Whenever a natural environment achieves equilibrium, chances are there’ll be thunder and lightning to mark the event. As if to prove that the same is true of the virtual world, Crysis Warhead is a studiously rebalanced show of its predecessor’s cataclysmic power. More accessible to both mid-spec hardware and middling skill, it’s described by Crytek as little more than a game of ‘destruction and the tools it requires’. But what destruction, what tools, and what a stunningly rejuvenated world to put them in.

Warhead fills in the missing hours of Sergeant Michael ‘Psycho’ Sykes, the least vapid and most outrageously stereotypical of the first game’s heroes, deployed elsewhere for much of its plot. “I’m English, you Muppet!” we’re reminded twice, without provocation, as both alien invaders and the North Korean army are given a five-hour bout of top-class GBH (Great British Hassle). So when the developer calls this a better-characterised, more narrative-led experience than the first game, know that you could grit an entire frozen island with the salt that requires.

Crytek has, however, turned its game of ‘action bubbles’ and exploratory play into one of more traditional episodes and versatile set-pieces, each bookended by dramatic cutscenes. Where Crysis felt like a game hidden within its own world, only visible through an elusive matrix of muscle-suit abilities and tactics, here the goal is clear: get from A to B intact, however you can, against seemingly insurmountable odds.

What began as a neat upshot of making CryEngine 2 more efficient – in short, the old boast of having more guys on screen at once – is arguably the making of its second game. Trouble doesn’t just find you in Warhead, it ambushes and bombards you, swerving into view in an armoured truck before trying to run you over, filling the sky before swooping down and lashing you with freeze rays and swirling tentacles. Despite the lower hardware requirements and greater momentum, what the game achieves more than anything is a critical mass of opponents and AI finally worthy of the muscle-suit. Its first encounter, a showdown with dozens of soldiers in a beach resort full of popping glass and spiralling debris, demands more power-juggling than Crysis did over a dozen hours.

There’s a moment near the end when Sykes, a man inclined to shoot first, kick the corpse and leave the questions for the newspapers, sits head in hands in a scene thick with murder, neither word spoken nor judgement made. It’s a terrific moment in a game crammed with Schwarzeneggerian action, and something Warhead would have done well to explore further. In all fairness, though, there’s little room in this ‘expandalone’ for navel-gazing. In the big dumb act of blowing its extraordinary world to kingdom come, Crysis finds itself smarter than ever. While it’s hard to recall a more red-blooded battle since Lost Planet, it’s harder still to recall a more decisive remedy to a game’s initial flaws.

8/10