In the plot of Crysis only a select few of Nomad’s team made it out alive, and while Prophet’s general status was known throughout the game, Psycho’s status only intertwined with yours a couple of times. Crysis Warhead lets you explore what exactly he was up to on the other side of the island, taking the role of Psycho as he deals with his own battles and problems. The game also lets Crytek flex a bit more developer muscle and provides a more fleshed out gameplay experience than what the original game delivered.

A British tough guy with a surprising level of depth, Psycho is a well developed character. The original Crysis rarely broke the first person viewpoint but in Warhead you often see cinematics showing your avatar in the third-person; leaping onto moving trucks, shooting enemy soldiers, and generally being awesome. Though he is capable of being just as stealthy as Nomad thanks to the capabilities of the nano-suit, Psycho often gets placed in situations where he is better off manning a minigun turret and throwing both stealth and a hail of bullets to the wind.

Very few changes to the underlying gameplay have been made in the expansion. The suit capabilities are the same as they were, composed of strength, speed, armor, and cloaking modes. Most of the old weaponry makes an appearance though the sniper rifle is oddly missing. With a sniper scope mounted onto a SCAR rifle, in single shot mode, using super strength to steady your aim though you won’t miss it. That may sound complicated, but it is just that between the different stances, suit modes, and attachments you can use many of the game’s guns in a variety of situations and simply don’t need to rely on a diverse set of weapons to do the same thing.

One change to the arsenal is a new SMG that can be picked up to replace the pistol and an overhauled dual-wield system to use with it. When you are using two pistols or SMGs each mouse button controls the firing of a gun. This makes it possible to keep sustained fire by altering firing one gun and reloading the other, but also makes it even harder to not go all Woo-tastic and breach a hut in strength mode and spray anything inside with lead. Another new toy is a particle accelerator gun that is obtained near the end of the game that serves as Crysis’ BFG.

The pacing is accelerated in comparison to the original game. While playing the original game often was very methodical, slowly moving from bush to bush and taking out enemies one by one, in Crysis Warhead the option to do so still exists but there are many set piece areas where stealth simply isn’t much of an option and you must rely on other modes of the suit. The introduction of the aliens happens barely halfway through the campaign, and unlike the original you consistently fight a great deal of North Korean soldiers from that point forward; often who are fighting each other well before you get there to mop up. The campaign isn’t as long as the original, though for the price it delivers quite well and players can look forward to many hours of nano-suit fun.