Is Crysis a good game? YOU decide!

[Lagmonster]

Made a new thread because the other one was so off topic that there was no other choice. As for the spamminess, I'll deal with you later.

[Tolya]

Guards never noticed Sam's glowing green goggles, worst stealth A.I. ever.

Oh please That's not the problem of the AI. Thats a design flaw. AI didn't react to any light source that was on the character because it was never coded to do so.

If the devs planned on AI reacting to glowing goggles in the dark and, for example, ignored after staring at it for one minute, then that would be a AI problem.

Not that Splinter Cell AI was any good. It was basically nonexistant.

As for games with good AI I remember Half Life had competent infantry. I have no idea how much of that was due to scripting and how much due to actual AI programming, but the fact of the matter was that soldiers supported each other, threw grenades, flanked you and retreated if faced with overwhelming force.

[adam_grif]

Oh please That's not the problem of the AI. Thats a design flaw. AI didn't react to any light source that was on the character because it was never coded to do so.

Right, and the Koreans were never coded to react to the cloak shimmering in Crysis, which is why I made the statement you just responded to. The lights on Fisher are there so the player can see him in the dark and because they look cool. Likewise, the cloak shimmering in Crysis is there because it is an art choice.

I brought this up because Hawkeye complained that the Koreans couldn't see you when you activated cloak even though you had blue glowly shit flying all over your body that by any rights should be relatively easy to spot, even at a distance, and criticized this as an A.I. problem. Direct your contempt at him, not me.

Not that Splinter Cell AI was any good. It was basically nonexistant.

It was decent for what it was.

OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE! Still less annoying than MGS2 guard chatter though.

[CaptHawkeye]

It *is* an AI problem. On the highest difficulty it means that you get to watch the game design be shit right before your eyes.

It wouldn't be a problem if the Difficulty system had any meaning though. lol Koreans speak in Korean now. Wow so hard.

[adam_grif]

If that was the only thing that changed on Delta that might be a valid complaint. As it happens Delta is by far the most enjoyable setting to play on (barring the shitty on rails sections and one or two bits that you will die on a thousand times), so that's what I always play.

And the Koreans do see your cloak if you stand in front of them. They only don't see you if you're 6+ meters away, otherwise they go "huh what's that OH MY GOD AN AMERICAN blam blam blam". You could make arguments for the Koreans to be made more "twitchy" than they are, i.e. if they suspect you're nearby they will spot you more quickly when cloaked, but the game works fine and the A.I. is fine too. It's a relatively minor thing.

[Sarevok]

The Koreans are normal humans without super duper sensors found on the nanosuit. How can they detect cloaked objects at same distance as Nomad or Psycho ? The image seen by the nanosuit user is computer enhanced even in daytlight mode optics. The average North Korean soldier don't have that technology so why should they be able see telltale signs of a cloaking device from same distance ? In multiplayer games even human players with the nanosuit rarely pick up cloaked enemies.

It's not like they are completely oblivious either. They do open fire if the player gets too close. This is good AI in my opinion. It tries to simulate what living breathing humans would do in same circumstances instead of making the soldiers act like Quake 3 bots.

[xthetenth]

Agreed, that's the key point, the main camera view isn't what exactly is going on, it's what the player character sees in Crysis' case or a representation of Fisher's awareness in splinter cell (which naturally includes his own body). When you go to a different view where it isn't an in character view to make the game play better, you don't see it. Look in a mirror in SC, and you'll note there are no lights because they aren't a representation of Fisher's location (kinda says something interesting that he sees himself as a set of glowy goggles and opsat) and in Crysis there's no visible cloak because of what Sarevok said.

Ahh the fun of gameplay and in-universe reality getting into a fight.

Plus, without cloak it'd turn into yet another game where you can snipe but once your location gets known you end up in yet another stupid shootout. Instead you can end up trying to get out of their area of awareness, shooting it out or a bunch of other things. At a certain point gameplay needs to win, and they do a perfectly good job of explaining it with the true invisibility in cutscenes. I don't remember, but do the knockoffs have an easier time seeing you cloaked? I think they might.

[Sarevok]

Even without the cloak you can be an unseen sniper. Silencer + SCAR + sniper scope allows some terrifying possibilities. I have cleared whole outposts without being seen.

I don't remember, but do the knockoffs have an easier time seeing you cloaked? I think they might.

Yes they do. Even if you hide cloaked they move around in a search pattern and eventually find you.

They THEMSELVES are highly stealthy. A novice Crysis player will never see them coming until they decloak and show themselves. Personally I never managed to kill the 4 man nanosuit squad in the cemetery while they were in cloaked state. Once I spotted one or two while cloaked, the rest STILL got the drop on me. It sort of defeats the idea that North Korean grunts are half blind and cant see obvious giant glowing sparks of electricity.

Seriously even with obvious giveaway signs cloaked enemies are hard to spot. In AvP 2 the Predator cloak was lot more obvious than the nanosuit cloak effects. It made visual distortions like Halo Elite cloaks and had glowing lasers you could see from across the map. Yet without the motion tracker the Colonial marine was completely at the mercy of the Predator. In my MP experiences without the motion tracker the marine almost never saw the Predator until he revealed himself.

[Tolya]

Serves me right for being lazy and not reading everything in correct order.

It wouldn't be a problem if the Difficulty system had any meaning though. lol Koreans speak in Korean now. Wow so hard.

I think the *intended* difficulty in it was that the player would not understand what the koreans are saying, making it more difficult to predict their actions.

[Sarevok]

You can make the enemies speak Korean in normal difficulty setting by setting ai_UseAlternativeReadability = 0 in the console.

[adam_grif]

That reminds me, I wish games would let you have customizable difficulty settings selectable from the menu (not console commands to manually assign it). So you could set the enemy A.I. to as smart as it gets and have them speak Korean / remove grenade hud and turret control while driving, but also have the enemies do normal level damage. Or play on Delta difficulty with grenade hud on.

Games should do this.

[Sarevok]

You can already do this in Crysis without the console. Go to the config folder and you will find a file named after each difficulty level (except Delta which is named Bauer). The files are plain text which can be edited to your pleasure in notepad. It's a bit clumsy compared to the ingame menu, on the flipside you have control of variables that you normally would not have. Such as adjusting the rate of energy regeneration on your suit.

[Moby Halcyon]

It's actually one of the things I liked about Crysis - the customizable stats. It was a lot more fun to play as a super suit, with hyper speed and incredible strength, far exceeding the limits the game puts on you, while still amplifying the difficulty of the opposition. It balances out, but makes the game a lot more fun to play when you're moving at the speed of sound.

That is, right up until you run into a mook and kill yourself on impact.

[xthetenth]

Customizable difficulty is something that should be in every game, full stop. Just like you can customize your video settings you should be able to customize gameplay settings to get the gameplay you want. It only makes sense that different people would like different experiences through differently configured difficulty, and the only risk is the relatively low one that the experiences would be less comparable and therefore a bit harder to talk about. Then again the difficulty settings themselves would be a good subject of conversation.