It’s really late at night and your friends have all gone home. The beer’s still sloshing around your brain so you stick the TV on for want of anything better to do. There’s some horrible Jean Claude Van Damme film on, but instead of sensibly switching it off and going to bed you, out of some morbid fascination, keep on watching. Then, not only that, after about ten minutes of hammy villains, iron chins and big explosions, to your horror you realise that you’re actually enjoying it. Well that, right there, is Crysis: Warhead.
The very first moments are a good indication of what’s to come. The Crytek logo appears on screen and a raspy and serious sounding voice announces ‘MAXIMUM GAME’. Maximum game? That doesn’t even make any sense. But then, it sounds kind of exciting, and that’s really the point of Warhead. Dumb enemies, big guns, pretty explosions and shallow excitement.
It could have been so much more.
Warhead, like it’s forefather Crysis, is brain-searingly pretty, and capable of throwing you into vast playing areas. For the first two hours of the game you’re given an objective and left to your own devices. I have to assault a base, and I’m told it’s probably a bad idea to attack it head on. To test exactly how bad an idea it is I steal a car and drive it full speed at the front gate. I dive out and watch the car slam into the barrier, exploding and taking out a few guards. Then I jump over the wreckage and pull out my grenade launcher. Ten minutes of pure gaming joy follows. At times like these, Warhead is top class action fare.
Your nano suit gives you the ability to switch between various abilities. Super speed, super strength, extra armour and a Predator style cloaking device. Used in combination these abilities grant you a glorious array of options when choosing how to tackle the next enemy base. But, as with Crysis before it, Warhead refuses to let you have the freedom you really want. The nano suit is a few Duracell batteries short of full functionality and you can only deploy each ability for moments at a time. Frustratingly, you’re always stuck a few seconds short of being a superman.
Not only that, but after the first few sections, Warhead takes everything away. The world freezes over and the Koreans are replaced with aliens. The once living bases are frozen and empty but for these glowing blue machines. They don’t panic, run for cover, throw grenades, use vehicles or man turrets. They’re soulless, predictable and dull. There’s no point in cloaking and going for a stealth kill when all you have to do is point at them and fire. The delight of experimentation is gone.
Then you’re dragged indoors. Into an aircraft carrier, down some mines. Suddenly it’s just another corridor shooter and you’re left wondering what on earth happened. The guns are still meaty and dangerous, and it still looks gorgeous, but it’s brainless. Turn corner, shotgun the guy on the left, grenade the ones in cover over there. No need to use the suit, just stay in armour mode and plough on.
Emerging from these sections in the latter stages does little to cure the feelings of disappointment. Everything that was brilliant about the first hour has, by that stage, been systematically dismantled. The glitz and razmattaz of the powerful engine and the showy set peices against boss enemies can’t do much to redeem a game that tragically repeats all the mistakes of its predecessor.
Like that bad late night action film, it’s fun in its way. You’ll be fine so long as you don’t think about it too much. If you do you’ll find yourself imagining everything Warhead should have been, and against that, the reality is a sad thing.
Excellent debut. I’ve always enjoyed your stuff over at MVH, but you really donned the top hat of professionalism for this one.
Well said, Ive rage-quitted numerous times after being told to defend myself against a horde of blue floaty death. Its worth noting though that I play it on Delta difficulty and even toning it down to normal is still just too much.
Crytek have some great ideas, just a shame there is always someone shouting “Aliens!” in their board meetings. ‘sadface’
It’s especially odd as the critical reaction to Crysis fairly uninanimously derided the alien sections, so Warhead was a good chance to concentrate on what was really great about the first game and put things right. Instead Crytek seemed determined to ignore all that feedback and did exactly the same thing again. Seeing a potentially amazing game fall so far short is always worse than playing something that’s outright bad.
It was the same with Farcry -> Crysis
This is the conversation that actually happened in the development of Crysis. Actually.
Everyone in the world ever: “Trigons were shit you know”
Crytek: “Yeah; you said. Ok, no Trigons this time. Promise.”
Everyone in the word ever: “Ok, great. Killing those koreans sure does look like a hoot”
Crytek: “Yeah, it’s brilliant. And you know what comes after the koreans? ALIENS!!”
Everyone in the world ever: “Sigh.”
I’d say Crysis: Warhead did worse than repeat the mistakes of the original, it expounded on those mistakes. Warhead featured notably less sections fighting Koreans than Crysis did, although it did have a few more intense Player vs Aliens vs Koreans scenes.
But I’d have to say Crysis was easily the better game. Oddly, Warhead was a more linear experience than the original and the story was, well, unnecesary. It might have worked better had Warhead been a prequel (only vs Koreans) or a sequel, in which case at least the story might have been worthwhile. As it is, Warhead just repeats mostly everything you already know and adds very little.
To SAeN: I wonder where you get stuck? I’ve played through both games on Delta and neither was especially challenging. To be perfectly honest, I found Modern Warfare on Veteran mode to be a lot more difficult, if only because of those lame infinite spawn sequences (that Crysis thankfully didn’t have).
The train in the swamps, its still doing my head in! :(
I can ussually manage the first wave but after that I’m toast.
I just stuck to the top of the train tearing them all apart. Focus on the healing aliens first, because the rest will be very tough to take down otherwise. And focus on one side before eliminating the other, it’ll be much easier to dodge fire when it’s only coming from one side.
Other than that I don’t really know what advice to give. Just stick to train, use the guns at your disposal and try to get out of the line of fire when it gets too hot. Fortunately the aliens aren’t the most accurate bunch, they just spray a lot of bullets (or needles, whatever it is that they’re shooting).