Crysis

Verdict: A virtually flawless FPS with stunning graphics, but you'll need a monster PC.

Crysis - the long-awaited spiritual successor to Far Cry - drops you into the combat boots of Jake 'Nomad' Dunn, a US Delta Force solider sent to investigate an island in the South China Sea that has been invaded by North Korean forces. And, as you subsequently discover, hostile aliens.

As this is a sci-fi first-person shooter set in 2020, a few liberties have been taken. For starters, Jack's equipped with a nano-suit. This allows him to regenerate health (thus eliminating the need for first-aid packs), gives him temporary physical advantages (strength, speed and armour) and enables him to become virtually invisible for brief periods, morphing in and out like a Predator.

Like Far Cry, Crysis is very open-ended. The maps are gargantuan and there's no correct style of play. You can opt for a silent assassin approach, sneaking past the enemy to achieve your objective, or you can adopt a gung-ho approach, randomly killing everything in sight. Both strategies work, although you'll find that a combination of the two works best.

There's a plethora of weapons at your disposal - which are largely looted from corpses - and many of these can be upgraded, although there's a price to pay. For example, you can fit a silencer, which means that every time you take a shot, the entire North Korean army doesn't come running. However, this also means that bullets inflict far less damage, so unless you manage a successful headshot, you'll go through ammo like it's going out of fashion.

While Far Cry had only one large map, Crysis boasts four maps - the opening island, an alien ship, the island again (this time frozen), and the US Navy fleet. You'll get through these in a day or so, but the trouble is that you'll want more, although the various multiplayer modes go some way to alleviating the cravings.

Visually, Crysis is jaw-droppingly good, putting every other game in the shade. It isn't only the vast draw distance, detailed maps or blinding character models that makes it stand out; it's also the other elements that we've been waiting years to see. As well as having a destructible environment (a firefight in the jungle brings down trees and foliage), air units behave the way they should and ballistics make long-range sniping a challenging task, without being frustrating. The list is endless.

Combat is fast and furious, and some of the pitched battles (such as the assault on the enemy harbour) are fantastic. However, the AI still has issues. On the one hand, enemy troops will lay down suppressing fire and lob well-aimed grenades to winkle you out of a defensive position, but on the other hand, they still sometimes run into the open when being shot at, rather than taking cover. This isn't a huge issue but, given the almost flawless quality of the game in other areas, it magnifies its few failings.

Controlling your character using either the standard mouse/keyboard combo or a gamepad is a breeze. Crysis has pretty much everything you could possibly want from a first-person shooter, with gorgeous foliage and water effects at its top settings, not to mention great combat. Unfortunately, you need a monster PC to play it at the Very High settings.

• Western Digital Caviar Blue (640GB) - Hard disks / storage
• Samsung SATA SSD 32GB - Hard disks / storage
• Spore - Games
• Zalman VF1000-LED - Other cooling hardware
• Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2 - Other cooling hardware
• Antec Mini P180 - Cases
• Turok - Games