» Thu Dec 31, 2009 3:58 am 
Before anyone thinks I'm just going to rant about "i hate crysis it svcks cant play laglaglag blaahhhhh", I'm not. I like this game a lot, most of it, almost all of it actually. There are a few big issues like the connection, the REALLY loud, triple layered MP music (I turn it off in MP and back on in SP), locking pistol suppressor (SP), and a few other similar issues. Those have been covered in a number of threads on many websites, and are very well known, so that's not what I want to talk about.
I'd like to bring up a few things that I've had an issue with while playing. They aren't so much technical issues or glitches, but game design issues, some of them overlapping.
First, the Assault game mode. It's a really cool concept, but is hugely flawed. The idea of having non-nanosuit soldiers with rifles defending and nano-soldiers attacking, but only with pistols, is fine, I like the idea. The normal soldiers even have lasers on all their guns to help balance their better weapons, which is a nice touch. There are three big problems with this game mode. Any one of them would be okay, but add the other two and it's almost unplayable. Number one: Health. This is the biggest, the "normal" soldiers don't have normal health, they have permanent armour health. Read that again. That means it takes FIVE SHOTS of HAMMER to kill them. It's already very hard to kill a someone in a normal game mode if you have a pistol and they have an automatic rifle, which it should be, the Hammer's three hit kill on a non-armour guys, which is fair, but five is near impossible. The M12 is six hit kill, but with its faster rate it has a faster kill time, so its the better choice, but still easily outclassed by the SCARs, SCARABs, and Felines. Let's face it, most of the time most players play alone. A team of unorganized, but skilled players attacking as NANOSUIT SOLDIERS will lose to an equal team of "normal" defending soldiers. The next two problems go hand in hand and tie into a later one. The time limit is too short and it takes too long to upload. The upload isn't too bad, but with the already mentioned health issue, if the nanosuit uploaded is seen, which he will be, even in cloak, he will die. The time limit being short means that the attacks don't have much of a chance to be sneaky, and given the slow upload on health issue, this becomes a big problem. Even if the attackers kill all of the defenders, which is rare, because the only effective way of doing this is stealth killing, then they still have to upload the intel. This would also be okay, if all the already mentioned problems didn't mean there is almost always about 30 seconds left, not ever long enough to get to the intel and upload it. So then you lose, even though all the defenders are dead and you are uploading. Remember the intro cutscene in campaign, where Prophet takes down about 10 C.E.L.L. guys, an APC and a helo? Yeah, that's what a nanosuit can really do...
Second, the suit. Don't get me wrong, I love the nanosuit, the concept, the idea that you can't sprint and then expect to have full armour as soon as you find someone, or something like that. The problem is a few of the features don't work well enough, and some used to. The drain is okay, but it needs to recharge just a little bit faster. If you look at the video for Air Stomp you'll see that as soon as he power jumps he's getting energy back. Right away, no delay. That's how it should be. No, wait, it should be Nano Recharge speed and Nano Recharge should be instant. Yeah. Another thing is Armour doesn't seem to absorb enough damage. It's supposed to make you lose energy instead of health. Well, not entirely, but pretty well. I find myself, with Armour Enhance, and "Health Critical" and a blurry screen with half my energy left, that needs to be fixed. Cloak has two huge problems too. First, it's WAY to easy to see. I don't camp, I don't like camping, it's boring so that's not why I'm saying this, but I find that if I'm cloaked and not moving if someone comes in to clear the room they'll see me almost as if I wasn't even cloaked. And no, they didn't all have Cloak Tracker. The Beta had amazing cloak, you didn't have the annoying hexagons, but most importantly, you didn't have a colour. I was swimming underwater at Pier 17, in cloak, a good 5 feet down, and someone saw and killed me. That should NEVER happen. Cloak was great in the Beta, but is honestly not useful how it should be now, also because: You drain cloak really fast, which is okay, but you drain it faster while moving. What? Armour should be use while mostly not moving, and you become a tank, but cloak is supposed to be used for flanking and sneaking, you SHOULD be using it on the move. Punishing movement with cloak both robs it of its usefulness and promoted camping.
Third, optics. Specifically, the Grendel with a Reflex sight. It's overpowered and almost game breaking. You would think, after the disaster that was the M16 w/ Red Dot in Call Of Duty 4 (great game otherwise, though it is the only good COD imo) game designers would have learned that close range, red dot optics on no recoil, three round burst, long range weapons was a BAD idea. They got it right on the SCARAB, close range gun = no Assault Scope. Why they didn't on the Grendel is beyond me. Also, they removed the suppressor for the SCAR. I guess that's because it would have eleven attachments and you couldn't unlock them all if you didn't put in your hologram code. But still, why not remove, I dunno, Extended Mag? It has 40 rounds, you really shouldn't need 50. Worse than that, if I want a Scoped/Suppressed/Full Auto weapon, my ONLY option is the Feline. What??? Other than not being the Jack-Of-All-Trades gun I was intending on making, why do the SMGs have Scopes and not the SCARAB?
Finally, and most importantly, melees. The melee system was amazing in the second Beta, but now, it's broken. Totally broken. In the Beta it was rare for anyone to get a melee kill, how it should be and quite honestly refreshing in a first person SHOOTER. Now its a mix of COD and Halo melees. If you're up close, the fight is settled with a melee, unless you're really good with a shotgun, but even then you'll lose a lot. And both relating to melee and otherwise, there isn't enough penalty for attacking while cloaked. I can't emphasize these the melee and cloaked shooting enough, they desperately need fixing.
While the game is still mostly playable with these issues, coupled with the lag issues and the rest, it all really needs to be fixed soon, or people will just start playing something else, and I really don't want that to happen.
