When I got this many moons ago I literally gave up as I remember being forced on the first mission and just being shot out of the sky. A similar experience to a CFS1 being put in a P47 way above its ceiling and expected to dogfight with no response to the controls. I literally could not do a thing and was basically shot out of the sky in seconds without any way to alter the situation ... I discarded it there and then as it appeared that if I didn't do that mission I couldn't progress. This is an old and very well loved sim and I must admit I didn't have the patience to find out what was the problem but the overwhelming reviews here and elsewhere give me pretty good reason to think there was something wrong and that I should find out. So 2 stars is only MY experience and should be taken in that vein as it was short and I will maybe try to get back to it as I hanker for that fighter sim experience and maybe this time I'll find out what the problem was / is. I even fired up CFS again and got it working (joystick problems on win 7 and above), as I enjoyed the experience back in the days I first bought it. I'm pretty sure if you are reading this wondering whether you should buy it. Trust the better reviewers rather than mine and at the price it's going for these days you have little to lose.
This is the best of the 3 games by far. All the one star reviews particularly the one who calls it "left wing propaganda" and "too political" are just waving the sausage wildly about. No game is perfect and yes there is grinding and there are bugs but not game breaking and the ai could be a hell of a lot better. "hmm I think I'll search over there now .. maybe over here .. " But all said and done the game is fantastic with a good strong story. Driving is a lot of fun with a number of different cars all with different handling , music is absolutely wonderful especially if you are old enough to remember 1968. Great atmosphere and graphics with a good feeling of town and city layouts with different feels. I got this game really cheap and it was a massive bang for the buck and I'd wait for a decent price before you buy (at the time of this review it seems abnormally expensive) .. that's all and you won't regret it.
Groundhog day? More computing power = More graphics = More mimicking of Hollywood's crap repetitive plots and story lines. I'm getting tired games trying to be a Hollywood look-a-like, it smacks of laziness and god knows Hollywood is already 80% lazy in my view, working and reworking the same old plots and stories. Not all games that lent themselves to a film genre or theme are bad but somehow when they are done badly and for no good reason it just falls flat. I have not played any previous titles in the series and having played this probably won't bother now even though reputedly they are very different. I leave the plot and explanation of story line to other reviewer other than my first sentence which says it all. This is so short I was aghast at how ridiculous and excuse for a story this was and it just seemed to me that this was just slapped together possibly for fans of the series. A quick buck. For me the groundhog theme just meant you played the same 3 maps with slight adjustements each time making this not only stupidly short but mindbogglingly boring and if you like the good ol' "Hollywood" Zombie shite then this is right up your street. I personally don't - I could never see the fascination with that craze and it's been done to death over decades and is just boring as hell to me. Why did I buy it if I don't like Zombies - 1) I got it free in a recent offer and 2) I didn't realise it had the 'horror' element. I don't recommend this at all, however, if you like this kind of zombie shootout stuff (god knows there's enough of them why would you want another), there's an arcade mode which probably allows you to mindlessly blow zombies away till your fingers bleed and/or your mother/spouse/brother/sister/aunty tells you to go the f**k to bed. For the rest I'll warrant your money would be spent more wisely elsewhere.
I remember all the noise about Crysis when it came out. I never did take the leap so when it appeared here I decided to give the game a go. I was disappointed mainly because of its linear nature and very short story. I'm not into the multiplayer side so if people bought this for that I can't comment but there isn't much content for single player mode. What I dislike in games like this is what I determine as cheating. Yes cheating - when programmers cheat they don't use the game engine with difficulty engineered properly they make situation where they want you to do something in THEIR way or they want you to have a particularly hard time (boss fights etc) they decide to alter the mechanics or force you to do specific things in specific ways and if you die you have to go through it all again. Such tactics are not only a cop out they are (for me at least ) intensely annoying. May some people find it challenging but not me, it's easy to change the rules to make things difficult instead of leaving it up to creating a difficult situation within the rules. I do hate it and there are a good many games that have done it in the past and present. Think Watchdogs and the police chases at points where they really want to make sure you are caught. I prefer to enjoy games not get frustrated by them and this frankly just drove me mad. Apart from that - well graphics are ok but I think about Farcry 1 which was around at a similar time and it was much better and you could explore more. Crysis - there is no opportunity for exploration at all - you are pressed into the mission and then from one to the next. So no open world here. At the time maybe some technical things might have been amazing graphic wise but in all I found it fairly dull but hey great leaves on the bushes! I liked the experience of stealth in this game though, the nano suit idea is good and how it operates is fun and got the maximum use by me. Basically when invoked you become invisible and a power meter is displayed - it depletes as you move but not if you stay still. Once depleted of the stealth mode is removed the bar recovers fairly quickly. So we could say there is a good leaning towards doing most missions with stealth. There are a lot of weapons but another source of frustration. I found that I'd end up having to stick to weapons found on enemies because this is the only way you are going to guarantee getting ammo. In fact the assault rifle you start with - I don't think I found any ammo at all for it. Each weapon could be modified (silencer, grenade launcher, laser pointer , flash light etc.) but it's all a bit of a mishmash as I had a mission where my weapons were taken away from me and then when I got them back a lot of the mods were no longer possible. Why ? I guess the mods were attachements but I never found any attachements in the field. Another frustration ? You get a Gauss rifle - do you keep it? It's really powerful but you can only have 2 weapons in that slot so hmm, it has 5 rounds in it - am I going to find more? Err I doubt it - well not till the very end so forget that. Sniper rifle is better but you are hard pushed to find ammo for it. The Gauss comes handy for the final boss fight at the end which is a very frustrating and annoying experience (cheating - yes, looking on the net you'll find a LOT of people thought there was a bug with their 'super weapon' but it was just because you had to do everything exactly the way they wanted you to do it otherwise - fail, do it again) So all these weapons are rendered almost useless in a way . the game is too short to keep stuff in the hope you'll find ammo for it. Your greatest source of ammo is from enemies if they are carrying the same gun or their camps where you'll get supplies every so often. In conclusion the game engine was capable of making things difficult without resorting to gimmicks (or what I call programmer's cheating). But on the whole I found - although I enjoyed some of it - the frustrations weren't worth the experience and it was very very short. I didn't pay much for this game so I didn't lose much in money or time. Meh! put it down to experience.
