With powerful graphics cards worldwide still being snapped up by cryptocurrency miners, it feels almost cruel for Crytek to announce another Crysis game. Today they confirmed they're returning to their supersuit FPS with a new instalment they claim will be "a truly next-gen shooter." They're not clear about what next-gen means to them. Will Crysis 4: a) require a £1500 graphics card; b) be a battle royale; or c) sell NFT hats on the metaverse blockchain cryptonet? Answers on a postcard, reader dear.
]]>The Crysis Remastered Trilogy is out, complete with all the angry nanosuit men, angry alien squids, and solitary angry Cockney bloke of the originals – now with 8K support.
]]>Crysis Remastered landed on the Epic Games Store last year, and the Crysis Trilogy Remastered will similarly don its freshly dry-cleaned nanosuits for Epic's store on October 15th. But as of today, you can also grab Crysis Remastered from Steam.
]]>If you fancy grabbing Crysis 1, 2 and 3 in one tidy bundle, then you're in luck, because the Crysis Remastered Trilogy comes out on October 15th. Crytek already remastered the first game in their stealthy first-person shooter series last year, but now you'll be able to play the sequels with improved visuals too. Judging from Graham's Crysis Remastered review, however, you might be better off sticking with the original versions if you already own them.
]]>Windows is full of phone-based surprises, lately. For example, Windows 11 natively supports Android apps. It also turns out both Windows 10 and Windows 11 can be installed on phones with ARM and Snapdragon chipsets. And we're not talking about the old Windows Phone OS, either. This is proper, desktop Windows. That’s a route that eventually leads down a certain path. A question asked of all PCs since the mid-2000s, and now one we must ask of modern phones: “But can it run Crysis?”
The answer the OnePlus 6T cockily spits back is, “A bit.”
]]>Last week I wrote that it looked like a Crysis 2 Remaster was on the way. I was wrong - it turns out a Crysis Remastered Trilogy is coming, including both the second and third games. It's due to arrive this autumn.
]]>As seminal hip-hop artists Ant & Dec said: Let's get ready ready, let's get ready to rumble. YouTuber and maker Teenenggr has answered the question: what if instead of plugging a rumble pack into your N64 controller, you plugged it into your desk, and also it was ten times larger?
There's a video below of his keyboard and monitor rattling around his desk every time he fires a gun in Crysis, and it's glorious.
]]>Crysis was always about more than its graphics. Crysis was and is a first-person stealth playground, with destructible buildings, clever enemies, and a set of flexible superpowers with which to make one collide with the other.
Crysis Remastered is that game again, with new graphical bells and whistles you probably can't use, and a substantially higher price than the original game costs now.
]]>I'm still in the process of putting Crysis Remastered through its paces on PC, but if you want to see for yourself if your PC can indeed run Crytek's revamped FPS classic, then you'll be pleased to know the game has its own dedicated benchmarking tool. You won't find it in the game itself, sadly, as it's tucked away in the game's system files. Here's how to find it.
]]>Crysis Remastered is out and yes, you can probably run it. You will need to buy it though, because that's how these things work. The remaster includes visual updates like 8k resolution textures and ray-traced reflections for those of you willing to put your systems through their paces. Not to worry, ye old Crysis joke will live on for several more years if Crytek have anything to say about it.
]]>Famed for its steep requirements and melting PCs the world over, the original Crysis was arguably one of the most important PC games of its day when it first came out in 2007. Not only did it push current PCs to their limits, but it also became a touchstone for the avid benchmarkers in the years that followed. Whenever you built a new PC, the joke was always, "But can it run Crysis?"
Now, that joke is probably going to become, "But can it run Crysis Remastered?", which arrives on the Epic Games Store tomorrow, September 18th. With support for 8K textures, software-driven ray tracing, real-time reflections and loads more, developer Crytek and partner Saber Interactive have given the 2007 original quite the new coat of graphical paint - and I got to speak with Crysis Remastered's project lead Steffen Halbig ahead of the game's launch to talk all about it. We chat about everything from what kind of performance you can expect from its official PC requirements, to how their software-based ray tracing works, and why there's currently no system on the planet that can max out its aptly-named "Can It Run Crysis?" mode.
]]>Crytek have released a new 8K tech trailer for Crysis Remastered, comparing the game's 2007 visuals with all of its new graphical bells and whistles at a whopping 7680x4320 resolution. It's effectively a fuller version of the tech preview trailer they showed off last month, giving us a closer look at their software-driven ray tracing effects, pretty real-time reflections and its aptly-named "Can It Run Crysis?" 8K graphics setting.
]]>Might want to dig your nanosuit out of the back of your closet to see if it still fits. It's been 13 years and now it's time to get geared back up next month. A new trailer for Crysis Remastered reveals the release date and shows off some new visual improvements. True to form, the rehabbed Crysis will try to put your PC to the test.
]]>Update: Wildly, Crytek have delayed the formal announcement, while acknowledging that everyone has seen the leak anyway.
Today is the day for Crytek for formally reveal Crysis Remastered, though the release date and trailer have apparently already leaked anyway. The prettied-up re-release of the supersuit shooter is coming on July 23rd, according to a Microsoft Store page that went live early before being pulled down. Here, check out the trailer.
]]>Poor Crytek. After some apparent teasing of it, they just let everyone know they’re remastering their 2007 PC-melting FPS Crysis by accidentally making the official site live. In the short time the site was online, someone grabbed the key art.
Update: And now it's officially announced.
]]>After a long sleep, Crysis appears to be waking up. Crytek have been busy in the meantime with the likes of Hunt: Showdown while Crysis took something of a cold-storage nap. The super serious super soldier FPS series added Crysis 3 to the stables back in 2013. Seven years later, the official Crysis Twitter account is broadcasting signs of life.
]]>"Will it run Crysis?" was an oft-expressed anxiety of mid-noughties PC gaming, but here in the chaotic end-times of 2018 we're faced with a new one: "Crysis can't run Crysis."
Come October, there'll be no more multiplayer nanosuit shenanigans: Crytek are shutting the online component of Crysis down, apparently because the playerbase is just too dang small to make life support worthwhile. Singleplayer isn't going anywhere, you'll be glad to hear, but still: it's sad when something dies.
]]>Three fallacies I'm occasionally guilty of believing:
1) The Oculus Rift does not involve any of the physicality of the HTC Vive 2) VR gaming is riding a cart to minigame hell 3) There's a ceiling on how good VR games can look
Crytek's beautiful and involving Oculus Rift game The Climb [official site] is a pretty good riposte to all of the above.
]]>Global illumination. Volumetric clouds. Sub-surface scattering.
These are words that make me hot.
But I know this feeling is forbidden. I should care about games, not the empty pursuit of photorealism. But oh my, it’s so exciting, and not empty. In fact, I think that right now photorealism is becoming crucial to games, and that we should celebrate it.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
When later entries in a series go wrong, the disappointment tends not to blight the original people liked so much. Unfortunately Crysis [official site] couldn't maintain the things people liked about it for even its own running time. Yeah, the aliens were a bit guff, but there was so much in Crysis to like from its open stealth-action beginnings to its bombastic finale.
]]>Hello youse!
We're off the back of a string of five reviews, so it's time for a NEWS UPDATE. Let's call this the NEWS UPDATE OF MAY, or the MAY NEWS UPDATE. Of board games, obviously. And you might be thinking - “Well, Rab, you just did a news update last month, called the April News Update or something. Is there even more news about daft board games already?” And I'm all like that - “Well, yes.”
]]>There's an open stretch of grass between me and the thin exterior wall of a small island village. The place is crawling with enemy troops, who move along the dirt roads and populate the ramshackle buildings in groups of two or three. Defensive turrets would already be firing at me if I my nanosuit wasn't keeping me invisible, the energy bar barely moving for as long as I remain still.
So I start to run.
You want Advanced Warfare? Crysis did that seven years ago.
]]>In June this year, rumours began to circulate that developer and publisher Crytek were in trouble. Anonymous sources told Kotaku and GameStar [article behind paywall] stories of wages being late, staff going two months without pay, and a lack of communication from the company's management. Crytek initially denied everything. Then last week Crytek made staff redundant at their Austin office, and sold their UK office and the Homefront IP to Koch Media.
Which brings us to today, upon which Eurogamer have run an interview with Crytek co-founder Cevat Yerli. The interview is long and wide-ranging, and covers the current financial situation at the company, why wage payments got "delayed", and where the company is now headed.
]]>I'm not sure how a Homefront sequel that I didn't really care about became a Crysis game that I really want to play, but that's what I saw the other day. Homefront: The Revolution is Crysis. Hilariously Crysis. So very very Crysis. And yet it's a Crysis game that Crytek haven't even managed to make, despite having all the component parts.
Now they are, and it's a Homefront game. I am confused.
]]>GameSpy giveth, and - years later - it shutteth down due to the cruleth realities of modern busineth practices and, in doing so, taketh away. The list of games affected by said untimely (but also kinda timely) demise is long and prone to billowing ominously in the wind, and we still don't know what exactly will happen to a number of those trapped in its server purgatory. Sometimes, though, no news is good news. Case in point: it turns out that Crysis and Crysis 2 won't be coming back online after GameSpy goes dark.
]]>GameSpy, a relic from times long before the modern Internet - or indeed, games and spies - existed is closing down. This on its own is not surprising as the multiplayer service is, by modern standards, buggy and kind of a joke, but it leaves a startling number of games with their e-wings clipped and their online-heaving hams strung in its wake. How many, you ask? Well, Reddit's /r/Games board compiled a massive list, and the results aren't pretty.
]]>This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.
Games move pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss them. The pretties this week come courtesy not of a particular game, nor indeed me, but of the Dead End Thrills Flickr group, a caravan of some 500+ 'players' who spend more time stopping games and looking around than they do actually playing. The times we live in.
With some 11,000 images in there, I wasn't sure how best to approach this. (Drunk, obviously, but how badly?) I've gone for the easy option: a round-up of games and/or users that stood out over the last few weeks. What you'll often find is that wrangling games into 'screenshot mode' has knock-on benefits for any PC gamer, so let's see if that holds true.
]]>OK, OK, I admit, I want an Oculus Rift and I will do unspeakable things to any human being of your choice in order to get one. (Er, better not hold me to that.) Stereoscopic 3D in games has left me either unmoved or with a headache to date, but these VR goggles are so much more than that. They mean videogames BEAMED DIRECTLY INTO MY BRAIN, or thereabouts and, as this video of an OR modification for Crysis demonstrates, they also allow the use of natural head movement to look around game environments.
]]>Crysis 3: a first-person shooter set in a post-apocalyptic, alien-invaded New York, in which you wear a Nanosuit which enables you to temporarily become invisible, damage-resistant or able to leap moderately-sized walls in a single bound. It has a lot of graphics. It's out now in the US, and tomorrow in the UK. Here is an opinion.
]]>We don't usually do system requirements posts, but when it comes to Crytek they do have a history of basically telling us all that our PCs are rubbish and outdated. Granted, while once it was the high watermark of e-willy waving, the Crysis series hasn't of late been the technical Goliath/Mephistopheles it once was. Does that change with the upcoming Crysis 3? You know how this works.
]]>Do you think Crysis needs more lightsabers? I think Crysis needs more lightsabers. Evidently, the folks behind the original Crysis' four-years-in-the-making StarCry mod agreed, so they chucked 'em in - hopefully skewering an Ewok or 12 in the process - for good measure. Wait, good measure? Why would I ever say such a thing when lightsabers - much like love - are all you need? Mainly because they join 1000 new sci-fi-themed objects, 2000 textures, 20 weapons, and 1000 lines of dialog as part of a seriously formidable overhaul package. Intrigued? Well, unfortunately, the RPS lot is fresh out of sci-fi-themed vehicles for break-traversing purposes. We do have Syfy-themed vehicles, though. Might I recommend the Supergator?
]]>Yesterday brought official word that a profitable videogame would see a follow-up. Surprise! But while we got to ogle a few Crysis 3 screenshots, we didn't get to see it in motion. We still don't, because life is harsh and cruel and that's a lesson that we all need to learn at some point. Now go to bed without having any dinner. Once you wake up tomorrow, starving and miserable, we might just let you watch this footage of the latest update to CryENGINE 3, which might just offer some visual hints about what to expect from Thrysis. Included - more ear-shaped ears, diving fish-guys, a man with multi-coloured stubble, the kind of fantasy castles that we all wish Skyrim had, a lovely waterfall, a man taking out his existential rage on a window and a shed.
]]>Here is a poorly-kept secret: I'm not a very tall man. Here is another one: Crysis 3 is happening. Even before evidence turned up last week, a fourth nanosuited adventure seemed something of a given, but it's taken the EA-Crytek announcengine this long to formally confirm the next game. I've just played Press Release Bingo and I've got a "stunning", a "state of the art", an "unparalleled visuals", an "ultimate", a "leveraging the latest technology" and enough pre-order unlocks to kill a small horse.
Confirmed: we'll play as angry baldy man Prophet (those who've finished Crysis 2 can probably work out why that's the case), that bow and arrow is legit, it's due next Spring, it's using CryEngine 3, it's going to have "sandbox gameplay" and it's set in a New York trapped inside an Nanodome which has caused it to transform into an 'urban rainforest.'
]]>While struggling to think up a headline pun to accompany the unsurprising news that there's almost certainly going to be a third (well, fourth technically speaking) Crysis game, the 'crap rhymes' part of my imagination dredged up No Way Sis, who were at one time deemed the UK's premier Oasis tribute act and enjoyed far too much success of their own. Even a hit single. What a terrible, terrible world this can be.
Anyway, Crysis 3. A spot of digging by Neogaf and Eurogamer's German arm has turned up assorted hints that Crytek's third nanosuit oddyssey is due for a reveal soon. They even found a picture of a Crysis dude with a bow and arrow. Which seems sort of incongruous to the nanosuit, but maybe the Strength mode will enable us to shoot arrows that fly for over 20 miles. EXTREME HUNTING.
]]>Would you call Minecraft in the Crysis engine Mynecraft or Minecryft? I prefer the second, because the first could be a typo, whereas the only legitimate reason for coming up with the second is if there's a Crysis mod that adds Minecraft to it. Wait, there is! And it's called... what, 'Craftable'? Seriously?
]]>This week, a few mods that I've been monitoring but haven't had a chance to have a proper go at yet. In some cases, that's because they haven't been released yet, in others it's because the hours in every day are sadly limited, and as well as playing games and writing about them, I very occasionally sleep. I even venture outside from time to time, although admittedly not in the current political and meteorological climate. Too chilly. Too bitter. All too real. Onward to fantasy. Preferably with decent central heating.
]]>I use the word potential all the time. To the extent that it becomes annoying to the people around me. But it is an important word, especially in this still youthful industry. It’s locked in the bizarre ideas forming in the mind and on the hard drive of the smallest indie developer, and it’s evident in the expanding technical prowess of the largest blockbusters. It’s not just in the future though. I also love the potential of what already exists, the engines that have been built and the histories they have produced. And that’s why I love mods. They can make the old new in so many ways: balancing, tweaking, expanding, subverting, or being something self-contained and entirely new. Take The Worry of Newport. It’s a self-contained, Lovecraftian mystery that’s pretending to be a mod for Crysis.
]]>Speaking with Gamasutra, Crytek bossman Cervat Yerli had this to say about the Crysis games: "Crysis 1's intention was, if I were to play it three years later, it looks great. And it does, actually, it fulfilled that. But it made it difficult for entry-level players. So with Crysis 2, we took a different direction, and it backfired a little bit." Yerli explained that the forthcoming high-end 1.9 patch for Crysis 2, which will introduce clevers such as tessellation, realistic shadows with variable penumbra, parallax occlusion mapping, and "Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field", is a "gift" to the PC high-end community. "It lifts up Crysis 2 and gives a sneak peak of how PC gaming will evolve in the future," says Yerli, "If you support a high-end preference." I totally support a high-end preference. That sounds like some kind of innuendo, right? Eh? Guys? Mm.
]]>THINGS ARE GETTING REALLY STRANGE NOW. Now being outside of UK office hours mean we're yet to get our own EA response to why Crysis 2 vanished from Steam yesterday, but across-the-ponders have now received one. The upshot? Despite all this 'only on Origin' stuff, EA didn't do it. So: who did?
]]>"Where were you when the war began, Daddy?" "Well, little Ignatius H. Meer III, I was at my PC, staring vacantly at Twitter. Probably eating some crisps as I did. I'll never forget that dark, terrible day. The day that EA decided they could fight Steam." "Daddy? Why are you crying, Daddy?"
Crysis 2 has disappeared from Steam, and is now described as being "Origin only." Origin is, you may recall, EA's newly-relaunched download store. Uh-oh.
]]>Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there's very little for you to actually play. There's a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That's a lot of games! Read on to find out what's what.
]]>Where were you all last week? I turned up and no one was here, honest! What's that? No, I'm not crossing my fingers behind my back, and you definitely didn't see him heading off on holiday. What nonsense. Anyway, to make up for it, here's an extra-long edition of Mod News to cover the past two weeks. This time: Crash Bandicoot, a Warcraft III art mod, a surprising number of trailers and a bizarre remake of Deus Ex...
]]>A new splashpage at CryMod, which is currently being overhauled, reveals that this summer will see the apperance of both a Crysis 2 editor and a CryEngine SDK. What does this mean? Well, it means people will be able able to make levels for Crysis 2, but also that they'll be able to make non-commercial stuff for free using the CryEngine tech. Crytek's Mr Yerli says: "In August 2011 we will be launching a free CryENGINE SDK. If you want to use it for fun, like all our previous MOD SDKs it will be completely free of charge, to anyone who wants to play with it! You just register, download the SDK with a personalized license key and you're good to go! If you want to use it to make a game to launch commercially, we'd like to help you with that. If you want to take your product down a traditional commercial route, we will offer an innovative low cost licensing model if you want to release your game digitally."
]]>In the week of Portal 2's release, it seems apt that Valve's games should dominate the mod scene's output. While the range of titles you can mod these days is impressive, and so many of the tools are easy to learn, I've still yet to come across a moddable engine that's quite as intuitive and flexible as Source. I can't wait to see what people can do with Portal 2 when we're able to mod that. It's going to be very interesting to see the results. Onwards, then...
]]>After a couple of weeks of web-wide worrying and shouting and bickering and excellently satirical editorials, you may be glad to hear that Crysis 2 is to receive its in-doubt DirectX 11 patch after all. This comes via the official forums, wherein it was officially said on an official forum, despite being officially said on other official forums that it mightn't happen. That seals it: all is well in PC gaming tech land. For now.
]]>Having played Crysis 2, the latest from the former technical innovators at Crytek, I have to express that I'm not only horrified, but also shocked, at the paucity of graphical accomplishments in what should have been a groundbreaking game. It's quite clear that massive compromises have been made in order to keep the console market happy, meaning the PC version of the game is crippled to the point where it's literally impossible to look at without feeling physically sick. I have put together some detailed analysis of the differences between CryEngine 2 and CryEngine 3, to prove that the developers have let everyone down.
]]>He calls himself Master Le Cosplay. Going on this, he's probably right. This gentleman has built himself a frighteningly detailed Crysis Nanosuit, complete with weapons. Super-strength, speed and invisibility TBC. Though frankly invisibility's going to be nigh-on impossible looking like that.
]]>In our excitement of posting Pat's shaky-hand-footage of Crysis 2 we didn't actually post the full thing when it popped up on the 9th. We'd normally rather be never than late, being obsessed by appearances and fearing being mocked by our cool blogger friends, but we'll make an exception in this case. Basically, because it looks pretty lovely, doing the Gears-of-War-esque SAD SAD SONG OVER RUINED LANDSCAPE thing and featuring shit getting real. I love it when shit gets real. When shit remains fake it's distinctly inferior. Er... trailer follows.
]]>The internet is about to be ablaze with info from the recent Crysis 2 event in New York, which I totally didn't get invited to. I'M NOT BITTER. Fortunately news-sleuth Pat from VG247 has a load of it, including an interview with Crytek superboss, Cervat Yerli. Not much concrete on the PC version, other than suggestions that it will be "best". The impressions of the game sound impressive too, even if it is more aliens, and even if it did cause Pat to collapse into some kind of modernist experimental streamed free-association brain-burst:
]]>The MechWarrior: Living Legends mod popped a few times in comments over the break, and it has been landing in my inbox from various people, too. I can see why there's excitement. It's a Crysis mod based on the Mechwarrior universe, the beta for which is now underway. That means, well, robots piloted by men, with lasers, and missiles. You know the sort of thing. You can grab the most recent version of the mod over at the Moddb page, but you'll need Crysis to play, obviously. Judging by the beta footage (posted below) this is look very promising indeed.
]]>I remember being very pleased the time I found a Delorean mod for GTA Vice City. That lovely car, upward opening doors, very cute. It was as nothing compared to this mod for Crysis that Lewie points out to us - all that Back To The Future detail. You can time travel in it! (To the opposite time of day, but you know, it's still time travel.) Check out the video below.
]]>This is rather beautiful: a series of famous movie environments - including BladeRunner, Aliens, and I Am Legend - recreated in the Unreal 3.0 (apparently) and Crysis engine, over on Incrysis.com. These were pulled from the original competition threads over at the Game Artist community forums.
]]>Wahey, it's another video! But it's a bank holiday, so you should be grateful you're getting anything at all out of us tradition-spurning Brits, quite frankly. Plus it's apparently a leaked video, which adds the scintillating thrill of watching something you're not supposed to. Because seeing footage of games that might make you want to buy them is a bad thing. Yes.
]]>So we've got a release date for Crysis Warhead, the... yep, I'm gonna say it. You can't stop me from saying it... expandalone for last year's system-eating FPS. It's September 16th - in America. In Europe, it's September 12th.
Which is a) great news for we oft-second-fiddle Eurotrash and b) steeeeeeeyoooooooooopid - or at least it is so long as you subscribe to the theory that staggered release dates can increase piracy. It'll be an interesting situation to watch, at any rate.
]]>Explode! No sign of the rubbish-o-aliens, mercifully:
]]>Next-Gen.biz seem to have gotten some clarity out of Crytek over their platform plans for the Crysis series. Crysis Warhead was long in development as a PC exclusive before studio boss Cevat Yerli announced they were going multi-platform.
However, from now on their games will be released across the range of platforms, obviously still including the PC. Crytek's business manager, Harald Seeley, added,
"[W]e had no desire or intention to disappoint our loyal PC fans."
Um... There were possibly slightly more uplifting approaches that could have been available. Anyhow, he states that the different platforms will receive different treatments.
]]>Two stories caught my eye. Firstly, Cryptic Comet – as well as revealing Solium Infernum – announced their next free content patch for Armageddon Empires. The innuendo-provoking Tip Of The Spear is primarily about increasing the utility of infantry troops through new advanced training cards. It's due on the 17th of July, the anniversary of the game's release. Which is nice. Secondly, Crytek announcing that the long awaited 1.3 version of the Crysispatch “almost certainly" isn't going to come out. And not in a skipping straight onto 1.4 way. They're just not going to bother. Which is less nice.
So... how much patching can a community actually expect?
]]>I was passing through the 'Gaf when I noted some chattering about Incrysis discovering Crytek had registered a new trademark and another website. The name in question? "Crysis Warzone". Apparently, this brings four marks/sites having been registered - alongside Wazone we have Crysis Warhead, Crysis Wars and the brilliantly suggestive World In Crysis. One of them will clearly be the inevitable console version. Others could just be Crytek not deciding exactly what to call their inevitable console version. But - we suspect - not all of them. Whatever could World In Crysis actually be, eh? Speculation: Go!
]]>I've just been reading Raven Software's Manveer Heir over on GameSetWatch. He's talking about how games that allow you to make choices are generally the more interesting experiences, with specific reference to how the early parts of Crysis are better than the final act. The suit powers, he argues, are a neat way of giving the player distinct choices. However...
This choice virtually went away with the new enemies. They could often see through my cloaking and it became almost useless. I played the rest of the game barely using my special abilities, which changed the way the game felt and played. Couple that in with the more linear levels, and it becomes evident that the end of the game offers far less choice than the beginning.
He's dead right, the opening few hours of Crysis are incredible, but then Crytek seemed to lose sight of what they'd invented: the Nano Muscle Suit.
]]>Epic do it. id do it. Even educated fleas do it. And now Crytek have announced they too are dumping PC exclusives. VG247 spots Crytek's Cevat Yerli telling PC Play about the aftershocks of Crysis:
]]>The winners of our excellent Crysis competition are David McLaughlin, James Glover and Si Wharton. No, we're not going to print their crises because they're of rather variable length and family quality, and we may need them as... evidence. Thanks, however, to everyone who entered. And thanks to EA for providing the booty. Fresh competitions coming up soon.
]]>Electronic Arts have kindly volunteered to give away copies of Crysis and its soundtrack CD to three RPS readers. Well, we say "give away", but there has to be an element of vying for the prize. We require a small imaginative penance by which we can judge the worthy recipients. Crysis, in case you weren't paying attention, was one of last year's most splendid first-person shooters, and spiritual sequel to Far Cry. And it's a beauty.
]]>There's a bunch of these Crysis editing tool vids bouncing about, but I like how this water-physics one takes on a kind absurdist performance art feel:
]]>Now, this is an interesting twist in a tale. Ever since people described its first month sales figures as disappointing, it's been one of those accepted gamer beliefs that the PC-punishing FPS was a flop at retail. Except Joystiq brings to our attention that Crysis has been announced as going Platinum. That is, a million copies sold, worldwide. I've been expecting this - I recently saw the UK figures for PC retail, and Crysis wasn't exactly that far down the list. It kind of shows that we really shouldn't jump to conclusions, especially when even then those original conclusions were pretty untenable if examined closer. Those who actually looked would have realised that "first month" was actually just over two weeks on sale, and the NPD figures put that 86K actually over what they estimated it would.
]]>An amazing work in progress is being unveiled over at Digital Urban, the blog of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London. They're importing models from the Big Smoke into the Crysis engine, with astounding results. "Our London model goes out to the M25 covering 3 million buildings," says Andy from Digital Urban, in the comments thread following this piece.
]]>What a lot of words we posted yesterday. You must be exhausted from all that reading, bless you. Is ickle baby tired? Does 'is ickle eyes need a resty-poos? Well, why not take some time out to play some games instead? Here's a quick round up of recent free digi-delights (and, um, some more reading. Sorry.) potentially worthy of your exacting attention...
]]>We don't write about PC hardware all that often on RPS, unless it's something absolutely batshit or doomed to failure. In the parts of my life that don't involve obssessively checking whether anyone's said something rude about us in our comments threads though, I keep a detached eye on what's new in silicon heaven.
Today, it's leaked details on the next card from current 3D champs NVIDIA.
]]>Sad tidings for fans of heavily normal-mapped pretend-man-shoots. Seems both Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3 haven't exactly stormed up the charts, which is a tragic and strange state of affairs for what were seemingly two of the most eagerly-anticipated PC games of the year.
]]>Now, this is the Crysis I want to play - far more exciting than all that rubbish alien stuff.
]]>I'm playing dilettante this weekend, dabbling with some of the bigger games of the moment which I haven't had a chance to play properly yet. Some of them are on Televisual Pleasure Boxes (Mario Galaxy and Assassin's Creed) but one's home is on the Personal Thinking Machines whose progress we like to chart at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It's Crysis.
Which is a case where I'm last guy to the party but - hey - it's Saturday. We can all chill together.
]]>I spotted this over on GameTrailers' featured user's movies, where they explain: "The "CORE-X Graphical Benchmark" is a render Video by "Blur Studio" for CryTek that shows how they wanted Crysis to be like."
]]>Some interesting (and perhaps worrying) facts'n'quotes over in this report on PC industry heavyweights discussing the future of the ol' IBM Compatible as a gaming platform. They claim all is rosy and well, but it seems PC gaming generates half a billion dollars less now than it did in 2001 - though as the piece points out this doesn't include digital distribution such as Gametap or Steam (and, I'd guess, MMO subscriptions too). Or, indeed, pirated copies of games, the elephant in that particular room which doesn't seem to have been mentioned, and could quite possibly account for some of the drop from $1.5 billion to $970 million over the last five years.
I can't help but get a little bit snooty and defensive when I hear talk of something rotten in the state of PC gaming.
]]>Can't get Crysis multiplayer to work? Crytek know your woes.
For everyone struggling to get multiplayer to work properly, Crytek are on it. And while the connectivity issues are being hit with a thousand spanners, the company offers some helpful workarounds for those affected.
"Word from Crytek: We just would like to let you know that we are aware of the currently occurring issues regarding playing Crysis Multiplayer online. We are already in touch with Gamespy, EA and the world-wide server provider to resolve the problems. This topic has the highest priority for us now and we hope to come up with a solution as quickly as possible."
]]>So something finally happened with that Crysis viral. The sim card that came with the not-so-clever document was stuck in an old mobile, and left. Last night I checked and a text arrived, with an URL and a username and password. And yes, I'm typing through gritted teeth, perfectly aware that writing about it is exactly what they want me to do.
In what is quite possibly the dullest ARG ever, the site contains a couple of folders, in which is some gibberish, and an mp3 which you can listen to here. Though goodness knows why you'd want to. It sounds like Crysis background noise - weeee!
There's lots of nonsense, all posted below for those who enjoy code cracking. I'm not at all clear what the goal is, so close to release, and so blatantly about Crysis. But they have my home address, and that's a bit worrying. I prefer my insane advertising stalkers to have a bit more imagination and purpose.
]]>Since Jim is away in the Big Apple this week, it falls upon me to post news of his review of Crysis going live over at Eurogamer. Jim likes it, in short. He says things like...
]]>So when is Crysis coming out?
]]>Here's a strange piece of viral advertising. (And proof I can't be trusted with a document marked "CONFIDENTIAL").
In the post this morning came a stiff, brown envelope, containing what purports to be a "CONFIDENTIAL" document, with the vast majority of the text blacked out. And a very small envelope stapled to the document, containing nothing but an O2 mobile phone sim card.
It disappointingly quickly reveals itself to be a viral for Crysis, with statements like,
"...TO USE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE AND REMAIN COVERT AT ALL TIMES. IT IS VITAL THAT THE NORTH KOREANS DO NOT KNOW THAT THE TEAM IS ON THE ISLAND."
Scans of the doc, and more below.
]]>First, we had the tanks and the helicopters and the nukes and the aliens. Now, thanks once again to modders experimenting with the outer limits of the bundled Sandbox2 editor, we get the Crysis demo in a whole new, sparkly setting. Is this the best demo ever? Apart from the goof many years ago in which a UK magazine accidentally stuck, rather than the demo, the entirety of the game in question (wish I could remember what it was - I'll try and find out) on its coverdisk, I reckon so. Details of the map and how to get it after the jump.
]]>Either Crytek are quietly trying to cause no end of hell for EA, or the wrong Crysis demo got released and there are a whole lot of panicking, screaming, crying German developers right now.
First, the script for the entire game was discovered lurking in the demo files. Then a simple config file edit activated supposedly DirectX 10 and Vista-only graphical effects in DirectX 9 and XP. And now, someone faffing about with the bundled level editor has managed to dump a load of good stuff from later in the game into the demo map and make it playable. To find out how, what, who and wither, you'll have to read on...
]]>Yes, we know we're horribly behind most of the rest of the internet in this (and in fact didn't bother to mention it previously for just that reason), but hell, if we ever want to be the biggest PC gaming website in the world we should probably make the effort. I've compensated for our tardiness by adding several hundred words of bonus ranting to it.
Skip to the end if you can't be bothered with me waffling on about Microsoft conspiracy theories and just want to find out how to make the Crysis demo look way better under hoary old Windows XP. Otherwise, don your finest head-fitting tinfoil and read on.
]]>While John’s spent his time in the Crysis demo struggling to shoot men in the face, I’ve spent mine exploring. Here I am, after all, on a beautiful tropical island and with a pocketful of superpowers – there must something to do other than murder people. It’s time to test the limits of this supposedly open environment.
]]>In short: Crytek have spent so much time thinking about how best they can show Korean gentlemen being throttled, they forgot to remove the design-doc-script thing from the demo files. Oh noes!
]]>Why? Because doing this just made me scream and run out of the room in big-girl's-blousey fear:
]]>The Crysis demo appeared last night, in an effort to confuse everyone. It's a whopping 1.77Gb (123.8 Peggles), and can be downloaded from all sorts of places, helpfully gathered together here.
And it's really rather good. This is a huge chunk-o-game, which if explored gleefully could take you well over an hour to play through. (I'm sure idiots could rush through it in minutes, but I care not for the antics of idiots). And finally, we can believe in the powers of the suit. But there are some problems. So, in the interests of not being a miseryguts, here's what's good about the demo:
]]>The Crysis demo is yours to download today! Er, if you're willing to buy Crysis first.
EA, in their non-stop waterfall of wisdom, have decided that it's an extremely clever idea to ask people to pay money for an advert - an advert that will be available for free tomorrow.
For those who are buying the game anyway, they can gain access to the brief section for a whole 24 hours, when the non-pre-ordering plebs must sit outside in the cold. Which includes us, so we've no idea what the demo's like. Sorry about that. Read on for more moaning.
]]>So, we're in a bit of a quandry. Bioshock was quite exciting. The Orange Box was simply incredibly wonderfully enormo-exciting. The writers and readers of RPS alike rode these zeitgeist waves in something like ecstasy, hollering happy, happy words all the way. But what now? While there'll doubtless be yet more Portal posts here before the year is out, really it's time we look to tomorrow...
]]>This new video trailer for Crysis mixes developer Cervat Yerli talking fairly frankly about the game, with Microsoft and Nvidia folks delivering empty eulogies that seem to have been downloaded directly from MarketingBrain HQ. The footage has a similar piecemeal quality to it. There are man-shooting, grenade-lobbing scenes when it it looks like Crysis is simply Another Generic Shooter, and then contrasting scenes where you have to sit back with raised eyebrows and nod in agreement with Cervat: it does look a bit gosh blimey. Have a look for yourself:
]]>It's the night of the New Game Download. The Crysis multiplayer beta, oddly described as "Friends and family", is accessible to anyone with a Founders' Club FilePlanet account. Which anyone can get by paying IGN's insanely awful download service $10 they don't need or deserve.
]]>While you may not realise it from reading this blog, there are other PC shooters other than Bioshock we give a damn about. No, really.
]]>The Far Cry 2 teaser site is up and running. You can click on the trees and birds fly off! Man, I'm sold. I haven't been this excited about a semi-interactive picture of an African vista since I don't know when.
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