Crysis (series)



"J: A quantum computer compared to an ordinary computer is like the sun compared to a charcoal drawing of the sun S: Supposedly the answer will come before you even put the question in. A: But will it run Crysis? S: No J: No"

- Random chat log, on Crysis ' foremost distinguishing feature

""Son, you seem to think this is some kind of game.""

- Jacob Hargreave, Crysis: Legion

Crysis is a video game series created by Crytek, previously known for Far Cry.

In the year 2020, an alien structure has been found buried in an island in the South China sea. The US army sends Raptor Team, a group of Delta Force soldiers equipped with multifunctional Nanosuits, including the Player Character Jake "Nomad" Dunn, to rescue the archaeologists who found it and then were taken captive by North Korean forces. However, the aliens are not friendly to either side and Nomad must combat both the North Koreans and the aliens.

Crysis features the same open-ended style of meeting objectives that appeared in Far Cry. It also is ridiculously future-proof - if you can run it on maximum settings and still get good performance, you probably won't need to worry about the system requirements of another game for a good while. Allow us to express a desire for your computer.

An expansion, Crysis Warhead has since been released, putting the player in the role of Major "Psycho" Sykes through the timeline of the original. A touted feature of Warhead, turned out to be surprisingly true, is improved performance on higher graphic settings.

Bridging the gap between Crysis 1 and 2 we have a comic miniseries that follows Raptor Team directly after the end of Crysis. It ties in neatly with both games, and explains quite a bit about the setting and background.

Crysis 2 is set three years after the first game. Written by Richard K Morgan of Altered Carbon fame, the game opens up with a plot about an alien virus infecting the citizens of Manhattan, riots breaking out, and eventually cuts to the viewpoint of a man codenamed "Alcatraz" and his Marine squadmates sent to rescue Dr. Nathan Gould, who is trapped somewhere in Manhattan. However, their submarine gets attacked on the way, and Alcatraz himself barely survives before being rescued. From thereon, it's up to Alcatraz to figure out what in the world is happening on Manhattan, and why human paramilitary forces are out to kill him and seemingly everyone else that moves in the name of containing the infection.

Crysis 3 has been announced, and is currently slated for release in spring of 2013. The story, set in 2047 involves Alcatraz and fighting the remnants of CELL and new Ceph through the overgrown ruins of New York. There's a city-sized dome and a bow involved.

It's novelized in Crysis: Legion, by Peter Watts, which greatly expands on the story and nature of the Nanosuit, and adds an (un)healthy dose of Watts' hard-science Nightmare Fuel.

"..some kind of outer shell. It seems organic... I'm not alone in here. Something just hit me! Strickland, if you can hear this, you need to get everyone off this island! They're all waking up!"
 * Abnormal Ammo: The Alien MOAC (Molecular Accelerator) turns water vapors in the air into icicles and launches them at enemies. Yes, it shoots ice. In the sequel, the K-VOLT fired electromagnetically charged pellets, having gone from usually non-lethal far-ranged multi-target riot-suppressing taser to lethal weapon.
 * Admiring the Abomination: Hargreave is prone to this.
 * Aggressive Categorism: In Legion, Colonel Barclay refers to War of the Worlds when discussing the Ceph. Gould is Mind Screwed by this - he's a Properly Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist who has feared The Government and especially the military his entire life, and "lifers who read ancient science fiction don’t fit comfortably into his worldview." This worldview is reinforced a few minutes later, when Barclay dismisses his theory on how the Nanosuit could be used to instantly eliminate the Synthetic Plague, along with all the Ceph. He also gets his satisfaction within the hour when Hargreave instructs Alcatraz on how to use the Nanosuit to destroy a Tower.
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: Completely averted. The SECOND AI in the Nanosuit 2 does its job of keeping the operator informed and alive and the suit functions integrated so well that even its creators are dumbstruck. It's stated that, by the end of the events in Crysis 2, the suit and its AI are so deeply connected with Alcatraz, that most of his thought processes happen outside of his skull.
 * Watts adds that it not only made him smarter and gave him new skills, it altered his mind so he enjoyed the process.
 * Air Jousting: In the zero-G level during the first game, any aliens not armed with actual weapons would basically fly forward and ram Nomad at high speed, clawing at him in the process. The attacks would do high damage, though it would also put them in range of the instakill jelly grab.
 * AKA-47: Variation in that while "SCAR" is the name of a real gun, it's applied to a futuristic derivative of the Heckler & Koch XM8, not the Fabrique Nationale SCAR. This is a small Genius Bonus, since the XM8 was also a contender for the SCAR trials, but was beaten by Fabrique Nationale. Played straight with the FY-71.
 * Most of the guns in Crysis 2 are futuristic renditions of modern weaponry. The only two that seem to be an "original" mishmash are the SCARAB and Feline.
 * Aliens Are Bastards: Whatever the Ceph are doing here on Earth, they sure as hell didn't come in peace. Hargreave suggests that
 * Alien Invasion:.
 * All There in the Manual: The real names of the strike team are hidden in the editor. Nomad's name is Jake Dunn, Psycho's is Michael Sykes, Prophet's is Major Laurence Barnes, Aztec's is Harold Cortez, and Jester's is Martin Hawker.
 * Goes for the sequel as well. By reading some special entries on the MyCrysis.com site, you'll find out that Hargreave was born in 1896, that he, Karl Rasch and Walter Gould undertook an expedition to Tunguska in 1919, and that Hargreave saved the other two by carrying them across the Siberian wastes in an apparently superhuman feat. You also get to read some of the e-mail conversations that you can discover in-game, which leads to a minor spoiler.
 * Already Done for You: In the last level of the original, . In Warhead, we see how it was done.
 * Apocalyptic Log: Though it (thankfully) doesn't become one, Nomad narrating his journey through the lithoship in the first game has all the hallmarks of one. Several times it's implied Nomad really does expect to die in there.

"Major Strickland: "I'm a Marine, son! I'll walk on water if I have to.""
 * Artificial Gravity: Or, rather, an artificial lack of it. It's one of the best sequences in recent gaming and very well done; just be really careful. It's easy to get confused and lost.
 * Artificial Brilliance: The KPA troops will flank you, flush you out with grenades, and blast through walls to try to kill you. The Elite KPA will switch between armor modes to survive as long as possible, while making your life miserable as they flank you.
 * Both the KPA soldiers and the alien Troopers in Warhead will use lasers (laser pointers for the KPA and a small LIDAR for the aliens) to check places where you're likely to be cloaked. Since the Nanosuit isn't really transparent and can't reproduce a laser, it will put you in trouble quite a bit.
 * The Ceph soldiers in Crysis 2 have practically unreadable body language, and once in a while they might spontaneously decide to release an EMP burst that drains all of your suit energy; it's the most annoying thing when you're trying to sneak around them.
 * There's also the fact that they use the terrain to their advantage, doing things like wall running or jumping onto elevated positions to get a better angle on you.
 * CELL troops took pages from the KPA playbook and carry laser sights when they know you're in the area. They can spot you even while cloaked if close enough. CELL troops will fire off flares that summon reinforcements and realistically flank and canvas an area for you if cloaked. They're actually smart enough that you can realistically trick out and confuse them; for example, if you're being shot at and run toward cover, and cloak midway then change directions, the AI will initially think you're taking cover behind that object but quickly realize the ruse and start hunting for you normally.
 * Artificial Stupidity: Youtube is filled with funny videos showing flaws in enemy soldier A.I. Thankfully, the more blatant bugs have been patched out, although the KPA are still happy to do stuff like chase you into the water and drown, or simply stare into space when you enter cloak mode.
 * The pathfinding system for Crysis 2 was reportedly unchanged from the original. Basically, the AI thinks they're in a jungle when they're actually fighting in the city. You end up with AI who occasionally gets stuck running into a wall or can't decide which side of a hedge they want to be on.
 * Ascended Extra: Psycho, your squadmate in the original, is the player character of Warhead.
 * Ascended Meme: "Can it run Crysis?" is the first achievement/trophy you get in the console versions of Crysis 2.
 * A number of memes pop up during Alcatraz's interviews in Crysis: Legion, including the "NOM" system on the N2 suit that consumes and converts biomass for energy, and references to Ceiling Cat and the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Alcatraz himself. There's some Fridge Brilliance in the latter, as in order to be a Marine in 2023, Alcatraz would almost certainly have to be in his early teens now, so he'd naturally possess some knowledge of internet culture.
 * MAXIMUM (NOUN)
 * Author Avatar: Take a look at Commander Lockhart's face. Now, take a look at Cevat Yerli's face.
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: Both played straight and subverted with the North Korean general. Done the same way with the North Korean colonel in Crysis Warhead, but here, the progression of the trope marks either Psycho's crowning moments of awesome or Nightmare Fuel, depending on one's perspective.
 * Ceph commanders from Crysis 2 are significantly more resistant and powerful than the others as well.
 * Awesome but Impractical: The air stomp move in Crysis 2. It's difficult to set up, tricky to hit with (although there is a modest amount of splash damage to make it less frustrating), and doesn't really do that much damage when you consider how hard it is to actually set it up and use it.
 * There's also the powered melee attack. It can kill a standard CELL trooper or Ceph in one hit, but it uses up your entire energy meter, leaving you vulnerable to attack from all the other enemies nearby. Not to mention you can kill humans with two uncharged melee attacks in less time. It also doesn't do enough damage to kill a Commander or really hurt a Heavy.
 * Back for the Dead/Dropped a Bridge on Him/Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome:
 * In the comic interquel,
 * in Crysis 2 is a more obvious example.
 * Badass Boast:

"Hargreave: "Better men than you have tried, son. Better men than you, and things so far beyond men you can't even begin to imagine them.""
 * Hargreave gets an epic one in Crysis 2 after Lockhart promises to :

"Hargreave: If it's at all possible, son, d'you think you could keep my billion dollar suit out of the line of fire for awhile? It'd really be better for all involved if you came back to me in one piece."
 * Beat Them At Their Own Game: Legion speculates that this is what the NYC Ceph tried to do. It doesn't work very well.
 * Beehive Barrier: Non-forcefield version: When activating your armor mode in Crysis 2, translucent hexagon patterns fill the periphery of the screen, representing your suit hardening itself.
 * While Alcatraz is laying siege to the Prism in "the eye of the storm", Lockhart hides himself behind a transparent window/barrier that stops ordinary bullets (including .50 cal) but not Gauss Rifle slugs (while taking potshots at Alcatraz using a Gauss Rifle of course). When the barrier takes fire it does light up in a classic beehive/hexagon pattern.
 * Beyond the Impossible:
 * Playing the game on the highest graphics settings. Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation summed it up by saying something to the effect of "Crysis was designed to be played on some kind of futuristic supercomputer from space." Even computers made in 2011, four years later, had difficulty running it unless you sunk a few hundred dollars worth of extra hardware into them.
 * The Sandbox editor officially does not work on 32-bit XP and Vista systems due to the unGodly amounts of memory needed in order to create a map at a speed more than "slideshow".
 * BFG:
 * The TAC, a grenade launcher that fires a tactical nuke.
 * The Gauss Rifle's slugs aren't particularly large, however it's a railgun that fires them at 8 times the speed of sound, dealing very high damage against most targets.
 * Big Applesauce: In Crysis 2, especially after.
 * Big Damn Heroes: in Masks Off.
 * Bilingual Bonus: On the highest difficulty setting, the Koreans speak Korean rather than English.
 * Black Dude Dies First: Two black dudes and a Hispanic fellow, actually. All of them die within the first 2 levels. One gets better, though. Subverted; he
 * Bling of War: Colonel Lee in Warhead wears a stylized Nanosuit with large, shiny gold shoulder epaulets and various officer insignia on the chestplate. In contrast, General Kyong's Nanosuit is completely utilitarian, being indistinguishable from the ones worn by the regular North Korean Nanosuit soldiers.
 * Book Ends: Crysis 2
 * Border Patrol: Starting with a shark... then warships... then you getting vaporized.
 * Crysis 2's water is guarded by tentacles.
 * Boring but Practical: Alcatraz is quite straightforward when dealing with enemies he's grabbed. Either he caves in their heads with a single punch, or he slits their throats with a single, economical cut with his knife.
 * As stated under Game Breaker, as opposed to the Badass display in the demonstration video before the game starts, slow, methodical stealth, and intelligent abuse of the cloak ability, puts the game on easy mode even on the hardest difficulty.
 * Bulletproof Human Shield: Averted in Crysis 2. Grabbed human soldiers or Ceph still allow shots through.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: Doctor Gould, who is a giant conspiracy nut. This is one of the reasons why.
 * According to Legion, he's also a meth junkie; Alcatraz notices crystal remains around his house and Hargreave mentions something about drugs reducing his ability to think straight.
 * Character Development: Psycho, who goes from the obligatory 'psycho' in Crysis to the surprisingly sympathetic main character in Crysis Warhead, where he is much less of an AFGNCAAP than Nomad.
 * Hargreave is... complicated. From what can be discerned, the guy has a gentlemanly, code of honor and genuinely cares about the people under him (he briefly sends Alcatraz to look for one of the CELL squads he had sent into an alien hive, and sounds genuinely upset when he finds their bodies), but he allows none of these to interfere with  . Also, since he witnessed certain important events like   the 2012 "Double Dip" and the spiraling worldwide chaos that followed it, he has a seething hatred and mistrust of anything government-related.
 * Chekhov's Gun: Or rather, Checkhov's Tactical Nuclear Grenade Launcher.
 * Clothes Make the Superman: The Nanosuit. You would be in trouble without it: you face huge alien exosuits, hundreds of NK soldiers (some with their own Nanosuits), Helicopters, APCs, Tanks, etc. There are environmental hazards too: a zero-G alien spaceship and and an energy sphere so cold that it literally snap-freezes unprotected humans.
 * In Crysis 2, it's hinted at a case of
 * Cluster F-Bomb: Lockhart loves his F-words.
 * Conspicuously Selective Perception
 * Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: "Alcatraz, over here! Punch it man, let's go! Alcatraz, over here! Punch it man, let's go! Alcatraz, over here! Punch it man, let's go!"
 * Humorously, you can hear Lockhart doing this to his soldiers at one point, interspersed with insults at both you and his men.
 * Continuity Drift: In Crysis 2, the Ceph seem to have changed (evolved?) quite a bit; they're no longer cryophilic creatures native to a world where a balmy day is in the double-digit Kelvin range (Hargreave says they evolved in an ocean ) and they've traded their squid-like flying robots for Terminator-style bipedal suits. Also, they've gone from freezing people dead to melting them to goo with a nanotech supervirus. In a similar vein, the North Korean superpower from the previous game is never mentioned (though New York is under a severe quarantine and the entire USA is under a government-enforced media blackout, so we don't know anything about the outside world), and the
 * This is actually the purpose of the IDW comic interquel: as the Ceph are
 * Continuity Nod: Crysis 2 has references to the Lingshan Incident, Strickland and Helena Rosenthal at various points. Also, by the end,.
 * The whole plot of the second game shares similarities with the first: Botched insertion, protect the scientist, getting, being reassigned to a Marine officer mid-way, and the  . Your efforts throughout the game are to prevent another Lingshan disaster, but in a massively populated area.
 * Legion gives us, as expected, some more, and also ties up some loose ends from in between the two games, e.g. what happened to Lingshan Island.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Averted. Fire still hurts.
 * Crapsack World: In Legion, Alcatraz describes that the world apparently became like this in the years between 2010-2020. There were a couple of economic crashes (the "Double Dip"), multiple wars in Asia and South America, new epidemics (at least one of them weaponized by Egypt against Syria in the "Water Wars") and a number of Secession Riots in Texas, which were quelled with Marine deployment. Things are so bad that the USA is under a DHS-enforced media-blackout, cellphone restriction and a No-Fly zone, all of them voted into long-term law. As for the rest of the world, we literally don't know what is happening after the Ceph awakened.
 * In Legion Watts points out that the Ceph's cryogenic weapon would set off environmental catastrophes worldwide - which corrupt governments were able to spin into Soviet Russia-level authoritarianism. Ceph hives are slowly waking up, causing city-smashing earthquakes. And on top of that, bioterrorism is a growing concern - Alcatraz compares the Ceph bioweapon to enhanced necrotizing fasciitis that somebody turned loose in the Middle East to defend the pipelines.
 * Crazy Prepared: The Nanosuit, which has, among other things, zero-gravity maneuvering thrusters. In case you're accidentally catapulted into space, presumably. The Nanosuit also has a defrosting mechanism. Perfect for temperatures below -200 degrees, as well as freeze rays.
 * The thrusters are actually used for swimming, Speed Mode sprinting and maneuvering yourself in midair while strength jumping.
 * Crysis 2 has a good explanation for this-it's revealed that
 * Crew of One: Although this is averted on the higher difficulties, except for the tank, whose HUD suggests some sort of computer-assisted turret control.
 * Cursed with Awesome/Blessed with Suck: Alcatraz, protagonist of the second game. Bonus: he's wearing a suit that makes him super strong, super fast, super tough, and can turn invisible, as well as scanning the battlefield to mark enemies, strategic points, and analyze enemy weaknesses. Minus:
 * Cutscene Boss:
 * Dead Man Walking  A little more literally with Alcatraz, at it's stated that, aside from the previous point,
 * Deadpan Snarker: Nomad has one or two of these moments. One conversation via radio is roughly as follows; "Sir, I think the Koreans have Nanosuits." "That's impossible!" "...if it's any consolation, they look like cheap knockoffs."
 * Hargreave is a bit dry when speaking with Alcatraz.
 * Crew of One: Although this is averted on the higher difficulties, except for the tank, whose HUD suggests some sort of computer-assisted turret control.
 * Cursed with Awesome/Blessed with Suck: Alcatraz, protagonist of the second game. Bonus: he's wearing a suit that makes him super strong, super fast, super tough, and can turn invisible, as well as scanning the battlefield to mark enemies, strategic points, and analyze enemy weaknesses. Minus:
 * Cutscene Boss:
 * Dead Man Walking  A little more literally with Alcatraz, at it's stated that, aside from the previous point,
 * Deadpan Snarker: Nomad has one or two of these moments. One conversation via radio is roughly as follows; "Sir, I think the Koreans have Nanosuits." "That's impossible!" "...if it's any consolation, they look like cheap knockoffs."
 * Hargreave is a bit dry when speaking with Alcatraz.
 * Hargreave is a bit dry when speaking with Alcatraz.

""You know that line they feed you in boot camp, "You can rest when you're dead''"?"
 * Alcatraz himself basically acts like a Genre Savvy Marine Troper during his debriefing in Legion.

"Nanosuit: Warning! EMP shutdown! All systems impaired. Switching to core function mode. Life support priority. Warning! EMP shutdown! All systems impaired. Switching to core function mode. Life support priority. Warning! Deep layer protocols engaging. Rerouting systems."
 * Destination Defenestration:
 * Diegetic Interface: One of the suit's features.
 * Disney Villain Death:
 * Do Not Drop Your Weapon
 * Dragon Their Feet:
 * Eleventh-Hour Superpower: This is actually a recurring thing in the Crysis games:
 * Crysis: You get the  just in time to destroy a.
 * In Warhead, you get the  in order to destroy the.
 * In Crysis 2, the final levels have most of the game's MIKE maser canons, which cause the aliens to explode into a mushy pulp very easily. Also, by that time, the suit, which is how the whole mess gets solved.
 * And although it has no gameplay effects...

"Alcatraz: I have no idea why, Roger. It’s all just idle speculation bouncing around in the back of a Bulldog on its way to the final showdown. All I’m saying is, maybe "
 * Elite Mooks: NK Special Forces, especially those that are wearing Nanosuits.
 * Ceph Grunt Captains, Heavies, and Stalkers in the second game.
 * Every Car Is a Pinto: You can cause vehicles to explode by "punching" them.
 * Everything's Even Worse with Sharks: Guess what happens when you swim out too far in the ocean?
 * Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods: Unless they're wearing armored robotic suits and are trying to give you a painful, horrific death. Then it's even worse.
 * Evil Laugh: gives one when Ceph overrun his facility.
 * Exploding Barrels: Though you can pick them up and throw them if their initial location is inconvenient for you.
 * Explosive Overclocking: It is known that playing the game for too long has a fair chance of resulting in the most realistic explosion the world of gaming has ever witnessed.
 * Famous Last Words: Crysis 2 "They call me Prophet. Remember me."
 * Fast Tunnelling: The Ceph can, thanks to giant mechanical Combat Tentacles.
 * Floating Continent: at the end of Crysis 2. Not really floating, though. More like kept up by huge metallic tentacles.
 * Fluffy the Terrible: One of the friendly Nanosuit-wearing Delta Force NPCs in Warhead has "Cupcake" as a call-sign.
 * Foreshadowing: The intro to Crysis 2 shows that the nanomachines are cute little critters based on the "machines made out of protein" school of thought. It's not just stylistic.
 * Four Is Death:
 * Freeze Ray: The Alien MOAR (Molecular Arrestor) instantly freezes enemies, though it's rather useless in the multi-player as the frozen enemy could simply move their mouse back and forth to thaw out. It could also freeze vehicles, though the occupants are unharmed and are still able to fire the vehicle's weapons. Unpleasantly surprising when it's a jeep-mounted machine gun, reaches painful status when it's a tank's cannon. Highly satisfying to use against helicopters.
 * With luck or teamwork the freezeray is very effective, making 1-Hit kills.
 * Fridge Logic: In-universe. In Legion, Watts's Alcatraz points out two things;
 * 1). Hargreave claims that - but Central Park   was built in 1857, and left alone for all that time while every other aspect of the city changed around it. If you count back to the colonists buying Manhattan from the Native Americans, New York could be considered five hundred years old. If you count how the Native Americans considered the island valuable for millennia...
 * 2).
 * Conclusion: There's no way to be certain that

"Hargreave: What do you do with the millions of rotting corpses? Well, there you see the answer the Ceph have evolved. They wipe us out, they break us down, they reduce the environmental impact almost to zero. Exemplary."
 * Game Mod: Crymod is an entire community based around these.
 * One of the more well-known mods is Mechwarrior: Living Legends, a total-conversion mod in the BattleTech/Mechwarrior universe.
 * Graphical mods which make the game look even better (photorealistic) and run at the same speed or just slightly slower are very popular.
 * Gameplay Ally Immortality: The friendly Delta Force Nanosuit soldiers who help you through a couple levels in Crysis Warhead are immortal; being "killed" only knocks them down for several seconds, after which they get back up again to kick more ass.
 * In the Crysis mission "Assault," it is possible to destroy the AA gun in the harbor without being detected, which causes all the enemies to start shooting at Psycho rather than looking for you. No matter how many bullets he takes, he won't even fall down, much less die.
 * Mostly averted in the sequel. Other than a single plot-important named character, your Marine squadmates are mortal and can die, although they are pretty tough and can survive reasonably well. There's even an achievement in the console versions for getting all of them through one of the levels without any of them dying.
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation: Averted in Crysis 2 in regards to the multi-player mode. The Marine and CELL Nanosuits are significantly weaker than the main Nanosuit 2 used by Alcatraz in single-player, with faster Stealth energy drain and a less effective Armor Mode. Without Armor Mode, a Marine or CELL can only survive about as much damage as a CEL Mook NPC from single-player. Indeed, one of the Level 3 killstreak rewards is the Maximum Nanosuit, which boosts the power of the player's Nanosuit up to the levels seen in single-player, and pretty much makes them a walking tank for as long as the killstreak is active.
 * that is because the Cell and Marine Nanosuit are not Nanosuit 2.0. They can be seen stored in glass cases in Hargreave's study, using the Tactical Mode to analyze them will reveal that they are indeed custom made Nanosuit 1.5 and not Nanosuit 2.0
 * Gatling Good: One of the weapons is a man-portable minigun, of course. Justified in that you need a superpowered Powered Armor Nanosuit in order to wield it. And even then, you need to switch the suit to Maximum Strength to actually hold it on target.
 * General Ripper: Lockhart, whose hatred for both Prophet and the Nanosuit program goes right up to irrational hatred to the point that he actively sabotages Hargreave's efforts to save New York City. Legion goes into detail regarding Lockhart's hatred for the program, as not only does he consider the use of the technology to be an "abomination" but that he also lost a nephew during the program's early testing phase.
 * Watts actually says that the Straw Man Has a Point; Every iteration of the Nanosuit up to 2.0 has killed its user, and From a Certain Point of View, they were designed to do it. He points out that the suits replace every biological function save independent thought; “assume autonomic, regulatory, and motor functions in the event of somatic damage or operator incapacity.” The Nanosuit's purpose is to turn humans into "post-human warriors" - except that the users are not told of this until it is too late. Lockhart refuses to see how nothing less will stop the Ceph, and goes insane with his hatred of the suits, but damn.
 * Genius Bruiser: Alcatraz develops into one over the course of Legion, becoming a startlingly intelligent and savvy person thanks to the help of the suit and
 * The Ghost: Roger, the poor interviewer debriefing Alcatraz in Legion. It's clear from the narration that Roger is asking Alactraz questions as certain points, as we'll see Alactraz pause and respond ("So anyway...I'm sorry? Oh, you meant the [x], no, I was talking about the [y]..."), but he doesn't actually have any printed lines of dialogue, forcing the reader to guess at his questions based on Alcatraz's reactions.
 * Giant Mook: Ceph Heavies in Crysis 2. Huge, strong, dual-wielding a heavy machine-gun analogue and a rocket-launcher, along with having an EMP ability like most Ceph. It takes two direct hits of C4 to kill one. On Easy. For comparison, most similar enemies in other FPS games (i.e. F.E.A.R. Heavy Armors, Bioshock Big Daddies, or Modern Warfare Juggernauts) usually take about 50-80 rounds of assault rifle fire to kill. The Ceph Heavy can take up to 350 rounds of assault rifle fire (that's 12 full mags) to kill. Fortunately, they're slightly more vulnerable to explosives, special weapons, or headshots, but it still take a lot of hits to kill.
 * Their only saving grace is that they're slow. But that can be more terrifying as they amble in your direction, ignoring the massive amounts of fire you pour into their armor as they casually toss cars out of their way.
 * Oh, we mentioned how a short burst from a Gatling Gun will take down a helicopter earlier, right? Well you can empty out two of these into a Heavy and not have any effect.
 * Good Looking Privates: Tara Strickland in the second game. Lampshaded in Legion by Alcatraz.
 * Grand Theft Me: Turns out, this is why  Implied to have happened to   at the end of Crysis 2, though Legion indicates things are a lot more complicated than it seems.
 * Gray and Gray Morality: All of the different competing human villains in Crysis 2 actually have generally good motives and are trying to save humanity from the Ceph. It's just that to varying degrees they're perfectly fine with killing marines + civilians, killing each other, and most especially killing you in order to achieve that goal.
 * Grievous Harm with a Body: You can Neck Lift enemy soldiers, then throw them at their comrades. And your Nanosuit's strong enough to do this even when you're not in strength mode. Not only do aliens have necks, but Neck Lift is instantly and invariably fatal for them. It is possible to finish The Core chapter (and some levels after that) using cloak and Neck Lift only, on any difficulty.
 * Gun Accessories: You start with an underbarrel tranq gun, a silencer, a EOTech holosight and a flashlight, then you get a grenade launcher, an ACOG scope, a sniper scope, and a laser sight. You can mount every accessory on every rifle, but some combinations are more useful than others.
 * Some combinations are hilariously useless - you can mount a sniper scope on a shotgun.
 * Crysis 2 dumbs this system down somewhat: the number of slots has been decreased, the flashlight is gone (made slightly redundant with NANOVISION ENABLED), and there's only a choice between underbarrel shotgun, a late-game gauss rifle, or grenade launcher, and the ironsights/scope/laser sights on most guns.
 * Harder Than Hard: Delta difficulty. No aiming reticule, enemies speak Korean, can't drive and shoot at the same time. It also drastically reduces the speed at which your health regenerates. The game files refer to Delta as "bauer".
 * The sequel has Post-Human Warrior, where your health is significantly reduced, to the point you can be killed by just a few bullets. Your Armor Mode shield seems to be just as durable as on Normal, though, so as long as you use it correctly, the game's still manageable.
 * Harmless Freezing: Played straight and Averted. The player is fine, everyone else isn't. You can still be shattered whilst frozen if you die in the wrong place. You can also be killed if you are frozen by an exosuit and don't break the ice (rapidly moving your mouse back and forth), though - you'll fall down and shatter.
 * Heroic BSOD:.
 * Heroic Mime: Lampshaded in the opening scene of Crysis 2, where it's stated that Alcatraz doesn't feel like talking because he's got the mother of all hangovers. Afterwards, it's highly likely that Alcatraz simply CAN'T talk, due to
 * Heroic Safe Mode: In Crysis 2,
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: Multiple:
 * Hot Scientist: Helena Rosenthal.
 * Nathan Gould?
 * Humongous Mecha/Spider Tank: The Ceph Hunters.
 * And the Ceph Pinger in Crysis 2.
 * Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Easy, Normal, and Hard are straightforward, but then there's Delta, which the game files refer to as "bauer". Among other things, it averts the Translation Convention with the NK soldiers and makes them speak actual Korean.
 * Crysis 2 renames "Delta" difficulty to "Post-Human Warrior", or Super-Soldier for consoles.
 * IKEA Weaponry: The LAW missile launcher's venturi and scope collapse into the tube when not being used for mobility's sake.
 * Imported Alien Phlebotinum:
 * And the Ceph
 * Impressive Pyrotechnics: Any object that can explode will explode with incredible graphical effects. The pinnacle being
 * In-Series Nickname: "CELLulites" for the PMCs in Legion. Ceph, Squiddie and "those alien bastards" are also common nicknames for what are officially called The Charybdis.
 * Infernal Retaliation: See Nuke'Em below.
 * Invisibility Cloak: Standard Nanosuit feature. Also tends to be a Game Breaker in single-player. In multi-player, savvy players will notice that cloaked players still leave shadows, and the handheld scanner will pick them up and display them on the minimap.
 * Instant AI, Just Add Water: oddly twisted about in Crysis 2:
 * Legion indicates that the SECOND AI system is aware and able to make its own judgment calls and decisions, but relies on a human operator to make most decisions. Alcatraz does not appreciate SECOND choosing to....second-guess him. Eventually,
 * Instant Sedation: The tactical attachment for rifles in Crysis 1, which fires tranquilizer darts. Subverted, they get back up in thirty seconds.
 * Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: In Crysis 2, you can kick a car across a street, but most doors and windows are made of solid Wall.
 * In Universe Game Clock
 * Invisibility Flicker
 * Ironic Echo: "I'm British, you muppet..."
 * Just Hit Him: Inverted; enemies can survive multiple punches but will die from just one throw.
 * Just One Man: Commander Lockhart says this about Alcatraz.
 * Kaizo Trap:
 * After the  Pinger boss fight, three marine squad cars suddenly plow through a wall and, should you be even remotely close, your energy will be wiped out and, (if you're unfortunate enough to be insta-killed) thrown back a checkpoint to before the boss battle. Even on supersoldier, which means we're talking about restarting an extremely difficult boss battle because your allies don't have the fucking decency to brake or look where they're driving.
 * Kick the Dog: The Aliens' sphere freezes everything. Even turtles. In Crysis 2, they kill a lot of civilians, in a very slow and painful way.
 * Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Ceph Heavies and Grunt Commanders are Back Stab-proof. Grunt Commanders need to be softened up before the Neck Lift-and-throw can be used, while Heavies being Giant Mooks are understandably immune.
 * Lampshade Hanging: In Warhead, one of the Marines comments on the large number of VTOLs that get shot down.
 * Large Ham Radio: Radio Free Manhattan, complete with your obligatory self-appointed wisecracking overeager motormouth DJ making light of the situation, Eddie "Truth" Newton.
 * Lightning Bruiser and King Mook:.
 * Anticlimax Boss or Game Breaker:
 * Living on Borrowed Time:
 * Lowered Monster Difficulty: The Alien Scouts demonstrate superhuman speed, strength, and a cloaking device while wiping out your nanosuit-wearing Delta Force teammates in the game's first few levels. When you actually fight them later in the game, they display none of these abilities, and behave pretty much like attack helicopters.
 * In Crysis, the Hunter Exosuit is able to wipe out an entire platoon of U.S. Marines due to possessing an invincible energy shield, and is only defeated at the end of the game via Applied Phlebotinum that allows the scientist girl to hack his shield and disable it. In Warhead, for some reason the Hunters no longer have this energy shield, and can be fought as standard boss battles whenever you encounter one. Warhead also inverts it with the smaller alien 'infantry' exosuits, who now use squad tactics instead of just rushing in from up front and jumping into the air for no reason.
 * Crysis Warhead is chronologically before Crysis. To put it more clearly, the shield appeared later after you blew up an unshielded one.
 * Made of Explodium: Most vehicles detonate spectacularly if shot in the correct location; ie, the fuel tank. Or any fuel tank. Jeeps have a small fuel can on the back, presumably used for refuelling them in an emergency. Guess what happens when it's shot...
 * Made of Iron: The North Korean General can survive several sniper rifle shots to the face (despite not even wearing a helmet) or even a full extended mag of SMG fire. Although he's weak against thrown barrels due to a surprisingly common physics exploit (see Wreaking Havoc below).
 * Magnetic Weapons: The Gauss Rifle. One-Hit Kill, practically Hit Scan, has low ammo availability, leaves a trail that the enemy will trace to you if you miss, and is extremely expensive when playing multiplayer Power Struggle.
 * Meaningful Name: Alcatraz, as it's revealed, The rest of his unit is similarly named after prisons.
 * Mega Corp: Hargreave-Rasch, as stated in Legion.
 * Mercy Invincibility
 * Mistaken Identity: Crysis 2 starts off with Prophet rescuing Alcatraz (the player character) and giving him his suit before dying. Prophet's suit is one of the last known in operation, so naturally everyone assumes you're Prophet for the first third or so of the game, including your Voice with an Internet Connection as well as (unfortunately) all the mercenaries trying to kill Prophet. Alcatraz is unable to correct anyone on the matter, mostly due to them all trying to shoot him (and possibly not being able to speak at all).
 * The comics indicate that the reason why Aztec and Jester got eviscerated by alien Scouts early in Crysis is because . If you pay attention, you'll notice that the same thing happens in Crysis 2 when you first meet a Ceph Grunt, but the Nanosuit 2.0's more advanced systems resist more effectively.
 * Monumental Damage: Well, it's New York we're talking about. Over the course of the second game you are treated to the sight of quite a number of famous landmarks collapsing in a spectacular (and devastating) manner - Hell, one of the first things you see in Crysis 2 is a somewhat untouched Statue of Liberty.
 * More Dakka: The Swarmer is this applied to missiles. And yes, it reduces Ceph Heavies to a nice paste in seconds.
 * Nanomachines: The game would end four minutes in without them.
 * Nerf: The shotgun has been reduced to a standard FPS Short-Range Shotgun as opposed to the long-range one-hit-kill weapon it was in the first game, though it is still effective at medium range.
 * New Game+: in Crysis 2 all Nanosuit Modules and weapon attachments are available from the start in subsequent re-runs of the game.
 * Nintendo Hard: Even if you're playing on the easiest difficulty setting, every single enemy in the game is capable of killing you in one shot. It's very rare for any of the Korean enemies (at least the ones without sniper rifles) to get the necessary headshot, but they're certainly capable of doing it. Then, when the take over as the main enemies, even one of the smallest mooks can easily one-shot you... and you often face at least four or five of them in one go!
 * No Body Left Behind: To prevent anyone getting their hands on the nanosuits, they self-destruct in an immolatory fashion, taking with them the body of the wearer.
 * Norio Wakamoto: In the Japanese version, he's the voice of the suit. (Mashimam shpeedo!)
 * North Koreans With Nodongs: a high-tech version! In-universe, China's been selling to them.
 * Novelization: The second game has a novel adaptation called Crysis: Legion. It expands on the setting, characters, technology, and enemies. The book is written in the form of an after-action interview of Alcatraz, occasionally interspersed with reports and interviews with other characters. However, for all information revealed, almost all of it is in-universe speculation. It was written by Peter Watts - who applies his nightmarish genius to it in so many ways.
 * Nuke'Em: Played painfully straight.
 * One Hundred Percent Completion: In Crysis 2. In fact, there's a separate completion percentage for multiplayer as well. Oh, and to get 100% in Single Player, you WILL have to beat the game on its highest difficulty, Post-Human Warrior. Good Luck.
 * Only Sane Man: Hargreave considers himself this.
 * Our Weapons Will Be Boxy in the Future: Almost completely averted.
 * Except with the Swarmer from Crysis 2: the thing is basically a crate of rockets with guidance and launching ports.
 * Our Wormholes Are Different: In the third issue of the comic series, Nomad, Prophet, Psycho and Helena are forced to go through a portal inside the Ceph mountain base, ending up.
 * Hargreave, as well as a few others, seem to think that all of the Ceph installations have a portal somewhere inside, for bringing in help from off-planet.
 * Passing the Torch: At the start of the second game, Prophet is dying, but knows the Ceph are still out there, so he transfers the suit to the marine Alcatraz. He then kills himself to sever the link, leaving the saving of the world in Alcatraz's hands.
 * PC vs. Console: Needless to say, a formerly PC exclusive series infamous for kicking even the most hardcore PC's ass getting ported to consoles sparked a lot of flame wars.
 * Pet the Dog: Alluded to. Alcatraz helps a mother and child in Legion and, when his interviewer expresses suspicion, makes a crack about shrinks and mommy issues.
 * Press X to Not Die: Crysis 2 has quicktime events. They're tolerable, though, because they're limited to only about 3 or 4 key scenes, you have a very generous timeframe to perform the action before failing, and the buttons you're required to press always correspond to the actions your character is trying to perform on screen (i.e. pressing the jump button to jump up to a helicopter). Furthermore, due to the way cutscenes are woven into the game, the player is always able to continue looking around with the mouse, so you'll pretty much always have your hands on the controls ready to Press X.
 * One of these events is pressing a button to activate your suit's built-in defibrillator. Literally pressing X to not die.
 * Poor Man's Substitute: Whenever a sniper rifle isn't available, you could put a sniper scope, laser pointer and silencer on your SCAR and set it to fire in semi-auto, making it a decent substitute. However, since you barely get any ammo for it, you'll mostly end up doing this with the inferior FY-71. While you can't attach the sniper scope to a rifle in the sequel, the ACOG provides enough of a zoom to still get the job done, though one shot won't drop Ceph infantry.
 * Also applies to the SCAR's under-barrel Gauss Attachment, which makes for a high-powered sniping alternative when combined with the SCAR scope.
 * Powered Armor: a bit of it.
 * It's interesting to note that, given their rather frail constitution and likely inability to function at all in normal gravity, the Ceph themselves are dependent of Powered Armor and autonomous drones for combat purposes. In the first game, their machines are squid-like, tentacled in appearance, and most are autonomous. By Crysis 2, however, they're using humanoid(-ish) robotic suits that are visibly manned by some kind of alien organism, though one that looks different from the aliens we see in the first game.
 * Powered by a Forsaken Child: In Crysis 2, it's revealed that the Nanosuits are not the cool next-gen Powered Armor that everybody thought they were. Instead
 * Power Fist: Strength Mode.
 * Pragmatic Adaptation: Legion isn't a perfect adaptation of 2. There's a note in front that points out the need to change stuff for the prose experience.
 * Possibly the best demonstration is the fact that Alcatraz, in the interview he's narrating, tends to gloss over the combat sequences. It seems like saving space, until one realizes that Peter Watts is perfectly capable of writing combat sequences, Alcatraz has perfect memory, and the skirmishes he is describing in a few vague words involve killing dozens of CELL and Ceph. He simply doesn't think they're worth mentioning.
 * Precision F-Strike: Legion has Gould describing the  as gay rape on hanging flies. It Makes Sense in Context, but every conversation within hearing distance ends abruptly. Even the wounded stop moaning.
 * Prequel: Noname Island, a Game Mod from Crytek.
 * The comic miniseries serves as a prequel to Crysis 2, connecting the plot with that of Crysis.
 * Present Tense Narrative: In Legion, Alcatraz narrates this way. Oddly, he's recounting the events of the game, so he's talking about things in the past. This is even lampshaded when the unheard interviewer debriefing him asks why he's talking that way and Alcatraz essentially just shrugs and says that with his nanon-augmented-memory, he can recount everything with crystal clarity and as such feels like he's reliving it.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old:
 * Removable Turret Gun: In the second game.
 * The Reveal: ...after reveal after reveal after reveal in the second game. It ranges all the way from the revelation that through the fact that, all the way to Hargreave  , then to the fact that  , and finally that  . Heck, even the pirate radio DJ, Eddie 'Truth' Newton, has his own small reveal if you're listening to his broadcasts.
 * Revolvers Are Just Better: The Majestic revolver in Crysis 2.
 * Scenery Gorn: New York looks pretty beat up from the start of the second game, especially when you get into Ceph-controlled territory, but things really get trashed after . Initial impressions of the third game seem to be leaning heavily in this direction as well, with image after image of New York ruined and seriously overgrown.
 * Scenery Porn: Crysis is infamous for this: in fact, one could argue that in many ways Crysis is Scenery Porn With Plot.
 * Sculpted Physique: The Nanosuits.
 * Secondary Fire: Most weapons can be toggled between the usual single, burst, and full auto fire modes. If there's a tranquilizer launcher or grenade launcher, the same key selects that. For the shotgun, it switches the spread between close and wide. Vehicles have both a machine gun and either a main cannon, dumbfire rockets, or homing missiles.
 * Semper Fi: Plenty of Marines in the first game, including the aforementioned Major Strickland. Played with in Crysis 2 a few times:
 * After the government pulls support for CELL and orders them disarmed, one asks his guard to let him out of his cell and give him a gun. When the guard refuses, the CELL trooper pleads with him on the basis that they're going to need everyone they've got to fight the Ceph, adding, "I'm one of you, I did nine years in the Army!" Before the guard explains that the CELL trooper's previous service record is irrelevant in light of his current status as a private contracter, he says, "I'm a Marine."
 * A pair of CELL troopers discuss the prospect of seeing action soon, one getting moto and saying "oorah!" The other chastises him, saying "You're not a Marine anymore." Given the first speaker's lack of protest, this can be another sign of how villainous CELL is for anyone familiar with the Marines' particular brand of espirit de corps.
 * In one of his broadcasts, "Truth" Newton drops the bombshell (as he admits it probably is to the type of people likely to tune in to him) that he's an "old Semper Fi Alumnus," assuring his listeners that they can trust the incoming Marines to get them to safety just as much as they can't trust CELL.
 * Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
 * Sequel Hook: in the first game, . The IDW comic picks up from there, with them quickly losing the dropship and going on a whirlwind tour of the fully awakened Ceph infrastructure, now filled with the Crysis 2 exo-squid and including
 * At the end of Crysis 2,.
 * Shell-Shock Silence: Present in Crysis 2 once something explodes neat you (especially the devastator units energy cannons). The nanosuit quickly repairs the potential damage that would technically leave Alcatraz deaf otherwise and the classic whistle and muted sounds rapidly disappear.
 * Shout-Out: The small and medium-sized alien war machines, once seen moving in-game instead of screenshots, bear a striking resemblance to squiddies from The Matrix.
 * In the game configuration files, the Delta difficulty is referred to with a "bauer" tag.
 * When you activate your cloak in Crysis 2, you hear the clicking noise the that the Predator makes when it's pissed.
 * In Crysis 2, in the electrified tunnel near the end of the second chapter, the first time you get shocked, the suit discreetly warns you that the electricity is 1.21 gigawatts.
 * The intro to Crysis 2 is an almost word for word homage to 2007's I Am Legend, two Newscasters debating baseball teams and playoffs, interspersed with news footage.
 * During the beginning of Crysis 2, one of the marines makes a reference to the aliens being "illegal aliens" which is a reference to another marine's comment in Aliens.
 * Short-Range Shotgun: Averted. Just like in real life, a well-aimed shotgun blast can one-hit-kill a human soldier at distances of a little over 100 feet (assuming you're using the "narrow spread" fire mode as opposed to the more standard FPSy "wide spread" fire mode.) The game even allows you to mount a short-range scope on shotguns - and for good reason.
 * Played painfully straight in Crysis 2, though, with the shotgun behaving more like the one from the Halo series, and failing to kill a CELL trooper with a single shot at more than 10-15 feet.
 * Sound-Coded for Your Convenience
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: The Wall, what with the version of "New York, New York" being sung by British singer, Polly Scattergood, amidst the carnage and alien/human war raging around the deserted streets of a decrepit New York city.
 * A Space Marine Is You: Hits most of the checklist -- except of course the "Space" bit. Also, Nomad actually has some lines during gameplay in addition to cutscenes.
 * Crysis 2 plays it even straighter by making Alcatraz mute, sticking him in levels that are considerably more linear, giving him increasingly unstable and untrustworthy Mission Controls, and Tomato Surprise about the nature of the suit.
 * Spiritual Successor: To Far Cry. Both are made by the same studio. Heck, Crysis has more similarities to Far Cry than Far Cry 2, the latter of which is almost In Name Only.
 * : The reason Prophet went back to Lingshan against orders.
 * Starfish Aliens: The aliens look like bioluminescent elongated jellyfish with Predator-like quadruple jaws and finned tentacles for legs. The overall impression is that of an aquatic organism that lives in zero gravity instead of water.
 * In Crysis 2, people call them the Ceph, as in "cephalopod". Hargreave states that there's little doubt that they evolved in an ocean. Legion indicates that the Ceph are as we know them might not even be the "true" aliens but rather their "gardeners" who woke up to find humans running rampant all over the lawn they're supposed to be tending - and Alcatraz takes a step further down, theorizing that the Ceph aren't the gardeners, but rather their specially-engineered tools.
 * In the comic, Psycho is dumbstruck for a good few hours by the notion that he's had his ass repeatedly handed to him by what he essentially sees as seafood.
 * Crysis: Legion also reveals that their "official" designation (in military reports and such) is actually "The Charybdis", after the mythical sea monster. "Cephalopods" is a moniker people came up with because... well... they look like squid.
 * Static Stun Gun: The K-Volt submachine gun in Crysis 2 knocks CELL troopers on their back with a single bullet, and stun-locks Ceph with sustained fire. It's described as a crowd-control stun weapon being misused by CELL as a lethal weapon by applying multiple shocks instead of just one to the victim. It is, in fact, the key to making the
 * Status Quo Is God: At the end of Crysis 2 there is almost nothing left of C.E.L.L. Every employee who isn't dead is on trial for war crimes, their main base has been blown to smithereens, and all their hardware has been confiscated by the US Marines. Crysis 3, however, reveals that not only are they still collecting government funding after their "gunning down civilians" fiasco, but they have enough resources to try a standard Take Over the World plot.
 * The Stoic: Nomad is awfully calm about encountering aliens. Psycho, less so. Prophet.
 * Strong Flesh Weak Steel: Obvious when you throw an NK grunt through a scrap-metal hanger, damaging everything but the mook. Averted in the sequel with non-human enemies; the Ceph, being boneless, take damage far easier than the armor they're wearing and explode into clouds of goop when shot between the seams.
 * Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: Crysis: Legion points out that, given the Charybdis' frankly staggering technological ability, we can barely guess at their true motivation, and the Manhattan attack certainly makes no sense from a strategic point of view; a comparison is made with humans building an ATM over an anthill - it doesn't even register with us if some ants are left after we're done with our job.
 * By the end of the novel, it's outright stated that whatever they're doing, it's almost certainly not an Alien Invasion or conquest.
 * Hargreave theorizes that what we're actually fighting aren't really "soldiers", but rather.
 * Peter Watts, cheerful fellow that he is, has an even worse theory:
 * Superpowered Mooks: The NK soldiers in nano-suits. Nomad quips that they're cheap knockoffs, although other than a lack of Speed Mode and fairly average enemy A.I., they don't seem all that different from your own suit. In multiplayer, the US and Korean Nanosuits are identical for fairness reasons.
 * Super Drowning Skills: Which the NK possess.
 * Super Strength: Nanosuit Strength Mode. Power Mode (a more on-demand version of Speed and Strength mode) in Crysis 2.
 * Suspicious Videogame Generosity: You absolutely know you're about to get your ass kicked if you find a rocket cache. And if there's C4, it's even worse.
 * Synthetic Plague: The "Manhattan Virus", identified by Hargreave as an "area-denial bioweapon beyond your wildest dreams". It doesn't just kill people, it melts them into sludge. Worst part is that it's not technically a "weapon" - Hargreave compares it to the BSE cullings; the problem was not killing the cattle, but disposing of the remains without creating a vermin population explosion. The "virus" breaks us down to sludge that most terrestrial fauna can't eat, but that the Ceph Ticks gobble right up.
 * Superpowered Mooks: The NK soldiers in nano-suits. Nomad quips that they're cheap knockoffs, although other than a lack of Speed Mode and fairly average enemy A.I., they don't seem all that different from your own suit. In multiplayer, the US and Korean Nanosuits are identical for fairness reasons.
 * Super Drowning Skills: Which the NK possess.
 * Super Strength: Nanosuit Strength Mode. Power Mode (a more on-demand version of Speed and Strength mode) in Crysis 2.
 * Suspicious Videogame Generosity: You absolutely know you're about to get your ass kicked if you find a rocket cache. And if there's C4, it's even worse.
 * Synthetic Plague: The "Manhattan Virus", identified by Hargreave as an "area-denial bioweapon beyond your wildest dreams". It doesn't just kill people, it melts them into sludge. Worst part is that it's not technically a "weapon" - Hargreave compares it to the BSE cullings; the problem was not killing the cattle, but disposing of the remains without creating a vermin population explosion. The "virus" breaks us down to sludge that most terrestrial fauna can't eat, but that the Ceph Ticks gobble right up.

"Alcatraz: "Let me repeat that, Roger, for the benefit of your chickenshit bosses behind the mirror. The Pentagon. Decided. That the best way. To take out. Super-advanced. Aquatic. Aliens. Was to drown them.""
 * Peter Watts' contribution; it's not even designed to kill humans - it's just a quick-and-dirty Terraforming agent, meant to keep existing microfauna from infecting Ceph tissue. It's alien DDT.
 * Take Cover: Crysis 2 has a Killzone-style cover system that lets you stick to walls and peek over/around them to fire. It triggers automatically when you try to aim while near a wall, instead of occuring when you press a specific button, so it sometimes causes you to get stuck to a wall when you were trying to strafe around it and shoot.
 * Take That: In Legion, Alcatraz says that the way the nanosuit keeps rebooting makes him think Microsoft made the OS.
 * In the comic, Prophet points out that the CIA has NEVER produced good intelligence when it really counted; the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, the Arab Spring, the "Darien Resurgence." Them mistaking a fucking Alien Invasion for an attempt by Hargreave to overthrow the United States (assisted by the North Koreans, who did nothing on Lingshan but make things worse) does not surprise him. Considering that, he should have realized that the CIA has Wrong Genre Savvy as its religion and would start torturing them until they heard something they wanted to hear.
 * Take Your Time: Averted at least once in 2, during "Power Out" where
 * Take Up My Suit: At the beginning of Crysis 2,
 * Tech Demo Game: Trope Codifier by far, even if other games were typically used as real-world benchmarks.
 * Ten-Second Flashlight / Infinite Flashlight: The night vision mode on your nanosuit lasts only a few minutes at most, but rapidly recharges. On the other hand, the tactical light weapon attachment never runs out of power, while making you highly visible to enemies.
 * Theme Music Power-Up: During the Mission Briefing before each chapter of Crysis 2, some variation of the game's main theme always plays to get you ready for the next chapter.
 * Too Dumb to Live / What an Idiot!: The US Military Command come off as this repeatedly over the course of the series, blatantly ignoring rather obvious facts about the alien threat. In Crysis they authorize a nuclear solution against the energy-siphoning alien structure, despite warnings from Helena Rosenthal (who didn't even get the chance to speak with the Joint Chiefs or POTUS). In Crysis 2 they top it off with the ludicrous decision to bomb the Manhattan flood barrier in order to drown the aliens. Alcatraz says it best in Legion:
 * Too Dumb to Live / What an Idiot!: The US Military Command come off as this repeatedly over the course of the series, blatantly ignoring rather obvious facts about the alien threat. In Crysis they authorize a nuclear solution against the energy-siphoning alien structure, despite warnings from Helena Rosenthal (who didn't even get the chance to speak with the Joint Chiefs or POTUS). In Crysis 2 they top it off with the ludicrous decision to bomb the Manhattan flood barrier in order to drown the aliens. Alcatraz says it best in Legion:

""Here's the PAX. It fires plasma. Don't ask how. Now blow up that alien Spider Tank over there.""
 * Though even that stroke of sublime genius may pale against the Clock Alcatraz has to Race Against at the climax of Crysis 2 -
 * Trailers Always Spoil: Crysis 2 -
 * Translation Convention: In any difficulty but Delta/bauer.
 * Tripod Terror: The Ceph Pingers in the second game, massive war machines you have to fight no less than four times.
 * Theme Naming: In Crysis 2, the Marine Force Recon team sent in at the beginning of the game are all named after famous prisons - the player is Alcatraz, one of the other soldiers is Folsom, etc.
 * Too Awesome to Use: The Gauss Rifle in Crysis 2. It's essentially a railgun, with all the advantages of the rocket launcher and none of its flaws -- deadly accurate, rapid-firing, quick to reload and enormously powerful, dealing a ton of damage even to heavily armored targets. However, good luck finding any ammo for it (other than the paltry 8 rounds you get with the weapon itself...)
 * ...unless you get the Gauss attachement for the SCAR, which allows both weapons to share ammo. Since the Gauss attachment will now hold 16 reserve rounds that are shared with the Gauss Rifle, and since the Gauss attachment can be reloaded from any ammo box, it turns the Gauss Rifle into Awesome but Practical. Unfortunately, this is really only feasible on the last mission, provided that the player picked up a Gauss Rifle in the previous mission.
 * The MIKE as well. There are only about 5 of them in the whole game (one of which is a prototype that can't have its battery replaced), but each one is extremely satisfying to use, since it makes those octopus aliens burst like popcorn inside their armored suits.
 * The Tunguska Event: The Ceph were involved.
 * Turtle Power: Literally. Thrown sea turtles are one of the best weapons in the game.
 * Uncanny Valley: Invoked In-Universe. It's stated in Legion that most people who meet Alcatraz are dead-scared of him, either irrationally or because they are confusing him with an alien unit; a priest calls him a devil and a mother and little girl that he'd just saved can't leave his presence soon enough. He gets quite pissed about it sometimes, since he's obviously humanoid and doesn't get why admittedly futuristic-looking Power Armor makes him an outcast even among his fellow Marines.
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change
 * "Onslaught", where you drive a tank. However, due to its moderate durability and lack of repair kits in singleplayer, you'll most likely end up abandoning it near the middle of the level. You can find a parked Korean tank near the train station, but it doesn't last very long.
 * "Core", you fight the aliens in their zero-gravity ship.
 * Unique Enemy: In the original Crysis, only 12 enemy Nanosuit Soldiers appear throughout the entire game. While this somewhat makes sense from a storyline perspective (Nanosuits costs about 1 billion dollars each), it's a bit underwhelming from a gameplay perspective since they're only about as tough as a Covenant Elite, so they could have easily been used more often without being unbalanced, especially in the later levels.
 * There's a type of alien trooper that has a different head crest and is equipped with a freeze ray instead of an ice gun. There are only about 3 or 4 of them in the entire game. Again, they're a fairly standard enemy, so it's not like they make up for their rarity by being much tougher than normal or anything like that.
 * In Crysis 2, there's the quartet of stealth-capable Ceph "Guardians" that appear at the end of the final mission, with black armor, glowing white visors, and black jelly. They are startlingly durable, able to casually tank multiple hits from JAW missiles.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon:  in Crysis 2. It's a lot more epic and exciting than it sounds. Part of this is because   by that point. It Makes Sense in Context.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Starting with choking Korean soldiers and tossing them off cliffs, into enemies, into each other, or through roofs. With proper modification, one can fling troopers clean into the air... from where you can shoot them out of the air with a weapon of choice, if you're quick on the draw. Turtles, frogs, chickens, quails and the like can all be rifle-butted or used as thrown weapons.
 * Then there's death by window in the second game.
 * The Virus: A key part of Crysis 2's plot is the citywide infestation by an alien plague. The aliens also.
 * In Legion it's revealed to be far more than just a deadly bioweapon. It turns out that every single piece of alien technology is covered in receptors for the spore, which is why, can interface with and manipulate it. It's speculated that it might be a sort of "portable ecosystem", or an "external immune system" for the aliens.
 * Walk It Off: The game wouldn't last long without the Nanosuit's regenerating power supply and healing function.
 * The War Has Just Begun: In both games..
 * Wave Motion Gun: The PAX (Plasma Accelerator) in Warhead, an infinite ammo weapon with a somewhat short range. No explanation is given about its mechanism, the game basically just tell you:


 * Crysis 2 has the X-43 Mike, basically a jumbo maser gun that would never be authorized for human warfare by any sane ethics committee. Since your enemies are genocidal aliens in armored exoskeletons, however, none of the ethics regulations apply, and you are free to make them explode like water balloons to your heart's content.
 * We ARE Struggling Together!: In Crysis 2, there are 3 distinct human factions; the main C.E.L.L. forces under Commander Lockhart and the Board of Directors, the small splinter-faction still loyal to former CEO Jacob Hargreave, and the U.S. military. All have the general goal of fighting the Ceph, but spend a huge amount of time fighting each other due to disagreements over the exact manner in which the war against the Ceph should be conducted.
 * Wham! Line: Crysis 2 delivers two of them in its last seconds:


 * What Happened to the Mouse?: Nomad, Psycho, and the secondary team of Nanosuit-wearing operatives from Warhead. However, see Powered by a Forsaken Child above.
 * You catch a glimpse of another Nanosuit wearer in New York in one of Prophet's flashbacks, but even though he sounds somewhat like Nomad it's virtually impossible to confirm who it is.
 * The interquel comic book shows that.
 * Wreaking Havok: The amount of stuff that can be picked up and thrown into other stuff is really quite impressive. This includes being able to bring down houses by tossing grenades or driving vehicles into them (or simply punching the walls down), or cut down palm trees with machine gun fire. Some enemies and certain objects are extremely vulnerable to thrown objects. Thrown driftwood can cause truck-sized jamming devices to explode. This extends to players as well. Getting trapped by a pile of cardboard boxes can be unexpectedly lethal.
 * Xtreme Kool Letterz: Well, it's called Crysis.
 * Yank the Dog's Chain: In Warhead, while fighting your way through the ice sphere, you can find several abandoned tanks, and you can even climb into them! Naturally, they're all flash-frozen so you can't actually do anything with them.