Crysis is a game of disinterested interactivity. The game is yet another technical achievement in a series of technical achievements for the first-person shooter genre, but as a game the interactivity remains much the same as it always has. Find target, point, click. Such a thing could describe any game, and yet somehow it seems to exemplify what almost every first-person shooter is about. Not a focus on breathing, not a focus on steadying oneself, on readying a gruesome bullet, but the disconnected, disjointed, point and click.
The interaction is so mundane, so basic, that only within certain contexts can a reasonable modicum of meaning be obtained, due to the lackluster interaction offered here. Crysis, however, still continues to offer much the same experience, albeit with a strangely differential analysis of the genre. Such insight is entirely due to special abilities which are also, unironically, point and click. Hiding, invisibility, is literally just a click away, as is power, as is speed. This is perhaps the problem of so many games, that magic becomes mundane, where the act of such a radical effect occurs so often as to be normal.
Concerning oneself with the story is equally meaningless. The depth of the game hinges entirely of the interest in the environment, of playing with mechanics, as a child plays with Legos. Yet Legos offer a boundlessness as a toy, their limit is simply their physical quantity, while limits here are strictly imposed, as is the usual case for videogames. Videogames can be toys, but few videogames intend to be toys, and to say that Crysis is a toy is telling of what the industry often creates unintentionally.
Many first-person shooters are simply experiments with various interactive possibilities. The goal is rather of a secondary nature. Even with games like Bulletstorm, the intention is never the goal, but of “toy-ing” the system, despite the fact that the toy aspect of the system in Bulletstorm is rather terrible. Crysis is a more interesting toy, a larger environment with freer interactions available, but to call it game is difficult.
A game has interactions that have motivations that often move beyond the goal, an overarching system of thought leading to a personal connection. Videogames have difficulty presenting meaningful goals because of their ability to push and drag the player, and the general acceptance is perhaps too widespread. A game should not need to feel so inadequate as to attempt meaning at every turn, as meaning is often personal, and while games are a great medium to allow players to explore a self outside themselves, games such as Crysis, despite giving the character a voice, fail to embody an experience. The first problem here is a failure to communicate character, the second is that the player is given total control of magic, making it ultimately mundane.
Recommended: No