EDIT: Title changed to something marginally less generic and more nonsensical...
Well, it's less a review of Crysis, more an aimless slog through my thought processes on the game. No score or anything. I just find writing them helps me sleep. Hopefully reading them will have the same effect for you!
It's quite long. Actually, no use beating around the bush, it's a borderline dissertation. Read it if you want to- please say nice things about it if you like it and direct people toward it. If you don't want to do either of those things...well, I dunno. Just fuck off I guess. Plenty of tedious system wars flame threads out there. It's a big internet...
Anyway, in the immortal words of Kel (or was it Kenan? A job for Wikipedia I think), 'Aaaaw, here goes'. Enjoy!
Crysis.
Crysis. Really? Like crisis, but with a 'y'? Oh, like cryo-statis, 'cos of all the ice and whatnot? 'Cos the companies called 'Crytek', and it's on the 'CryEngine 2', so really it would be cocking ridiculous if it didn't make a pun of the word 'cry' in the title. How would people know it had anything to do with Far Cry if it didn't? Tits...
Anyway, what review of Crysis could be complete without the following sentence?:
Mandatory review sentence 1:
'Admittedly, Crysis is quite the looker. But those looks come at a steep price, and even with a top of the end rig you'll be struggling to push a playable framerate when the action heats up. Such is the price we pay for near-photorealism'
And it's true! It's all true. It's one of those games that really makes you fear people will question the dimensions of your man bits if your graphics card isn't up to scratch. The other day, I swear to God, I was talking to this girl in a bar, and I told her I had to set the volumetric effects to medium to get more than 20 fps, and she kicked me right in the balls and walked off. Honest guv.
It really sets the geeks (myself included) apart from the normal people. The endless fiddling with settings, seeing what you can get away with putting to high and what has to be medium (ignoring the buggers who can get away with 'very high'- there's a circle of hell with your name on it...) becomes a game in itself. A (mostly)true(ish)story follows: all that has been changed are some of the words, particularly when it makes it look like I said more clever and witty things than I did at the time...
The day: roughly a week after the release of Crysis. Maybe a Tuesday. It's not important.
The scene: my bedroom, somewhere in York, England.
The smell: fish and chips, oddly. It seems that whenever a large pile of dirty clothes piles itself up in the corner of my room this is the resultant smell. Must investigate this further.
My housemate enters the room, stage left. He carries with him an opened can of cheap but potent cider. It is rather early in the day, but I don't want to say anything to him. I'm not his mother, for heaven's sake. He has entered just as the Installshield Wizard has finished shovelling Crysis onto my computers hard drive. He is a casual gamer (i.e. he does not enjoy adjusting .cfg and .ini files to enable different levels motion blur and HDR lighting. Weirdo.) He plonks himself upon a beanbag.
'What's this?' he asks, turning the game case over in his hands, 'Some sort of shooter?' Perhaps 'twas the guns and explosions that gave it away.
'Indeed it is, my prematurely inebriated friend. Not only a shooter, but the best looking shooting game available to man- nay, the best looking game of ANY genre' (I didn't really say 'nay', but I think I shall more in the future). He scrutinises the back of the case. I skip the readme and launch the game. Several splash screens leap into life; nVidia; Intel; Special Brew. I stab at the escape key to no avail. I turn my attention to my friend as the adverts do their thing.
'Remember that video I showed you last week?' I ask him. He nods slowly, remembering the video of Crysis I had shown right after our marathon horse porn session. 'It's that game. It's very pretty. Clever physics, too.'
'Oh' he mouths, seemingly unimpressed. 'Right then', I think, 'this'll impress the fucker. I'm gonna fire this baby up, whack up the details and shoot the shit out of some foreigners. And some aliens, depending where the mood takes me. At least I will once this Mazda advert is over. Is that an advert for Airwaves gum? Why would I want new double-glazing? I already have some Custard Creams...' Advertising in games. Mad. I resolve to write about it another time and continue this story.
Finally, title screen. I head straight for the options menu (annoying swishing menu graphics are the last thing you want when you'll be spending more time fiddling with the options than playing the game, but whatever...) I crank the settings to high- it recommended medium, but then it always underestimates, surely? I leave the resolution at 1680x1050. No antialiasing, to be on the safe side. Should be fine. My 7950gx2 purrs confidently away inside my tower. I purr back. My house mate gives me an odd look...possibly because of the purring. 'What are you doing? Play the game. I'm a busy man.' he says. He has one lecture to attend in four hours time. Busy hardly seems the word. 'I'm just making sure it...works' I reply. It'll be fine, I think, clicking on new game. I start the game. A loading screen. I pretend not to notice. An unskippable into cinematic begins. It's a mix of the game engine and some pre-rendered gubbins. It looks awesome. Bullets ricochet off improbable pectoral muscles. Trucks are thrown through the air at hapless teenage conscripts. 'Hmm' my housemate murmurs.
Another loading screen. 'Press any key to start'. My housemate, in an ill advised burst of wit, begins to say 'where's the any key?' I shoot him a look that suggests if he finished the sentence I would take him outside and drown him in the pond. That Simpsons episode has a lot on answer for. I press the space bar. The computer deems this an appropriate key. The game begins. A cutscene begins. A slideshow of a cutscene begins. 'Aaaah, wank'. The geek in me cannot but admire the liberal bump-maps slathered like so much gravy over every surface. The eyes shine. Pores are visible on faces. Christ, it's just like talking to a real person. 'Why so slow?' my housemate inquires. It is very slow, possibly 4 or 5 frames per second. You can tell you're in trouble when you can actually count the frame rate with the naked eye. I pretend not to notice, but as time passes I realise compromises will have to be made. As soon as the opportunity presents itself I return to the options: volumetric effects, post-processing and shadows are all turned to medium. I resume the game. Still slideshow-ing. I sigh and lower the resolution (1024x768 on a 16:10 monitor. The shame...) Frame rates are tolerable.
It is around this point in the rambling story that I realise I have yet to play the game. I have yet to shoot a man and fling his body at his friend, or set a barrel alight and use it to slaughter a colony of tortoises (in the game, at least...) I glance at my housemate: he has begun playing a demo of Monopoly on his mobile phone. The game progresses. I sprint towards the distress signal of a fallen comrade (forced to turn object detail to medium- too much foliage. Make up for it by returning post-processing to it's rightful high settings). My housemate buys Old Kent Road then lands on Income Tax. I step onto the crest of hill, overlooking a vast tropical bay. Trees sway in the breeze. In the distance, a Korean takes a slash off a jetty. Boats patrol the beautiful natural harbour. I am, for the briefest of moments, struck, much as at that pivotal moment in Bioshock ('would you kindly...'): much as when I stepped off that prison ship in Morrowind. Here was a world, encased in my computer. I turn to my friend.
He stands up, stares at the screen: 'water looks a bit syrupy' he suggests. He takes a slow swig of cider and leaves.
End of story. And he wasn't wrong, of course. Look at the water in Crysis, even on Very High. Then go outside and look at some actual water. Similar? Hardly. Near photo-realistic? My arse, it is. Crysis is a beautiful game with some lovely motion-blur, but it picks difficult targets. Remember when the Playstation first came out, and everywhere you looked there was lens flare? Sun? Lens flare. Trees? Lens flare. Sheep? Lens flare. As far as game designers were concerned, lens flare made things look real. It occurred to them soon afterwards that, as human beings, we do not experience lens flare unless viewing objects through a lens. As most of us do not spend our lives viewing our neighbours through telescopic sights (don't know how it is where you live, but that sort of behaviour gets one cautioned by the police rather speedily in England) it is as convincing a visual effect as... well, as the 'bloom' effect of the Xbox generation. 'Bloom', for those of you too young to remember (which would make you foetuses of some sort) was an annoying, intrusive graphical effect put to good use in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time to create a dreamlike, sleepy (in the nicest possible sense) atmosphere, and best demonstrated as a massive pain in the arse by Deus Ex: Invisible War. It's kind of like drawing something in charcoal then smudging it everywhere.
Theory: light sources appear to give off a soft, ambient glow.
Effect: game looks as though it is being viewed through jizz smeared swimming goggles.
Mistakes of the past and all that, eh? Modern game designers are no better, though. The most recent babies have been High Dynamic Range lighting and post-processing effects. Guess which is which:
-One is a curious method of rendering the extremities of the effects of changes in light sources on the human eye. It generally tends to end up with a striking, blinding quality to the whole world, occasionally topped off by, as was observed by a wiser man than I, a sheep which looks less like livestock and more like the flashpoint of the Hiroshima blast.
-The other consists of a suite of effects (motion blur, depth of field effects) which mercilessly and relentlessly kick the shit out of your graphics card and processor until they both switch themselves off and have a nice rest.
These effects, when taken separately, may strike the cynic as a load of balls. Together, they may create a beautiful experience. Call it what you will, though: the Uncanny Valley, the innate critical nature of the human condition- they still look like a computer game. Ever noticed the depth of field effect in real life? Not unless you hold a finger in front of your face and stare and the horizon- the brain is good at stopping us from noticing such things, and when they are flagged up by a game it seems all the more conspicuous. How about you stop the water looking like syrup first, then you try and simulate the way my eyes focus on things and that sort of bollocks?
If you're still reading this by now you may have noticed what could be construed as a 'negative' tone. But Crysis has a lot to offer, and delivers with jugs full of gusto. it provides the best shooting action I have yet to see in a videogame, without question. Guns that feel like guns (at least what I would imagine guns to feel like. I've never tried to drop a man at 150 yards with an assault rifle, so it's sort of out of my remit). Explosions to die for. Many people dying in said explosions. Stunning vistas (not that Vista...). Super cool super powers. Free form levels begging to be played in different ways. It's awesome. Mostly. Here, of course, like a drunken housemate caught out by an unforeseen doorstep in the dark, we stumble headlong over the proviso we have all been waiting for, the second mandatory review sentence:
Mandatory review sentence 2:
'The game is excellent, excellent fun...for the first two-thirds of the duration. From there the non-linear level design and cunning human enemies are replaced by on-rail action and scripted fights with some less than inspiring alien foes.'
Yeah, you know what, tactful textbook reviewer with your oh-so delicate euphemisms? 'Less than inspiring alien foes'? Fuck that, those aliens are balls. The whole last third of this game is balls. I've had more fun queuing in shops than I did fighting those bastard aliens with their stupid ice guns and bastard respawning. I could barely even shoot the fuckers because the frame rate was so bad because it was SOOOO important I have depth of field effects to make it look prettier when they kept on fucking killing me (that's more my being a shallow and superficial wanker than anything else, but sill...) A brief look at the minutes from a meeting at Crytek towards the end of the game's development cycle could shed some light:
October 3rd, 2006: review of end-stage position.
TERRY: Well, everyone, I think we can all be very proud. We've pulled off quite the accomplishment here. Not only a superb shooter, but the best looking game ever. Slaps on the back all round. I especially liked the last third of the game. I think we can all appreciate how we made a bit of a...balls-up with Far Cry. Mutants and that sort of business, not much fun. But we've avoided that pitfall this time. I love that twist at the end, having to use all your cunning to escape the North Korean army, then that pitched fight between those two battleships, and to top it all off when Brian Blessed shot that laser out of his...
TIM: Actually, sorry Terry. We...took that bit out. Thought the players might like it if we mix things up a bit. So we've got these amazing aliens that jump around and pelt you with ice, and they're like all jumping around, and you're like 'WHOA!' Yeah...it's pretty effing sweet.
TERRY: Oh. Ok, well, you're the designers! I'm sure their just as fun to fight as the humans, right? They don't just feel cheap and desperate?
TIM: Erm...well...I'll let Jeremy answer that one. Jeremy?
EDWARD: I'm not Jeremy.
TIM: Oh, sorry Ed. My eyes hadn't focused on the foreground properly, I couldn't make you out very well. So where is Jeremy?
EDWARD: I'm afraid Jeremy...passed away last night. He was...crushed by a falling tree. The police said it was a tragic accident, although they were very impressed by how realistically the tree fell on him.
TIM: Oh...God. Well, it's how he would have wanted to go I guess. What was he working on?
EDWARD: Says here...general performance optimization and bug checking on the last boss fight.
TIM: Shit...I'm sure they'll be fine. No use CRY-ing over spilt milk. See...see what I did? CRY-ing? Crytek? See?...
TIM: That's...awful, Tim. Just awful...
It really is a game of two halves, albeit halves of quite different size. What a stupid saying. Buy it. Play it. Love 2/3 of it. Then shelve it, and in 10 years time take it down from the shelve. Boot it up on your new PC with an Ati-Shitkicker 5670xtxxx, whack that water up to Very High, and quietly muse to yourself:
'Goodness, that syrup looks a bit watery.'
(I've decided to award a score after all: Q out of 17. Hope it helps clarify my stance.)
Well, it's less a review of Crysis, more an aimless slog through my thought processes on the game. No score or anything. I just find writing them helps me sleep. Hopefully reading them will have the same effect for you!
It's quite long. Actually, no use beating around the bush, it's a borderline dissertation. Read it if you want to- please say nice things about it if you like it and direct people toward it. If you don't want to do either of those things...well, I dunno. Just fuck off I guess. Plenty of tedious system wars flame threads out there. It's a big internet...
Anyway, in the immortal words of Kel (or was it Kenan? A job for Wikipedia I think), 'Aaaaw, here goes'. Enjoy!
Crysis.
Crysis. Really? Like crisis, but with a 'y'? Oh, like cryo-statis, 'cos of all the ice and whatnot? 'Cos the companies called 'Crytek', and it's on the 'CryEngine 2', so really it would be cocking ridiculous if it didn't make a pun of the word 'cry' in the title. How would people know it had anything to do with Far Cry if it didn't? Tits...
Anyway, what review of Crysis could be complete without the following sentence?:
Mandatory review sentence 1:
'Admittedly, Crysis is quite the looker. But those looks come at a steep price, and even with a top of the end rig you'll be struggling to push a playable framerate when the action heats up. Such is the price we pay for near-photorealism'
And it's true! It's all true. It's one of those games that really makes you fear people will question the dimensions of your man bits if your graphics card isn't up to scratch. The other day, I swear to God, I was talking to this girl in a bar, and I told her I had to set the volumetric effects to medium to get more than 20 fps, and she kicked me right in the balls and walked off. Honest guv.
It really sets the geeks (myself included) apart from the normal people. The endless fiddling with settings, seeing what you can get away with putting to high and what has to be medium (ignoring the buggers who can get away with 'very high'- there's a circle of hell with your name on it...) becomes a game in itself. A (mostly)true(ish)story follows: all that has been changed are some of the words, particularly when it makes it look like I said more clever and witty things than I did at the time...
The day: roughly a week after the release of Crysis. Maybe a Tuesday. It's not important.
The scene: my bedroom, somewhere in York, England.
The smell: fish and chips, oddly. It seems that whenever a large pile of dirty clothes piles itself up in the corner of my room this is the resultant smell. Must investigate this further.
My housemate enters the room, stage left. He carries with him an opened can of cheap but potent cider. It is rather early in the day, but I don't want to say anything to him. I'm not his mother, for heaven's sake. He has entered just as the Installshield Wizard has finished shovelling Crysis onto my computers hard drive. He is a casual gamer (i.e. he does not enjoy adjusting .cfg and .ini files to enable different levels motion blur and HDR lighting. Weirdo.) He plonks himself upon a beanbag.
'What's this?' he asks, turning the game case over in his hands, 'Some sort of shooter?' Perhaps 'twas the guns and explosions that gave it away.
'Indeed it is, my prematurely inebriated friend. Not only a shooter, but the best looking shooting game available to man- nay, the best looking game of ANY genre' (I didn't really say 'nay', but I think I shall more in the future). He scrutinises the back of the case. I skip the readme and launch the game. Several splash screens leap into life; nVidia; Intel; Special Brew. I stab at the escape key to no avail. I turn my attention to my friend as the adverts do their thing.
'Remember that video I showed you last week?' I ask him. He nods slowly, remembering the video of Crysis I had shown right after our marathon horse porn session. 'It's that game. It's very pretty. Clever physics, too.'
'Oh' he mouths, seemingly unimpressed. 'Right then', I think, 'this'll impress the fucker. I'm gonna fire this baby up, whack up the details and shoot the shit out of some foreigners. And some aliens, depending where the mood takes me. At least I will once this Mazda advert is over. Is that an advert for Airwaves gum? Why would I want new double-glazing? I already have some Custard Creams...' Advertising in games. Mad. I resolve to write about it another time and continue this story.
Finally, title screen. I head straight for the options menu (annoying swishing menu graphics are the last thing you want when you'll be spending more time fiddling with the options than playing the game, but whatever...) I crank the settings to high- it recommended medium, but then it always underestimates, surely? I leave the resolution at 1680x1050. No antialiasing, to be on the safe side. Should be fine. My 7950gx2 purrs confidently away inside my tower. I purr back. My house mate gives me an odd look...possibly because of the purring. 'What are you doing? Play the game. I'm a busy man.' he says. He has one lecture to attend in four hours time. Busy hardly seems the word. 'I'm just making sure it...works' I reply. It'll be fine, I think, clicking on new game. I start the game. A loading screen. I pretend not to notice. An unskippable into cinematic begins. It's a mix of the game engine and some pre-rendered gubbins. It looks awesome. Bullets ricochet off improbable pectoral muscles. Trucks are thrown through the air at hapless teenage conscripts. 'Hmm' my housemate murmurs.
Another loading screen. 'Press any key to start'. My housemate, in an ill advised burst of wit, begins to say 'where's the any key?' I shoot him a look that suggests if he finished the sentence I would take him outside and drown him in the pond. That Simpsons episode has a lot on answer for. I press the space bar. The computer deems this an appropriate key. The game begins. A cutscene begins. A slideshow of a cutscene begins. 'Aaaah, wank'. The geek in me cannot but admire the liberal bump-maps slathered like so much gravy over every surface. The eyes shine. Pores are visible on faces. Christ, it's just like talking to a real person. 'Why so slow?' my housemate inquires. It is very slow, possibly 4 or 5 frames per second. You can tell you're in trouble when you can actually count the frame rate with the naked eye. I pretend not to notice, but as time passes I realise compromises will have to be made. As soon as the opportunity presents itself I return to the options: volumetric effects, post-processing and shadows are all turned to medium. I resume the game. Still slideshow-ing. I sigh and lower the resolution (1024x768 on a 16:10 monitor. The shame...) Frame rates are tolerable.
It is around this point in the rambling story that I realise I have yet to play the game. I have yet to shoot a man and fling his body at his friend, or set a barrel alight and use it to slaughter a colony of tortoises (in the game, at least...) I glance at my housemate: he has begun playing a demo of Monopoly on his mobile phone. The game progresses. I sprint towards the distress signal of a fallen comrade (forced to turn object detail to medium- too much foliage. Make up for it by returning post-processing to it's rightful high settings). My housemate buys Old Kent Road then lands on Income Tax. I step onto the crest of hill, overlooking a vast tropical bay. Trees sway in the breeze. In the distance, a Korean takes a slash off a jetty. Boats patrol the beautiful natural harbour. I am, for the briefest of moments, struck, much as at that pivotal moment in Bioshock ('would you kindly...'): much as when I stepped off that prison ship in Morrowind. Here was a world, encased in my computer. I turn to my friend.
He stands up, stares at the screen: 'water looks a bit syrupy' he suggests. He takes a slow swig of cider and leaves.
End of story. And he wasn't wrong, of course. Look at the water in Crysis, even on Very High. Then go outside and look at some actual water. Similar? Hardly. Near photo-realistic? My arse, it is. Crysis is a beautiful game with some lovely motion-blur, but it picks difficult targets. Remember when the Playstation first came out, and everywhere you looked there was lens flare? Sun? Lens flare. Trees? Lens flare. Sheep? Lens flare. As far as game designers were concerned, lens flare made things look real. It occurred to them soon afterwards that, as human beings, we do not experience lens flare unless viewing objects through a lens. As most of us do not spend our lives viewing our neighbours through telescopic sights (don't know how it is where you live, but that sort of behaviour gets one cautioned by the police rather speedily in England) it is as convincing a visual effect as... well, as the 'bloom' effect of the Xbox generation. 'Bloom', for those of you too young to remember (which would make you foetuses of some sort) was an annoying, intrusive graphical effect put to good use in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time to create a dreamlike, sleepy (in the nicest possible sense) atmosphere, and best demonstrated as a massive pain in the arse by Deus Ex: Invisible War. It's kind of like drawing something in charcoal then smudging it everywhere.
Theory: light sources appear to give off a soft, ambient glow.
Effect: game looks as though it is being viewed through jizz smeared swimming goggles.
Mistakes of the past and all that, eh? Modern game designers are no better, though. The most recent babies have been High Dynamic Range lighting and post-processing effects. Guess which is which:
-One is a curious method of rendering the extremities of the effects of changes in light sources on the human eye. It generally tends to end up with a striking, blinding quality to the whole world, occasionally topped off by, as was observed by a wiser man than I, a sheep which looks less like livestock and more like the flashpoint of the Hiroshima blast.
-The other consists of a suite of effects (motion blur, depth of field effects) which mercilessly and relentlessly kick the shit out of your graphics card and processor until they both switch themselves off and have a nice rest.
These effects, when taken separately, may strike the cynic as a load of balls. Together, they may create a beautiful experience. Call it what you will, though: the Uncanny Valley, the innate critical nature of the human condition- they still look like a computer game. Ever noticed the depth of field effect in real life? Not unless you hold a finger in front of your face and stare and the horizon- the brain is good at stopping us from noticing such things, and when they are flagged up by a game it seems all the more conspicuous. How about you stop the water looking like syrup first, then you try and simulate the way my eyes focus on things and that sort of bollocks?
If you're still reading this by now you may have noticed what could be construed as a 'negative' tone. But Crysis has a lot to offer, and delivers with jugs full of gusto. it provides the best shooting action I have yet to see in a videogame, without question. Guns that feel like guns (at least what I would imagine guns to feel like. I've never tried to drop a man at 150 yards with an assault rifle, so it's sort of out of my remit). Explosions to die for. Many people dying in said explosions. Stunning vistas (not that Vista...). Super cool super powers. Free form levels begging to be played in different ways. It's awesome. Mostly. Here, of course, like a drunken housemate caught out by an unforeseen doorstep in the dark, we stumble headlong over the proviso we have all been waiting for, the second mandatory review sentence:
Mandatory review sentence 2:
'The game is excellent, excellent fun...for the first two-thirds of the duration. From there the non-linear level design and cunning human enemies are replaced by on-rail action and scripted fights with some less than inspiring alien foes.'
Yeah, you know what, tactful textbook reviewer with your oh-so delicate euphemisms? 'Less than inspiring alien foes'? Fuck that, those aliens are balls. The whole last third of this game is balls. I've had more fun queuing in shops than I did fighting those bastard aliens with their stupid ice guns and bastard respawning. I could barely even shoot the fuckers because the frame rate was so bad because it was SOOOO important I have depth of field effects to make it look prettier when they kept on fucking killing me (that's more my being a shallow and superficial wanker than anything else, but sill...) A brief look at the minutes from a meeting at Crytek towards the end of the game's development cycle could shed some light:
October 3rd, 2006: review of end-stage position.
TERRY: Well, everyone, I think we can all be very proud. We've pulled off quite the accomplishment here. Not only a superb shooter, but the best looking game ever. Slaps on the back all round. I especially liked the last third of the game. I think we can all appreciate how we made a bit of a...balls-up with Far Cry. Mutants and that sort of business, not much fun. But we've avoided that pitfall this time. I love that twist at the end, having to use all your cunning to escape the North Korean army, then that pitched fight between those two battleships, and to top it all off when Brian Blessed shot that laser out of his...
TIM: Actually, sorry Terry. We...took that bit out. Thought the players might like it if we mix things up a bit. So we've got these amazing aliens that jump around and pelt you with ice, and they're like all jumping around, and you're like 'WHOA!' Yeah...it's pretty effing sweet.
TERRY: Oh. Ok, well, you're the designers! I'm sure their just as fun to fight as the humans, right? They don't just feel cheap and desperate?
TIM: Erm...well...I'll let Jeremy answer that one. Jeremy?
EDWARD: I'm not Jeremy.
TIM: Oh, sorry Ed. My eyes hadn't focused on the foreground properly, I couldn't make you out very well. So where is Jeremy?
EDWARD: I'm afraid Jeremy...passed away last night. He was...crushed by a falling tree. The police said it was a tragic accident, although they were very impressed by how realistically the tree fell on him.
TIM: Oh...God. Well, it's how he would have wanted to go I guess. What was he working on?
EDWARD: Says here...general performance optimization and bug checking on the last boss fight.
TIM: Shit...I'm sure they'll be fine. No use CRY-ing over spilt milk. See...see what I did? CRY-ing? Crytek? See?...
TIM: That's...awful, Tim. Just awful...
It really is a game of two halves, albeit halves of quite different size. What a stupid saying. Buy it. Play it. Love 2/3 of it. Then shelve it, and in 10 years time take it down from the shelve. Boot it up on your new PC with an Ati-Shitkicker 5670xtxxx, whack that water up to Very High, and quietly muse to yourself:
'Goodness, that syrup looks a bit watery.'
(I've decided to award a score after all: Q out of 17. Hope it helps clarify my stance.)
