Finished Crysis

Technically I haven't finished Crysis but I've got past the bit where the aliens show up which counts as finished when you're playing a Crytek game. Not only did I get that far, but I played the stealth bit, the escort mission bit, the turret gunner bit and the Halo rip off bit before stopping at the fly a plane bit, all of which featured pretty uninspired alien design.

As I mentioned previously, I found Crysis incredibly refreshing because it had the balls to be a shooter that did the best parts of the previous game much much better with new game play mechanic twists (the Nano suit, destructible terrain), as opposed to a genre-bending wannabe sim/open world game/RPG which is what shooters have sadly turned into in too many cases.

(Please note I love the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series enough to be bothered to punctuate it correctly, Far Cry 2 and ARMA 2 for their crazy ambition, TF2 for its class design etc. But does it have to be every game?)

But I don't think you should play Crysis because it's incredibly fun, or because its beautiful, or because your graphics card can finally handle it. I think you should play it because two thirds of the way through the game it drops you into a zero gravity alien maze and teaches you seamlessly how to navigate it and fight the enemies inside, which are the first truly alien aliens I've seen in a game.

It is a classy piece of game design. I wish the final third had turned into Prey, not Halo.

Finished Bioshock

And I've finished Bioshock - by virtue of the last boss being a bit of an easy kill.

(Too many people design games the wrong way and make the last boss insurmountable - Puzzle Quest is the latest I've encountered which falls into this category).

Surprisingly, I restarted, looking for a higher difficulty and found there wasn't one. So much has been written about Bioshock - enough for discussion about it to coin the phrase 'ludonarrative dissonance', but very little of it on the actual game mechanics. Sure, they're a bit rubbish in places, but the looting and collection game is bizzarrely satisfying: there's never been more beautiful places to root through other people's trash; and the advancement mechanic, although it never quite comes together, hints at a number of strategies I didn't explore (I zapped and hacked and trapped, and grinded Vitachambers whenever I ran out of first aid kits, which happened too frequently). I hear Bioshock 2 fixes much of the awkwardness in combat which I've written about previously - and with the involvement of the studio which wrote the hugely enjoyable Dark Messiah: Might and Magic, I might have to pick it up the next time there's a Steam sale.

And what is it with Unreal engine games making the protagonist feel about 4 feet tall? Bioshock, the Ball... I feel like an angry Tom Cruise every time I play these.

Finished Far Cry 2

I've just added Far Cry 2 to the short list of games I've actually finished.

There's probably twice that again of games I've gotten to the final boss fight and given up... Far Cry 2's narrative is instead extremely effective at motivating you for the equivalent of the final boss fight. After a symphony of betrayals of those you don't care about, it sings poetically for a brief shining few minutes.

Really a rather brilliant game from a narrative point of view, even after seeing the seams.

With regards to game mechanics, just needed the occasional weapon you pick up to not be completely rusted, and give you more running endurance if you choose to throw your existing weapons away. As it is, the checkpoints just grind you down once you have unlocked all the weapons in the game - extra supplies isn't reward enough for the time degrading your shiny armoury supplied equipment.

I've never been so glad for public transport.