The storyline has several twists, one from the start being that you’re playing the part of an ‘evil’ force which battles against ‘angels’, though it’s not the deepest plot I’ve encountered in a game. The best part about this game though is the graphics. The levels are stunning, and judging from the detail that has gone into them I would say that a significant part of the development of the game was dedicated to the level graphic design. It’s all accomplished without resorting to DX10 and shaders that require a graphics card from 2009 to run – I managed to run it at the highest settings with the top AA that it supports for the most part, only having to remove the AA for the last mission. They must have pulled some trickery to make the game look so good without causing the problems that plague Crysis (which is still on hold until I can beef my computer up enough).

It took most of the day on Sunday to complete, so there’s probably a good 8-9 hrs gameplay there, and I played it on easy cos I prefer enjoying the scenery and storyline to facing frustratingly difficult challenges.

The other games in the pack are: Just Cause, Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, Project: Snowblind, Rogue Trooper.

A couple of months ago I bought Crysis for my PC. My PC has a reasonable spec, with a dual core processor, as much RAM as 32bit Windows can support without crashing and a mid-range graphics card (X1950 Pro). However, Crysis could barely run with this spec even on the lowest settings. Setting up Crossfire should approximately double performance.

When I last upgraded my computer, I spent quite a bit of time researching motherboards, looking for ones with Crossfire support in particular. Crossfire motherboards have 2 of the larger PCI-X slots, though they don’t necessarily both run at x16 speeds. The X1950 Pro card that I already had supports Crossfire mode without having to purchase a special master card – all that is needed are two identical cards.

The card I already owned had just 256MB RAM, but when I purchased it’s companion card there were only 512MB versions available. It was a bit of a gamble, since the configurations weren’t identical, but fortunately Crossfire mode worked beautifully. When in Crossfire mode, the cards appear as one single card to Windows with 256MB RAM, but with a significant performance gain.

I’m not going to bother with taking benchmarks, but I can confirm that Crossfire did help run Crysis on low settings. I think to run it on highest settings I’d probably have to spend quite a chunk of cash, which I can’t really justify at the moment.

This test of Crossfire was only a temporary setup because the new card is really noisy and I had to borrow a more powerful power supply from another computer – Crossfire mode requires a PSU that can supply at least 550W. So until I can afford to buy another power supply, the second card is sitting on the floor underneath my desk.

Now that I have played it I can say that it’s well worth buying. I can see how reviews have awarded so much praise (95%, 10/10 etc.) based on the originality, graphics, environment and of course gameplay. The atomsphere of the game is very convincing, thanks to the sound and graphics.

There is sufficient gameplay to last the average player about 20 hours, which is pretty impressive in my opinion. It probably took me about that long, most of it accomplished during the 3 day LAN party I recently attended (and the rest completed after work). Unlike most fps games, I feel that I can play this one again without repeating the same plot because of several choices available in the game which alter the direction you head in.

Contrary to what I would have thought, the method of ‘checkpoint’ recovery when you die doesnt make the game any easier – but it makes it a whole lot less frustrating. Whereas most shooters would take you back to your last save or automatic checkpoint once you’ve drawn your last virtual breath, losing any progress you’ve made since that point, Bioshock returns you to the nearest reanimating capsule (the actual name of it escapes me at the moment) and you keep your progress. This makes things slightly more challenging when you’re down to your last bit of health and no ammo, but as I say it takes a lot of frustration out of the game.

If you end up getting stuck, another relief from the frustration of not finding the next step to take is the in-build hint system. This meant that not once did I have to find a walkthrough on the web (which probably wouldn’t have been available at the time anyway).

I can’t think of anything that I would criticise in this game. It’s amongst my favourites (up there with HL/HL2). I hope that there’s a sequel planned – the ending I received certainly allowed for it. I would recommend it to any fps fan.

Oh, if you’re wondering about hardware, I ran it at top quality without any problems whatsoever. My machine, after it’s recent upgrade is now specced as such: Core 2 Duo E6550 (2x 2.33Ghz, 4MB cache), 2GB DDR2 800MHz, 2×250GB SATA in hardware RAID0, X1950 Pro 256MB. I think the progressive texture loading feature that seems to be incorporated in the game helped make the most of the 256MB graphics memory I have – there was absolutely no need to uprgade to 512MB or higher, which I had considered based upon the recommended specs.