Crytek came out of nowhere and burst onto the scene in 2004 with Far Cry, beating Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 to the punch with a game that arguably looked even better than the two highly anticipated releases. With a lush jungle setting and fantastic draw distances, Far Cry still looks impressive today, but it pales in comparison to 2007’s Crysis.

Crysis, the spiritual sequel to Far Cry (the actual sequel is being developed by a different company, surpasses its predecessor in every way and vaults to the top of a crowded cadre of first person shooters. With amazing graphics and production values and innovative freeform gameplay, Crysis holds its own against competitors like Call of Duty 4, Rainbow 6: Vegas, and The Orange Box.

Crysis is a first person shooter set in the near future, where you play as a US Special Forces operative wearing armor that gives you all the good superpowers except for flying or looking good in spandex. Endowed with strength, armor, invisibility, and speed, you must infiltrate an island in the Pacific to stop the North Korean army from doing a bunch of stuff.

It is unlikely that you will care about the specifics, though, because the story in Crysis is about as gripping as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that only exists as an excuse to have him blow stuff up. Thankfully, instead of being forced to watch the Governator have all the fun, Crysis gives you the power. Even more than in Far Cry, and certainly more than in most shooters, you can choose your own adventure.

Stealthy players can sneak through bushes with a silenced gun, using their cloak to infiltrate enemy lines. More action oriented players might charge right in with a stolen vehicle and blow the place to pieces, pausing only to lift an explosive barrel over their head to hurl it into a shack. Cowards like me will just run away until an objective requires them to shoot something. Crysis allows you to play however you want to play, and the fun you can get from such an open canvas is hardly limited.

And what a canvas it is. Crysis excels technically, with graphics that easily exceed every other game and a destructible environment that one-ups Half-Life 2’s seesaw physics puzzles and turns the world into a constantly changing battlefield.

Trees topple under a hail of machinegun bullets, enemy grenades destroy the shack you were hiding in, and wheels blow out from under you as you commandeer enemy jeeps. The interactivity of Crysis’s environment is great, from a lack of barriers or invisible walls to indigenous wildlife (or Korean soldiers) that can be picked up and thrown into each other.

All this comes at a price, though. Crysis looks like it’s a game from at least a year in the future, and its system requirements approximate that. A fast CPU, lots of RAM, and a new video card will allow you to experience Crysis in (almost) all of its glory, but players with less powerful systems will have to make do with lowered graphics settings and resolutions. Crysis looks great, but if you have to run every game on the highest possible settings, you’ll need to pay for a rig that can do it.

Technical and story issues aside, Crysis offers freedom, graphics, and gameplay that set it apart from more linear shooters. With AI that often (but not always) manages to stand up to the challenge of fighting against a player who has almost no limits placed on him, Crysis has a place in every gamer’s collection as one of the best first person shooters to come out recently. As the first game in a planned trilogy, Crysis promises to be a fountain of graphical and interactive innovation for a long time to come.