys and girls. Like I promised you at the start of the week, here’s my review for the re-release of Crysis. Is this game like a fine wine, growing better with age? Or a money grabbing stunt like many other re-releases? Something that adds substance, or just another pretty face? To find that out, you gotta keep reading.

Now, for those of you who’ve never played Crysis, here’s what it’s about: Crysis is an alien invasion game set in the year 2020. An archeological team on a remote Pacific island is captured by an invasion force of North Koreans, and your US Special Forces team is dispatched to investigate and rescue the scientists. Clad in high-tech nanosuits capable of boosting your strength, speed, and armor, as well as cloaking you temporarily to the enemy, you’re parachuted into a tropical paradise that’s crawling with intelligent enemies and something else that’s tearing both the North Koreans and US forces to shreds.

So unfortunately not a good start for the story. When you play you don’t want it to be predictable, but as soon as the mission starts, you’re reminded of just about every Delta Force movie, or in some cases the Predator films.

Lucky for the players, there’s still a lot to do, and the story does have a lot of unique twists after its hem-haw beginning. It’s essentially a sandbox type game, giving you room to explore… and trust me you’re going to want to explore every inch of this beautiful island.

Beautiful isn’t it? Almost makes you want to vacation there… you know apart from the vicious monsters and Koreans… Ah well you can’t have everything.

Unfortunately the graphics do show their age a bit, and that ends up taking you out of the experience… which is a huge no-no for a game as beautiful as this.

As I said, it’s a big game, but that also comes with its downsides… especially if you don’t really enjoy first person shooters. You can find yourself in a fire fight, and by the time you figure out who’s shooting and from where, you’re already dead. The bullets have to be precise and laser guidance (when you get it) helps, but sometimes the game is just so frustrating, you want to break they controller (or maybe that’s just me).

On the other hand, the fact that it’s so hard to hit somebody makes it feel like you’re handling real weapons. It’s realistic and when combined with the difficulty makes you feel like you’re really in the jungle fighting.

Don’t like walking? Just hijack a vehicle. Again like in real life, if you find a vehicle and kill the person inside, you can use it to lay down a can of whoop-ass that your opponents won’t see coming… but unlike the game, if you do this in real life, you’ll be arrested or shot, so I really wouldn’t advise trying it.

The story is too expansive to retell fully, and if I did, that would be robbing gamers of some of the twists of this complicated game.

The one bad thing, other than some of the graphics showing their age, is that there’s no multiplayer… but with the game so expansive and so gorgeous, you’ll be playing it for months at least.

This rabid gamer gives the Crysis rerelease a well deserving 8 out of 10 stars. If it had gotten added functions, it would get the full 10, but still a well worthwhile buy for only $20.