Crysis Warhead - amazing, but you may need the $30m Lotto win!

If you want to buy one intense action FPS sandbox shooter on PC this year, Crysis Warhead (EA, rated R16) is great value at around $50 - and the single-player campaign is excellent fun with a focus on sneaky tactical solutions and an emphasis on stealth.

As for visuals, Crysis Warhead is hard to beat alongside any other PC game out there, with its realistic cutting edge visuals including facial expressions and environmental effects. It has a solid frame rate but that said I have experienced a lot of slow down.

The physics show off some very cool elements but there are minor drawbacks such as a lack of dead character physics (by default) and the odd map bugs such as swimming underground after falling into a river 30cm deep.

The second half of the game is very demanding on hardware and the ice levels are pretty but exact a toll on frame rates, so enthusiast display options and DirectX10 definitely requires the most recent graphics card.

"Best ever graphics" can come at a price.

The evolution of PC gaming has meant greater and greater demand on your PC specs and Warhead was the tipping point for me.

Despite the low game price, I needed a major Lotto win to do justice to this game. I hadn't needed to update for the original Crysis but this one deserved it.

First I needed a top of the line HD graphics card so settled on the

ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

with 2.4 teraFLOPS of computing power (1.6 billion transistors and 1600 stream processors), 2GB GDDR5 memory, Shader Model 4.1, DirectXR10.1 and full anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering for the highest resolutions (2560 x 1600).

Then I needed a decent monitor to display the gorgeous 1080p graphics (1920 x 1080) so chose a 30"

Dell

which supports the new DisplayPort graphics connection.

I thought for a millisecond that it might be a bit on the bulky side for my PC workspace but actually it doesn't dominate. The features are nice for this product including a built in USB hub and card reader, full mode (upscaling resolutions to the native mode), native resolution of 2560 x 1600 and the HDCP 1080p support.

If the product is cool it also has to look cool. To house this hot card (yes the temps are high up there) I spent a little dosh on a top line case getting a black

Antec Twelve Hundred

hardcore gaming case with six 120mm blue LED fans and a monster 200mm top mount fan for keeping cool and quiet this summer.

The result: just amazing.

Here is a video showing off Crysis Warhead Weapons and Vehicles (watch in high quality):

Warhead is a standalone companion to the year-old Crysis. If you missed it first time around the smart story is about an alien artefact discovered on a tropical island, leading to the US and North Korea battling to get hold of it. Then an alien invasion erupts the island in chaos, freezing everything and threatening the world. Watch for the plot to twist half way through. The story is not yet resolved so more sequels are to come.

This time you play as tough-nut "Psycho," the British sergeant Michael Sykes from the first game. The action is on the other side of the island (but seems strangely the same) from the original game as you help the Americans in nano suits, that give awesome superhuman powers, such as an invisibility, speed, strength and armour modes, as they battle the Koreans and aliens.

There's also a separate disc with a multiplayer expansion, Crysis Wars, which is Battlefield-like and fun for up to 32 players but maybe just a little too complex.

In all the expansion plays smoothly and the winning formula from Crysis remains unchanged. Though a few bugs are present patches will resolve and video card drivers will accommodate for more playability, it is a little short but doesn't require the DVD in your drive as the original Crysis did, nor does it need the original Crysis installed either. The price is just right and I can't wait for the benchmark demos to start appearing.

MadGamer rating: 9 / 10

P.S. The game's system requirements:

CPU:

Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista), Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2 GHz for Vista), AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or better

RAM:

1GB (1.5GB on Windows Vista)

Video Card:

NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or better

VRAM:

256MB of Graphics Memory

Storage:

15GB

Sound Card:

DirectX 9.0c Compatible

ODD:

DVD-ROM

OS:

Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Vista

DirectX:

DX9.0c or DX10