How did Crysis score higher than Half-Life on Gamespot?

nigerian_businessman

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Did these people play the same game I did?

I agree, as far as graphics go, this game is a masterpiece. It pushes the boundaries, etc, etc. But better than Half-Life? Gameplay has got to count for something, right? I mean, Half-Life was actually somewhat difficult. The story line was engaging, legendary. Well, you all played HL so I don't have to go into complete detail. Anyway, Crysis gets a 9.5, Half-Life a 9.4.... something is wrong with this picture.

Crysis LOOKS great, but as far as gameplay goes I'd say it is fairly run of the mill. It also lacks polish in a few areas. Difficulty being one of them. The suit makes it too easy. Auto-save will save over a previous checkpoint, so god forbid you miss a missle launcher and get a helicopter chasing you, you'll have to start over from way back or dodge bullets for 15 minutes. Also, everyone in this game has the same 4 or 5 animations. Running, standing, crouching, crouching while walking, walking... everyone moves exactly the same. It's like the Koreans unleashed a clone army.


Oh, and the storyline...

Aliens invade, only one man can save the world. He puts on a special armor suit and takes it to the aliens. Where have I seen this story line before? Oh yeah, I remember now. Half-Life!
 
In respect for Crysis, it does bring alot to the table. We will all realize this in a couple of years when we can blast away on very high details with 50+ steady fps.
This is the fundament in a trilogy mainly bringing the new engine wich is incredible. Now they can focus on game content. Crytek is in the position to make a legendary fps franchise, I hope they get it right.

editted for truth
 
How did Bioshock score much higher than SS2? I just use reviews to find out the supposedly bad things about the game. Score is irrelevant as can be seen by many of these hyped up games that turned out to be decent yet received unbelievably high marks.
 
We all know:
1) HL > Crysis
2) Jason Ocampo is clueless

GFW is one of the few publications that got this review right. 8/10.
 
The new rating system on Gamespot does not help. Everything in .5 divisables is stupid. 9.5 is plain overrated.

I agree that the Half-Life games are a hell of a lot more fun than Crysis. For all Crysis' graphical splendour it's just an average shooter at it's core. The storyline is weaker than a soggy paper bag and the alien theme is dreadfully clichéd. I really lost interest in completing the game once the linear alien level designs and alien storyline took over. I was relived when it was over - not a good sign!
 
This sucks hearing you guys say the story line is bad and the AI is too easy. I was going to build a new computer this next month but there is really no reason now. Only thing I have to look forward too is Alan Wake now and thats a long way off.
 
In the end a lot of it is personal preference. I don't think it is ridiculous to prefer Crysis to HL, although I love both games. But I think in the end spicey has it. The new review system they have is the culprit. The system sucks btw.
 
pettybone, the game is still worth a play, so don't let me deter you from upgrading. I don't regret buying a new computer a month ago, despite Crysis being a big part of that decision. All I'm saying is that I think GameSpot and a few other websites loaded heaps of praise upon the game without touching on it's weak points at all, and undeservedly placed it above other games that delivered on all aspects, not just graphics.

I enjoyed Crysis. The alien invasion thing is cliche and I touched upon some weak points, but I still thought it was a pretty solid game. I just wish reviewers would take into consideration the scores they've given superior games in the past when deciding how to rate the game on a scale of 1 to 10.
 
While crysis does cover new ground in some areas like destructible environments it really doesn't do much in terms of AI or storyline. I found it disappointing that there is also no visible wounds on the enemies bodies for some reason? It actually made me go out and purchase SOF payback just to get some good enemy damage modeling. :p
 
Too many people put too much stock in reviews. If you like the game and it got 1.0 out of 10.0 would you stop playing ?
 
Crysis = Far Cry on steroids. Same environments, same quirky AI, same bad ragdolls, same basic storyline...

...I was expecting something drastically different from Crystudios, but seriously now... :rolleyes:


And yes, Half Life 2 > Crysis. Deus Ex > Crysis. The fact that PCGamer gave Crysis a 98% score makes me glad I canceled my subscription a few months back.
 
Im a big hl fan.. but to say that it pwns everything is just crazy. The game is completely scripted from start to finish its corridor like, also the story really isnt that involved. The only thing that is "deep" about the HL story is the stuff they don't tell you, that's what keeps people intrigued the unknown element.

Crysis has realtime cutscenes, insanely huge "real" sp levels (where you can go anywhere practically) hordes of AI, and a mixture of game play possibilities. Not to mention insane graphics. In the end of the SP game just look at the faces on the ship's crew, every face is different they just don't put gas masks on npc's and call it a day :)

Pc Games > all
 
Half Life 2, as far as game play goes, the only thing revolutionary was the physics engine, which of course was cleverly used into the game play with the gravity gun.

But other than that, HL2 still inherits the traditional linear gameplay, corridors to corridors combat.

FarCry offered a different gameplay and I actually replayed FarCry SP game more than Half Life 2, because besides tougher enemy, there's nothing new to explore.

If its FarCry on steroids, then its gameplay should at least be equal to FarCry if not better, which IMO, is more fun than HL2
 
This sucks hearing you guys say the story line is bad and the AI is too easy. I was going to build a new computer this next month but there is really no reason now. Only thing I have to look forward too is Alan Wake now and thats a long way off.

I played the demo and thought it was alright. Crysis is no longer in my purchase list. GOW is awesome on PC, so is BIoshock and I am having a blast in LOTRO, looks awesome too. upgrade anyway :)
 
Im with you RiZnO

We all hold a surreal loyalty to the HL games, as they are and continue to stand out as the tip of the sword in the PC vs Console war.

Before I got Crysis, I played through the HL2 episodes again, and then did Crysis. I like Crysis more.
 
This sucks hearing you guys say the story line is bad and the AI is too easy. I was going to build a new computer this next month but there is really no reason now. Only thing I have to look forward too is Alan Wake now and thats a long way off.

Crysis is worth the $40 but it isn't the holy grail to gaming. One of my main gripes is performance but that should be better by the time you finish your build. Like others have stated, it shares many similarities with Far Cry.
 
I just read reviews now for the opinions/facts mentioned during the written part; the number s don't mean shit anymore. It's a really fucked up exponential curve; everything below 7 is reserved for movie licensees/Barbie's Horse Adventure, 8 is for sports games/guys who didn't pay enough, and 9+ is for games that have forums amazed and publications spooging about it and a large bandwagon.

Not to mention that when HL earned its rating back in 1998, it actually meant something.
 
I just wish reviewers would take into consideration the scores they've given superior games in the past when deciding how to rate the game on a scale of 1 to 10.

Personally, I think that if a review gives a score at all, it should only be relative to the games that are out around the same time. Besides, can you honestly say that a 9.4 is different from a 9.5? How do you define a .1 difference in review scores? You can't. I'm more of a fan of reviews that don't give scores. At the same time, if I'm thinking of buying a game months after it was first released, I'll take a look at Metacritic or some similar site to get an overall feel of the game, and then from there I'll start reading reviews linked from there.

I like Ars Technica's method of listing The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for their big reviews, and Buy/Rent/Skip for their mini-reviews. Gamers With Jobs also have good reviews.
 
I consider the original Half-Life to be tied with Deus Ex as the greatest FPS of all time, so it'd take a helluva lot to convince me that Crysis belongs with that exalted group. I've not purchased Crysis because I'm in the middle of COD4 and Culpa Innata. I liked the Crysis demo, but it definitely looked a lot like Far Cry. While FC ranks as one of my favorites, I'm not eager to play it again with better graphics and a super suit. I'll pick up Crysis when its price drops.

On a side note, I'm very pleased that Far Cry 2 will take place in an entirely new environment (Africa). I've had my fill of island locales, for now.
 
I just read reviews now for the opinions/facts mentioned during the written part; the number s don't mean shit anymore. It's a really fucked up exponential curve; everything below 7 is reserved for movie licensees/Barbie's Horse Adventure, 8 is for sports games/guys who didn't pay enough, and 9+ is for games that have forums amazed and publications spooging about it and a large bandwagon.

Not to mention that when HL earned its rating back in 1998, it actually meant something.

100% correct.
 
You started a thread because one reviewer gave a game 1% more than another reviewer gave to another game 9 years ago.

I mean... really.
 
I am a serious gamer. I have bought and played over 500 video-games over the past 20 years, as well as played many P&P and Tabletop games....

Yet I found HL to be quite dull and have never finished it. I only bought HL because I had heard so many good things about Counter-Strike. I played CS continually for about three months, starting in beta 6, and only stopping (temporarily) to play Deus-Ex. After I finished Deus-Ex I decided to give HL a try. Needless to say HL was quite boring when compared to Deus-Ex (and CS as well actually). Deus-Ex had twice the story line of HL (as far as I could tell having only completed about half of HL) and 100 times as many options in the actual gameplay. For me HL2 was a lot better than HL, but it was post Far-Cry, and so it was still lacking something as well. It may just be me of course, I prefer options in my game-play, and the HL series is highly linear while Deus-Ex, Far-Cry, and Crysis are all games that offer a lot of freedom.

Ultimately I just don't think HL should be put up so high on a pedestal when so many better FPS games have come out, many of which were rated lower only because of technical glitches that were quickly resolved. I am kind of in agreement with an earlier poster that said games should be compared (score wise) to their own generation. This is the case because only storylines and game-play can be properly compared across multiple generations. Consider again Deus-Ex, it's game-play completely destroys that of HL, and basically every game since as well, yet I don't hear people complaining when another FPS is rated higher than 8.2 by Gamespot.... HL was a great game that deserved the ratings it got at the time, but it really hasn't held up well at all in my opinion, especially considering the first significantly better game came out just 9 months later (system shock 2).
 
Because it's (Crysis) a much much much better game.

Half-Life = the quintessential over-hyped game.
 

Not true at all.

PC gamers generally seem to think that the HL series should receive impunity from any level of scrutiny.
They look back on the games through rose-tinted glasses, but seemingly forget about how dull, repetitive, linear, and scripted the series was.

They are good games, don't get me wrong.
I played every single one of them in fact, however I see them for what they are, not for what people want them to be, merely good games that are over-hyped and over-glorified.

Seriously, what does HL/HL2 single player do/achieve that Crysis doesn't?

Story is just as cliche, if you want to nit-pick about that.
Physics are not any better.
Graphics are nowhere close (even in the newest incarnations, i.e., the new "Episodes)
Animations are no better.
Variety in terms of gameplay is no better.
AI is no better.

Seriously, what does the HL series do better than Crysis? :confused::confused:
I can name at least a few things that Crysis does better than any of the HL games however.
 
Given their respective time periods - innovate

Crysis is damn near Farcry with prettier textures.

Forget about time periods, PC gamers still tend to think of HL/HL2 as God's greatest gifts to gamers, irrespective of chronology.

But I digress, for it sounds as though you haven't played Crysis.
For what you did with your post is the following:

You totally dismissed the new physics engine.
You totally dismissed the new weapons customizations.
You totally dismissed the nano-suit which automatically adds a whole new level of innovation and gameplay mechanics to this that is non-existent in every other game on the planet.
You totally dismissed the team-based elements (which was non-existent in Far Cry).

Also, you totally dismissed the new CryEngine 2 on the whole, for it's not just prettier textures, not by a long shot.
Crysis literally looks photo-realistic at times, and just like a movie, it tells a story. Would you not be more immersed in a movie if it were in HD, on a big screen, excellent sound, etc. versus if it were filmed in say B&W, mono sound, and at a pixelated 320x240 res.

Just like the movie experience, games that look better also end up immersing us much more.
To that end, not a single game on the planet can even touch Crysis as they all pale in terms of looks.
 
This sucks hearing you guys say the story line is bad and the AI is too easy. I was going to build a new computer this next month but there is really no reason now. Only thing I have to look forward too is Alan Wake now and thats a long way off.

The only thing worse than listening to game reviewers on well-known websites, it listening to people on internet forums. If it looks good and most people are saying its good ( I think its great, for instance), then give it a try. The title of this thread is going to attract a bunch of people that thought Half life was the best game ever, so the opinions will slant one way.
 
You started a thread because one reviewer gave a game 1% more than another reviewer gave to another game 9 years ago.

I mean... really.

I started a thread because I keep seeing this game getting hyped like its the greatest game ever, when it isn't. And yeah, because this game isn't even in the same ballpark as HL, so how it scored higher, no matter by how little, amazes me.
 
Forget about time periods, PC gamers still tend to think of HL/HL2 as God's greatest gifts to gamers, irrespective of chronology.

But I digress, for it sounds as though you haven't played Crysis.
For what you did with your post is the following:

You totally dismissed the new physics engine.
You totally dismissed the new weapons customizations.
You totally dismissed the nano-suit which automatically adds a whole new level of innovation and gameplay mechanics to this that is non-existent in every other game on the planet.
You totally dismissed the team-based elements (which was non-existent in Far Cry).

Also, you totally dismissed the new CryEngine 2 on the whole, for it's not just prettier textures, not by a long shot.
Crysis literally looks photo-realistic at times, and just like a movie, it tells a story. Would you not be more immersed in a movie if it were in HD, on a big screen, excellent sound, etc. versus if it were filmed in say B&W, mono sound, and at a pixelated 320x240 res.

Just like the movie experience, games that look better also end up immersing us much more.
To that end, not a single game on the planet can even touch Crysis as they all pale in terms of looks.
So, you want to compare two games irrespective of time period, even though HL was released 9 years ago? Of COURSE crysis is going to look better. That's just ludicrous. That's like challenging a biplane from WWI to a race with an SR-71. Without taking the contributions of the predecessor into account, you're completely ignoring a huge part of what makes HL the amazing game it is. Crysis owes a lot to half life and to completely ignore that contribution is doing exactly what you rag on PoweredBySoy for doing.

You keep speaking of immersion in the game. HL was (one of) the first games to rely completely on scripted sequences instead of cutscenes keeping the playing in the action at all times. It's literally like playing a movie. You talk about immersion in the game, well HL was far and away more immersing than any game that preceded it.

And yes, I would probably be more immersed into a movie with high def, 5.1 etc like in your example, but if the movie sucks, all that technology isn't going to do shit. If the old school 320x240 BW movie is flat out a better movie, then I will be more engaged by that one. New technology is all well and good, but putting it to good use is far more important. Eye candy won't keep me interested anywhere near as long as a good story will.

I can appreciate the relative merits of crysis. It truly achieved something amazing with the new engine. That said, the storytelling pales in comparison and for me, that's the key. A lot of people pan HL and it's successors for having a linear type of gameplay, but to have the cinematic experience that the HL series provides, you can't have someone walking all over the place exploring irrelevant nooks and crannies. Part of the art of storytelling is pacing, and that is one thing that far cry and crysis have never been able to master.

Ultimately, this discussion is moot since it's all opinion anyway. No one is going to enjoy the same type of gameplay. However, my point stands that judging something without acknowledging the innovations and contributions it made is simply asinine.
 
For its time, HL was amazing and ground breaking. Crysis is very good, but not the same level of amazing. It's hard to compare them in a contemporary situation. It's like reviewing a new PS3 game to a classic PS1 game.

I like FC and HL2 for different reasons about equally.
 
You totally dismissed the new physics engine.

It's sweet. until it gets spoiled by seeing the robotic AI animations.

You totally dismissed the new weapons customizations.

They're not that big of a deal. Half of the customizations were useless anyway. Did anyone use the iron sights or the laser sight? What is the point of a laser sight when you've got a crosshair on the screen? It was rather gimmicky.

You totally dismissed the nano-suit which automatically adds a whole new level of innovation and gameplay mechanics to this that is non-existent in every other game on the planet.

The nano suit takes away from the game more than it adds, by making the game entirely too easy to play.

You totally dismissed the team-based elements (which was non-existent in Far Cry).

The team-based elements have been done better elsewhere.

Also, you totally dismissed the new CryEngine 2 on the whole, for it's not just prettier textures, not by a long shot.

Crysis literally looks photo-realistic at times, and just like a movie, it tells a story. Would you not be more immersed in a movie if it were in HD, on a big screen, excellent sound, etc. versus if it were filmed in say B&W, mono sound, and at a pixelated 320x240 res.

Just like the movie experience, games that look better also end up immersing us much more.
To that end, not a single game on the planet can even touch Crysis as they all pale in terms of looks.

The problem is that the story seriously sucks. It's boring, cliche, and feels as though it was an afterthought. I watched Matrix Revolutions in Imax and the visuals were great, but I felt the same way afterwards. For all its spectacular visuals, I would have given most of them up for a good story that left me satisfied after I was done.
 
It's sweet. until it gets spoiled by seeing the robotic AI animations.

Not sure what you mean by that, HL2 did not feature better animations, so I'm not sure what your basis for comparison is.



They're not that big of a deal. Half of the customizations were useless anyway. Did anyone use the iron sights or the laser sight? What is the point of a laser sight when you've got a crosshair on the screen? It was rather gimmicky.

Yes, I used both.
Obviously you haven't played the game in Delta mode.

Delta mode takes away the cross hair, and the laser sights can then help you to at least get back some of that lost aiming ability on guns such as say the pistols.
Also, they can help you to pull off headshots.



The nano suit takes away from the game more than it adds, by making the game entirely too easy to play.

I totally disagree. Play it on Delta mode, and you will see why.
Half the time you will be running in the opposite direction looking for cover rather than beating up the baddies.



The team-based elements have been done better elsewhere.
That may be so, but now you are digressing.
For before, you were saying that "prettier textures" is all this game is vs Far Cry.
This simple point (regardless of whether it was done better elsewhere or not) is proof that there is more to this game than just prettier textures.


The problem is that the story seriously sucks. It's boring, cliche, and feels as though it was an afterthought. I watched Matrix Revolutions in Imax and the visuals were great, but I felt the same way afterwards. For all its spectacular visuals, I would have given most of them up for a good story that left me satisfied after I was done.

:p And the HL/2, CoD4 stories don't suck, they aren't cliche? :confused:

Right.... :eek:

"Modern Warfare" has been done to death by countless games.
HL2 was written as the games evolved, the story is a discombobulated mess that left people with more questions than answers.
Also, the story was thin and sparse.
Every few hours you came across some story-related element, but by then you didn't really care what it was or why it was, you just wanted to complete the level.

You want a good story, look to a game such as Mafia.
But people using games such as HL2 to discredit Crysis in terms of story really need to take off the rose-tinted glasses.
 
You totally dismissed the new physics engine.
You totally dismissed the new weapons customizations.
You totally dismissed the nano-suit which automatically adds a whole new level of innovation and gameplay mechanics to this that is non-existent in every other game on the planet.
You totally dismissed the team-based elements (which was non-existent in Far Cry).

None of which makes Crysis a more innovative or engrossing game experience than Half Life was in its day. 10 years later, would I rather be playing Half Life or Crysis right now? I'd pick Crysis. But the op's argument is that Crysis shouldn't have gotten a better score than Half Life, and I agree with that purely on the basis of innovation.

I admit the suit powers are pretty sweet, and it brings some neat gameplay mechanics into a world which is essentially FarCry (at least until the end part). But that other stuff you listed is trivial.
 
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