Crisis confirmed

One year after Crysis made the circuit boards glow, Warhead was released in 2008, the only addon of the series. It continues the story of the alien invasion of the first part from the perspective of Michael Sykes, alias 'Psycho', but the gameplay has less to do with the original than you might initially think. This is because, in keeping with the protagonist's mental state of health, he prefers to use conventional jaw chucks instead of stealth mode. This sounds like a departure from the virtues of the main game and devalued the game for me to such an extent that I don't even know if I played it at all.

You can tell that the game was developed by Crytek's Hungarian subsidiary instead of the original developer Crytek not only from the design decisions, but also the background music: While I mentioned in the music review for Crysis that there were many parallels to the first Predator-movie, this tradition continues in Warhead ... that is, if you compared the addon to the second Predator-movie. As we all know, it was less thriller and more cheesy action fare, and even if the setting of the game remains the same, the comparison can at least be applied to the sound.

Games from the Crysis-series

Crysis (2007)

Crysis 2 (2011)

Instead of multi-award-winning star composer Inon Zur, Péter Antovszki, who most recently appeared with the scores for Sudden Strike 4, Codename: Panzers – Phase One or S.W.I.N.E.: HD Remaster made an appearance.That sounds more derogatory than it should and only serves to compare the level of expertise these of both composers. As in football, there is a difference if Messi is playing offensive or Hummels: both are good players but with different talents.

Thus, Antovszki's tracks sound a little off the peg and thus serve exactly the problem that I was happy to have avoided with the original score. At times the score sounds like The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (Crysis Warhead), at others like one of the current Call of Dutys (Airfield Assault) or an action piece from Splinter Cell (Alien Theme, Approaching Airfield- but never Crysis. The theme from the main game is nowhere to be heard, and something to replace it is also missing. At the same time, some of the tracks hint at the jungle setting through distant allusions such as percussion (Ambush, Psycho Standoff), which was still the focal point of the composition in the main game. Here it seems irrelevant and is dealt with almost casually.

In general, Warhead musically serves the fast-food cliché of the games industry, in which the music acts as a by-product. Thanks to synths and fast beats, it all seems rushed and more like an offshoot of the later Emergency-games than an AAA title. The overall work is rounded off by dominant electric guitar riffs that sound surprisingly satisfying, which means that the score could also be placed in the action section of a well-stocked royalty-free music collection without knowing any better.

Nevertheless, the music works very well in places (like in an Emergency), which is probably due to my simple affinity for this form of acustic experience. Ultimately, we get an avarage rating, which sounds counterintuitive after all the criticism. So please let me explain: The music from Warhead is absolutely average with no character of its own; Crysis , on the other hand, has an experimental score that is more daring and consequently more polarizing. Given the choice, I would recommend the music from the main game without hesitation. However, there are also people who prefer a solid shooting orgy to a thriller. But in this case they are beyond help.