Crysis was always a good game. It just didn't live up to its phenomenal graphics. It was better than Far Cry. Much like Far Cry, the first 2/3 of the game is stronger than the final few chapters. The sequels were poor however.

Having finally played through the whole thing properly this year on Switch, I'm the side of it being a genuinely good game, just not a great one.

The suit powers are cool and make you feel like a badass, the interactivity and freedom are nice, but it does kinda lack that special spark that makes a game a real classic. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what that is, but I guess it just kinda feel like it didn't quite live up to the potential its concept promised in terms of creativity. Still decent fun though.

It's... a good game. I don't enjoy the shooting mechanics that much (although there's nothing wrong with them either), but the freedom is nice and I think the AI is also quite fitting. I remember there being a ton of complaints about bad AI when the game was first released, but I never had any issues with the AI myself. Once you get roughly halfway through the game and you lose much of the freedom, the games loses its charm. It's still not bad and I'd go as far as to call even the latter half good-ish, but it's definitely nothing special there. Ultimately, I wish Crytek could have added just a touch of magic to the first half, and I'd call it great. Now the first half is just quite good, depending on whether you can appreciate the freedom. Crysis is another one of those games that feels like there's some wasted potential.

I just played through FarCry 2 this year, and, yeah, wholeheartedly agree it is the best Ubisoft entry (and I also liked it better than FarCry). I had some of the most exhilarating emergent gameplay I think I've ever had in a game playing FarCry 2. 2 examples which I had to recount in texts to friends (had it not been on the PS3, I would have saved the videos).

1. I threw a grenade at two boats with people on the turrets. It blew up both boats, the occupants, and felled a couple trees...one of which crushed another enemy.
2. I was being pursued by 2 jeeps with turrets. I hopped out of my still moving buggy, which ran over the guy in front me, then crouched in the tall grass so that they lost sight of me. I then threw a grenade under one jeep, causing it to explode and kill it's two occupants while also flipping over in the air and crushing another enemy only to then have the fire from the wreckage light up the foliage in real-time so that it all burned away, surrounding and engulfing the last enemy.

Awesome.

I also just played the first Crysis (original), along with Warhead, this year on PC. While they're not cutting edge anymore, I do think the graphics are still really good and, to my eye, mind-blowing for 2007. In terms of the gameplay, I thought it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the tactical freedom in approaching any given cluster of bad guys. I felt the suit was well implemented and a lot of fun to mess around with. It kind of felt like playing the original Deus Ex after already having your augments built up (in terms of powers, not depth or arenas). I will say that the game's final standing in my estimation probably benefited from being told for years that it was a glorified tech demo. I expected something more akin to FarCry (PC) which, to me, did feel largely like a tech demo...an enjoyable tech demo to be sure, but a tech demo all the same. Crysis had more gameplay, variety, and story than I expected based on the reputation that preceded it. I'm not saying that any of these were revolutionary (though, again, the suit was, while not new, very well implemented), but they were much more than I expected. Accordingly, I think I got more enjoyment out of them simply due to being pleasantly surprised.

Only two gameplay observations I can think of making at the moment are:

1. The silencer was, for me, largely pointless - enemies were always alerted whether I used it or not.
2. I miss the left/right leaning mechanic in FPSs (it was a joy to use them in both Crysis and F.E.A.R.).

Yeah, things like that are one of the major reasons I liked FC2 so much and still think it's best Ubi's FC (they regressed after FC2 IMO, though both FC3 and FC4 were somewhat fun to play). As for FC1...completely different game, mostly linear wide with lot of freedom to tackle objectives, but not open-world like Ubi's FC's (which somewhat reminded me of Boiling Point when FC2 launched). I find FC1 to be excellent in what it's doing, especially if played on harder levels.

I think its a good game. However, the quality of the gameplay didn't match the graphics which was essentially a generation ahead at the time it was released. IMO atleast

Yeah I'd agree with that, graphically it was ahead of anything 7th gen consoles ever produced, and it held the graphical crown for 6 years, but it's gameplay while solid definitely didn't hit the same level resulting in a bit of an imbalance, I think even most of those who liked the game would concur there.

Style over substance. The alien ship is one of the worst levels I've played in gaming. First part was good, and the Nano suit is a neat concept,i would probably score it a generous 7/10

That seems to be another thing nearly everyone agrees on, that the game becomes significantly less fun in its third act once the new enemies take centre stage.
I feel that way too, though I didn't feel even this last act was bad per se, and certainly not enough to scuttle the experience as a whole, just not on par with the more open ended jungle antics of the first and second acts.

Was good back then, but not worth playing it now if you've played shooter games in the last few years. I'm not sure if the remaster brings about next level ai and physics to make it a new experience.