Rob Letts, executive producer of Crysis, wandered over to a chicken that was milling about outside a military compound and scooped the plump bird up into his arms. He turned around, headed about 20 yards to the edge of the water, pointed his sights (and the chicken) up and out over the ocean, activated his nanosuit's strength ability and tossed the bird some 40 feet into the air. He drew his assault rifle and opened fire, landing a few scattered shots into the carcass before it disappeared into the water.

Letts followed his execution with a dip, swimming out past a loading dock, admiring a few crabs that scuttled about the ocean floor and a school of snaking fish off in the distance. Letts assured us that there were -- or would be -- sharks in deeper waters; the type that would be drawn to a slowly bleeding North Korean soldier launched from your arms into the depths.

Crysis is a joy for its subtleties, and for its complexities. We watched as Letts haphazardly caused enough commotion for an enemy combatant to fire a flare out over the tree tops. A minute later, reinforcements arrived by boat and by jeep. Some time later, over the ridge, troops who had spotted the flare earlier where still on alert. Letts spoke of a basic set of variables (the whos, whats, and wheres), which when applied to a dynamic environment, provide the player with ever-unpredictable "action bubbles." While there is a narrative structure to Crysis and a series of well-documented twists (two major environmental upheavals that change the nature of gameplay), Letts seemed most proud of the "sandbox" nature of Crytek's tactical shooter. 'Sandbox' might be a waning buzzword that's propelled too many lazily-developed borefests, but Crysis is clearly a title that will defend the legitimacy of such a fundamental design choice. If you've got the right rig for the job, peep Crysis when it drops (by the end of the year).

As far as weird decisions go, exhuming a popular pen-and-paper RPG franchise and transforming it into a cross-platform shooter isn't nearly as disastrous as you might expect. Indeed, most Shadowrun reviewers concur that the gameplay is enjoyable and pleasingly distinct from your space donut shootouts. As for the decisions that led to a dearth of single-player content and a comically high price tag, well, those are every bit as disastrous as you'd expect.

• Eurogamer (6/10) considers Shadowrun to be a "well-designed, well-conceived game," but faults its anemic features and "counter-productive" price. "There's nothing wrong with a game choosing to specialise in either offline or online experience, of course," notes Kieron Gillen. "But if you decide to completely ignore one pole of the experience, you have to offer something generally astounding and/or groundbreaking to justify yourselves."
• Gamespot (6.9/10) feels the game, which is "about $30 too expensive," makes poor use of the Shadowrun license and doesn't offer enough variety. Despite finding the combat unique and the customization choices to be meaningful, Jeff "8.8" Gerstmann ultimately labels Shadowrun as "a pretty shallow experience."
• IGN (6.8/10) loathes the game's presentation, one of many criticisms it piles atop the "well-designed nucleus of gameplay." Charles Onyett finds the whole thing to be unrewarding, explaining that, "As gamers, it's rewards we crave, be it of the narrative variety, in-game items, new options or modes, or something entirely different."

It's a shame to see Shadowrun providing "something different" to a crowded genre, only to clumsily stumble its way into the retail world with a heavy price on its back. We're sure the brilliant executives at Microsoft will pin the blame for inhibited sales on the license itself: "What? Shadowrun tanked? Well, that could only be due to the fact that nobody likes the Shadowrun universe anymore! Let's put that one back in the closet, eh chaps?"

Read -- Metacritic on the PC version
Read -- Metacritic on the Xbox 360 version

When we spoke with PR Manager Michael Wolf about Games for Windows Live, he was sparse in details regarding a Games for Windows Live Gold account. "All I can say now is that we're working to make a Gold membership worthwhile even if you're only connecting to Live from Windows Vista," he said.