Crysis is great. People only say it's bland because they're trying to sound like "refined video game connosouirs". The graphics are pretty, yes, but most people don't understand why Crysis is so requirements heavy.
The truth is, Crytek wanted to make the game future-proof, so they decided to make the highest settings nearly impossible to use on this gen's hardware. Truthfully, nobody is supposed to play it on very high, or even high, really. They knew this when they made it. They only included mind-blowing graphics in the game so that in 5 years, when you have new hardware, Crysis isn't just another old game that you have fond memories of playing. You can actually load it up and it looks completely better than you remember it, and it holds up to other games of the next gen.