I give it 4 stars.
The storyline was sufficient and kept my attention. Kinda simplistic and not too heavy so it still felt like I was playing a game.
The gameplay is fun. Good solid shooter gameplay. I felt the shields bar doubling up as a special ability bar added some extra depth to how I played it.
The different suit modes added variety to the approach players can take, whether they're stealthy, or a run 'n' gun type of player.
The visuals looked impressive naturally, however because so much emphasis was put into making it look realistic, players will often find themselves subconsciously finding flaws with the textures and character models, rather than enjoying the quality, as opposed to when playing a less detailed game and just accepting it as is.
The visuals also let the game down in terms of optimization. They turned Crysis into a benchmark game more than a mass market game. This restricted many players to have to experience a toned down lower setting version, even on a lot of modern computer builds available at the time.
I think it's a very fun game. It experimented a lot with gameplay mechanics, but it let itself down in some areas.
