Crysis made its name as a graphical powerhouse, with visuals beyond what current generation consoles and most supercomputers can generate. But there’s almost no depth behind this unarguably impressive presentation.

Story in Crysis is little more than an excuse for the big-budget action. The main character is a faceless soldier named Nomad, an elite commando with a futuristic nano-suit that allows superhuman abilities.

Nomad is part of a US special forces team investigating a tropical island where North Koreans have taken over an archaeological investigation of ancient ruins that turn out to be a buried alien spaceship. It follows a strict formula of War of the Worlds, Half-Life, and Halo, but lacks the depth and creativity of those three.

Scripted events and minimalistic dialog shoves the story forward, viewed in the first person Half-Life-style. The characters are all extreme testosterone to the max, the situations all cliche. It’s ridiculously generic and takes itself too seriously to be fun.

I almost lost it when the gruff general refused to listen to the pleas of the scientists pretty daughter not to nuke everything. “But we don’t know what will happen! It could make the aliens stronger!” “I’ve got my orders!”

German developers Crytek apparently learned nothing from Halo 2’s ill-received cliffhanger of an ending, as the one for Crysis is nearly identical, with promises of a big battle leading to the unexpected credits. The plot will continue in the next two games of the planned Crysis trilogy.

The ending tarnishes the whole experience, making it seem unfinished, more like they ran out of money than intended to wrap up the story there. And given the game’s outstanding production values, running out of money is a real possibility.

Everything about the gameplay and graphics is very impressive. The tropical locales have an astounding verisimilitude, with realistic lighting and weather effects and foliage that reacts to your touch.

The artificial intelligence is equally impressive, and North Korean platoons behave like real soldiers. Setting up jungle ambushes provides constant fun, as does avoiding the Koreans as they try to find and flank you.

Crysis‘ nano-suit abilities and customizable weapons allows you to approach the hostile jungle terrain in different ways. Turn on the suits stealth and equip a silencer for quick and quiet kills, or flip on the strength and run in with a machine gun.

The end stages after the aliens are on the scene lack this diversity. Much like the Flood in Halo, the alien invaders in Crysis can be approached in one way: Head-on. Also like the Flood, the simplistic and linear gameplay can be disappointing after the dynamic human adversaries.

The alien art design is also unimpressive. Everything is colored with a stereotypical blue and orange palette, and the enemies are a cross between the War of the Worlds tripod and The Matrix’s squid robots, with a standard array of energy weapons and a freeze ray that’s more annoying than anything else.

Crysis showcases incredible graphics, animations, artificial intelligence, and gameplay mechanics, but the plot and art style are pulled straight out of Hollywood flicks and more creative FPS titles. It stresses photorealism over creativity, and the lack of imagination makes Crysis little more than a tech demo for Crytek’s CryEngine 2.