Crysis Warhead isn't a sequel. You play a different character whose story runs parallel to that of Nomad in Crysis. The look and feel matches that of the original game, but the storyline is much shorter. You can easily beat the game in one or two days. Crysis Warhead was touted as being much more optimized than Crysis. Minimum system requirements read as a P4 2.8GHz, 1GB ram, and a 9800Pro (yes, thats right, the ATI 9800Pro from about 5 years ago). Well, I can tell you that I haven't tried it on my old computer, but on my current computer (C2D 2.4GHz, 2GB ram, and an 8600GT, I still can't play the game smoothly on Medium (it lags in large open areas and for weather effects). Worth playing through once, like the original Crysis, but definitely doesn't have much replay value. The final boss battle is a joke, and when the credits starting rolling, I couldn't believe that was the end of the game. Multiplayer if it is anything like the original will be disappointment.
I'm... not, curiously. Because it's cheaper than the original Crysis, and I'm not getting it for the game itself. (Mods.)
It was fun to play through the story. Some of the levels are pretty interesting, and there are many more and a larger variety of vehicles. As you might infer, I downloaded this as I did with the original. I usually download games and then if I like them I'll buy. For many FPS's, I'll play through the storyline once, and never touch the multiplayer. For other games, I'll play through the storyline, love the multiplayer, and buy the game so I can play online. It doesn't make sense to pay $50 to play through a 5-6hr storyline campaign once, but if I'm going to play multiplayer for another 100hrs, then its totally worth it. For a game like Crysis/Crysis Warhead, the storyline missions are fun to play through once or twice, and if you have a machine that can handle it, the graphics are beautiful. But the multiplayer is subpar and you'll get low fps. Download it, play through the campaign, and delete. The only thing to note if you are going to buy it, you might want to buy through Steam. SecuRom limits you to 5 activations, but I think (not sure) you can download it repeatedly through Steam.
Bleh. I still have a copy of the first Crysis in its shrink-wrap. I won't be playing either for a few years at least.
Just finished it tonight. I haven't played the first one, but I do remember some features of it for comparison. I think the biggest returning annoyance would have been the freeze ray. Once you figure out how to stop or evade it it's OK, but it is a great example of a badly thought-out weapon; preventing the player from doing anything for 30 seconds except wait to see whether or not he/she lives (probably not) is not really my idea of a fun mechanic. What's wrong with 5-10 seconds? At least then, while you'll want to avoid it, it'll make you less inclined to throw bricks at things... or people... ...and yes, the last "boss" was pretty easy actually. I didn't mind. There were some fairly tough firefights up to that point already (the one just before the cave springs to mind, and the freeze-ray walker wasn't nice either). Rather than being anti-climactic, to me it seemed more of a relief... I think the thing that impressed me most about the game would have been its direction and execution; it did a fairly good job of keeping things fresh and coming up with novel ideas (the train segment, at least in theory, is pretty cool). I'm not too keen on the setting though since it largely prevents it from going anywhere that just makes you stare at the scenery. Still. Voice acting, cutscenes, all that were pretty good. The above, of course, was heavily marred by nothing other than my system; technically the only under-spec bit was a video card with slightly less fill rate/whatever than what was recommended, but what really hurt was the supposedly on-spec memory. It spent all freaking day paging out to disk, the checkpoints would freeze the game for 5-10 seconds (which made the train segment horrible to do anything with), and generally I more than once felt like bending the damn thing over my knee. Things actually played really really smoothly when it wasn't stalling on the swap-file. Wasn't overly pretty since auto-detect set everything to minimum, which made it resemble Guild Wars or maybe Oblivion rather than anything particularly current, but that goes with the territory. And it was nice enough, at least. Single-player games, though they may be good, rarely are worth the kind of money you pay for Warhead (or Crysis for that matter) however. It's just too short, and you don't get much out of it. On the other hand, if you intend to play Crysis Wars (bundled) it may much more easily be worth it. Myself, I have my eyes more on MW:LL.
Dude, Warhead is already practically there. Hence why I bought it so early. >.> You could be right, but at least in New Zealand it appears to be selling reasonably well. Might be because people can run it now or something...
Sounds like it. There's supposedly a "trial" run of Crysis Wars on about now for those that are interested (sounds kind of like the beta events they used to have for GW except the game is released in this case), but I don't know if it's possible to join during the week or not. I haven't really tried it myself. Probably will at some point though.