I’ve been on the fence about Crysis for a while. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I knew there was a fence, I was aware of it. I knew that you could, theoretically, be on it. But I didn’t pay much attention to it. I just assumed that it wouldn’t run on my computer, and that it would be too much like Far Cry (I played the demo for that game, and was pretty underwhelmed by it). So Crysis and I existed in the same world, but were content to exist separately, aware of each other but not actually interacting.

About a week ago I downloaded the demo, just out of idle curiosity. And didn’t install it. Forgot about it, in fact. Then, two days ago, I was listening to the PC Gamer Podcast (which I highly recommend for any fans of PC gaming and/or game-related humor), and was privy to a lively debate about said game. It was fun to listen to, mainly because of the dialog rather than the content. The discussion boiled down to this: Norm, Logan, Dan, and Chuck all liked Crysis, and were hailing it as the Second Coming of PC Gaming (though not in those exact words). Jeremy and Garry, on the other hand, had each played the demo and had not been impressed. Their arguments were primarily that the “future-proofing” of the game was a gimmick, a sort of bait-and-switch tactic, that it was sluggish and unresponsive, that the system requirements were too high, that it was, effectively, Far Cry 2. Such comments did not make me any more likely to play the game, or the demo I had downloaded, and the arguments to the contrary sounded too much like simple evangelism to sway me in any other direction.

Still, the discussion had planted a seed. Something was percolating in my mind, growing legs and running about, messing with the silverware and knocking the pictures askew. Because of all these and other mediocre metaphors, I decided, when I got home, to install the demo and try it out, for no other reason than to see what all the fuss was about. I installed the demo, and it took a very long time. So far I was unimpressed. It finally finished and I loaded up the game, and was immediately assaulted by no fewer than four (!) advertisements for various sponsors. An unfortunate necessity, I know, but it rubbed me the wrong way none the less. I went in and fiddled with the options, clicked the button that would detect the optimal settings for my machine, and was told that everything had been set to ‘Low’. Not surprising, but still disappointing. Then I started playing.

And everything changed. The opening sequence was eye-catching and memorable, as my avatar and four other soldiers in nano-suits parachuted out of an airplane onto a tropical island in the dead of night. The graphics, despite being on the absolute lowest setting possible, were sharp and crisp and not at all disappointing. I had reared myself on sneakers like Thief and its ilk, so the slightly lower movement speed felt not at all uncomfortable, and encouraged the stealthy play that I prefer (a play style that, I’m glad to say, Crysis fully supports). I met my first pair of enemies, quickly dispatched them, and became engrossed in the game.

The environment is wide-open and allows for multiple solutions to problems. The enemies, while not always brilliant, try to do things like outflank you, flush you out with grenades, and take cover. The weapons are satisfying and effective. And the nano-suit, the game’s central mechanic, is well-realized and integral to play. While I rarely used the Maximum Speed or Maximum Strength settings, I could not possibly have traversed the demo without Maximum Armor and Stealth Mode, upon which I relied heavily. The suit, and the tactical options that it grants you, allow you to take on forces which are both numerically superior and better-armed than you, provided you think your way through the battle rather than charging in, guns blazing.

When I finished the demo, I had come to the conclusion that this is exactly the kind of game I enjoy playing. It has the right combination of verisimilitude and science fiction weirdness, the right amount of brains-over-brawn philosophy, the right degree of player freedom. I immediately went online afterward and added it to my Amazon wishlist. For those who are still on the fence (or otherwise), I suggest you download the demo and let it make up your mind for you. If you are like me, you will likely enjoy it and want more. If you don’t like the demo, chances are the game holds nothing that will change your mind.

Update: Thinking to tide myself over until I get Crysis, I went ahead and gave Far Cry another try. It’s like night and day. Where Crysis rewards tactical thinking and a stealthy approach, Far Cry seems to both require and punish such things. You cannot stand toe-to-toe with a large group of enemies, and most groups are large. Thus, you have to try to sneak up on them and take them out one by one, much as in Crysis. However, Far Cry (at least, up until the point where I got frustrated and gave up) gives you no tools for doing such. It’s very, very difficult to take out a single enemy without alerting the rest of them if you don’t have a silencer, and the lack of any reliable way to hide yourself exacerbates this. Combine this with the fact that the enemies are hyper-aware, capable of hearing a man walking slowly and quietly on grass, thirty feet below, and above the ambient jungle noises, and it makes a stealth-based approach stupidly difficult to affect. Oh, and the enemies are apparently psychically connected; once you alert one, they all know where you are. Finally, the checkpoint save system is a bad fit for this style of game. Twice I whittled down an enemy base to one or two mercenaries, only to be killed by those last one or two. The fact that I don’t get to choose when I save my game means that, when that happens, I have to start back at square one. Not fun. I have no idea why Far Cry was ever as popular as it was; it’s simply not a well-designed game.

Update, Part 2: I have now finished the full game of Crysis. While its system requirements were such that my computer often begged to run something else, it was fantastic from start to finish. I’ve rarely played a game that felt completely different at the end than it felt at the beginning, managing to stay fresh and provide new obstacles constantly. It kept me interested and engaged every second, and there’s very little about it that I wouldn’t recommend. Whenever I manage to score a new rig, I’m going to install it and play it with the settings cranked up higher. I hear it’s almost like a brand new experience, and the gameplay is such that replayability is high.

For those who have been reading this blog with any regularity, it should be no secret that I’m a fan of the HeroCard series of games that TableStar Games publishes. I enjoy the basic card battle system mechanics, and I’ve liked each of the five HeroCard games that have come out so far. It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I write this review, for their latest game, HeroCard Nightmare.

Nightmare is a bit of a departure from previous HeroCard games in a number of different ways. Like Cyberspace, there are no expansion packs; all four Hero decks come in the core box, and it’s playable for one to four players right out of the box. It’s also a deduction game at heart. The premise of the game is that you and your fellow players have been trapped inside somebody’s nightmare by a magic camera, along with five killers. Each player knows which killer will be his killer, and in which scene of the dream he will die. The goal is to find out who’s going to kill everyone else and where they’ll die, then arrange things so that their deaths come to pass. The last one standing gets to escape from the dream (though, thematically, it’s never really clear why this is).

The mechanics of the board game, itself, are fairly simple and, I think, fairly solid. There are seven scene tiles and five killer figures, along with a Dreamer figure which represents all of the players. During your turn you can move any of these things, reshaping the dream, moving the Dreamer, and moving the killers so that you can create the combination you want. When the Dreamer occupies the scene you want to know about, and is with any killers you want to know about, you can attack to scare. This is resolved using the basic HeroCard rules, with a twist: your attack is not directed at anyone in particular. As such, anyone can choose to defend, and the other players can choose to join in on either the attacking side or the defending side, provided they choose the side currently losing. If your attack succeeds, if anyone has either the scene card for the appropriate scene or an appropriate killer card, those players have to announce that they are scared. By paying attention to who is scared when, and who blocks or attacks when, you can use process of elimination to figure out what combinations will prove lethal for your fellow players. At this point you can attack to kill–a more straightforward HeroCard duel–with success removing the other player from the game. Last man standing wins.

As I’ve said, I think that the basic mechanics are sound. I like the theme and the way you re-arrange the dream to your liking, and I like the cutthroat deduction mechanic. My main problem is with the way the HeroCard system is implemented in the game, particularly in regards to attacking to scare.

Problem number one: attacks to scare tend to take a while, as each player deliberates on whether or not they want to contribute, and how much. Each player has to pass in succession for an attack to end and, in my experience, attacks can take as long as five minutes (as compared to the speedy, forty-second affairs of other HeroCard games). When each player’s turn takes five minutes (and players will be attacking to scare a lot), the game tends to drag.

Problem number two: Relief. There is a mechanic in this game when there are three or more players termed ‘Relief’. In effect, after an attack sequence is resolved, the winning side gets to either draw three cards or clear three cards. I understand why this mechanic is in place; since there’s a chance that everyone will be either attacking or blocking on everyone else’s turn, players need lots of cards and need to keep their Attribute Stacks fairly clear. The problem is that this mechanic destroys the balance of the system. Each HeroCard game has had at least one ‘basic deck’, a Hero who has few complicated abilities and relies primarily on one or two high-value attacks and blocks that use up an entire Attribute Stack (or nearly that, at least). As the system is designed this is balanced, because throwing yourself wholly into an attack like that leaves you open to an opponent’s attack, and using a high-cost block could make it more difficult to attack. There are trade-offs. In Nightmare, the Relief mechanic allows you to disregard these trade-offs. Will, the basic deck of Nightmare can spend his entire allotment of Body on a single, 9-point base attack, and add on some attack mods, and it’s very difficult for any of the other characters to block. When Will blocks, the same is true in reverse; nobody can get through his defenses. Because he’s likely to win most battles, assuming clear attribute stacks and at least one of these cards (or one of his lesser, but still potent, cards), he’ll almost always get Relief after attacking or blocking, meaning that he can simply clear those cards away (which is easier, since he’s playing only a couple of large cards, rather than several smaller ones like the other characters). Within the Nightmare game, Heroes like Will (or To’a King from Champion of New Olympia, or the Paladin from Orc Wars) are far more powerful than most other characters.

What I Liked: The basic mechanics of the game seem sound, and I like the idea of the game. The tiles and pieces are also of good quality and, viewed in isolation, the characters seem well-designed.

What I Didn’t Like: The HeroCard system just doesn’t work that well in this game. The game feels long and bloated, and not that much fun. I also wasn’t that crazy about the artwork on the cards; they look suspiciously like people from the office were photographed in costume, and then the photographs were Photoshopped later.

The Bottom Line:As I mentioned all the way at the top, I like the HeroCard system. I also like the premise of this game, and the core mechanics. The problem is that they just don’t fit together that well, as written. I’ve liked every HeroCard game that came my way up until this point, but I just can’t get behind this one. The game could be a quick-playing, light deduction game if a different resolution system were used, or if the existing system were simplified somewhat (perhaps by making attacks to scare more like standard HeroCard duels, and by eliminating Relief). As it is, though, it just wasn’t that much fun to play. I really, really hate to say this, but I just can’t recommend this game.