As expected, Crysis turned out to be pretty short, so it didn’t take too long to finish it off today. Spoilers ahoy.

I finished making my way to the mine, taking the opportunity of passing by a big cliff overlooking the mining pit to snipe most of the guards so that it would be mostly cleared out when I arrived. The North Koreans kind of objected to that though, and a couple times I turned around to discover a few of them had run up from below and snuck up behind me.

Within the mine there was the Big Discovery of the main alien artifact, and a boss fight with the North Korean general who had captured the archaeological dig members. He wasn’t too tough though; despite having a minigun, all I had to do was hide underneath and occasionally pop out to spray him down with machine gun fire.

After that I had to enter the opening into the alien cavern, where the architecture changed radically of course. Gravity suddenly took a vacation though, and I had to drift around and maneuver myself with boosters. That made fights with the aliens in there a bit tougher since they could swoop around with ease, but here I found the shotgun useful for the first time, since I only needed to get in one or two good hits at close range. I didn’t have to fight all of them though, since I managed to stealth by some.

After making my way out of there, the outside world had become frozen, and I had to make my way to a nearby marine outpost where I met up with the squad leader, thought to have been killed earlier when an alien snatched him away. This turned into an escort mission as his suit was busted and I had to lead him from heat source to heat source, after an initial big battle that I had to retry a few times since I did it too slowly and he lost too much heat.

After getting out of the frozen section, which turned out to be inside a sphere created around the mountain, I regrouped with other troops and defended their base against several waves of attacks from the alien squid-like creatures, and then there was the obligatory on-rails mission where you’re the gunner. Every FPS has to have one, of course. It only lasted a few minutes though, and then it was back to defending other squads of troops while they rescued a downed VTOL pilot and waited for extraction.

Following the extraction, I then had to take over as a VTOL pilot for the next level. Controlling it was awkward, but kinda fun, and it’s a bit disappointing that there wasn’t more to this segment than following some other VTOLs and defending them from aliens while they performed some other rescues.

I then wound up on an aircraft carrier, where an extended ‘interactive cutscene’ segment played out, and the carrier then came under attack. I had to fend off a few waves of aliens and then go inside the carrier to help fix the nuclear reactor. This section was a bit dull, since you’re trapped inside narrow, linear corridors instead of fighting in the open, and there isn’t even that much fighting anyway, but it doesn’t last too long at least.

I thought at some point I’d be going back to the island, but no, it ended right here on the carrier with a couple of final boss fights. The tricks to beating them were fairly simple; what made it hard was the sheer chaos going on around you with various other aliens constantly harassing you. flames everywhere, the boat shaking, etc.

I had trouble finishing it, though. Not because of the bosses, but after beating them, I had to run for the VTOL to get off the carrier, and I kept falling through the deck and dying every time I went for it, even after numerous attempts at trying different paths, speeds, etc. In the end, I had to turn all of the graphics settings down to ‘low’ to make it, as apparently it was the choppy framerate at this point that was causing it.

And so ends Crysis, with an obvious setup for a sequel since there’s still the island to deal with. Not exactly the most unique of stories, but it was a thrilling ride pretty much all of the way.