GameSpy published this preview:
A couple of weeks ago, EA invited us to take a look at the multiplayer side of Crysis aboard the USS Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier perfect for showing off the fidelity of the multiplayer maps. No fewer than three industry heavies (including Crytek CEO Cevat Verli, nVidia Senior V.P. Dan Vivoli and Games for Windows Global Product Manager Heidi Rademacher) took the podium to proclaim their intense commitment to Crysis, and yet, for all the pomp and circumstance, the playable product left a little to be desired. All the pieces are there, but the stuttering frame rate that continues to nag this graphics-intensive behemoth has us a bit concerned given the game's ever-nearing release date.
Battling Beach Bums
To get us acquainted with the controls and familiarize ourselves with the awesome might of the main character's nanosuit, we began the event by engaging in a little single-player action. Assaulting a coastal North Korean installation, we entered the fray alongside another nanosuited warrior and some soldiers of a more ordinary variety. Our objective was to hit several antiaircraft emplacements and reduce them to rubble so that friendly air support (currently buzzing the shoreline and baiting the AA guns for giggles) could mop up any remaining resistance. With jets constantly roaring over the vibrant foliage, the environment was instantly engaging in the classic Crytek fashion (you remember how gorgeous Far Cry was when it came out, right?).
Still, all of the sumptuous beauty was marred just a tad by the choking frame rate. Even when running on hardcore, custom-built nVidia rigs, the game chugged significantly during the larger firefights. Of course, diving into the crystal-clear blue of the ocean and witnessing the positively brilliant way that light shown through the waves and how the water itself refracted our view in lusciously smooth ripples almost caused us to forget that videogames even have such mundane things as frames to begin with. When we burst from the depths of the sea to beat two boat-bound North Korean regulars into smears of pulp and gore (using the strength nanosuit mod, naturally), it seemed that there were more important things to consider than whether or not Crysis ran at a crisp 60 frames per second -- and this was still pre-release code, so some allowances must be made.
Multiplayer Meltdown
Of course, what's good (or at least decent) for the single-player campaign is not necessarily conducive to awesome multiplayer, even over lightning-fast LAN connections. Unfortunately, as we attempted to slaughter our way through deathmatch on a map entitled Armada (which looked shockingly similar to the USS Hornet aircraft carrier that housed this event), we found that the frame rate issues became a serious detriment to our abilities to score frags, and, even more troubling, our ability to really enjoy the game. There's nothing worse than taking careful aim and firing short controlled bursts at... nothing at all. The zigging and zagging that typically accompanies FPS play became more than simply an evasive tactic in Crysis' multiplayer, it was a nearly impenetrable defense that appeared to have your human-controlled foes warping small distances during severe firefights.
It is important to note that these issues were not related to network connectivity, but to the intense graphical demands that Crysis imposes. While staggeringly beautiful, it's performance that rules the day in multiplayer, and during the standard deathmatch battles we were constantly reminded that the game still needs a bit of tweaking and polish. Fortunately, all concerned parties (not the least of which is Crytek itself) have some time left to tighten things up. Of course, the frame rate issues were most glaring during the frantic deathmatch where your only goal at any given moment is to blow holes in anything ambulatory, but as we were soon to observe, deathmatch is only one (and arguably the least interesting) mode of multiplayer.
Ongoing Struggle
While the instant-action deathmatch mode of multiplayer was fairly standard, the other mode that we got to test out, called Power Struggle, was infinitely more imaginative. We've seen this kind of thing in other games before, but the implementation of the objective-based siege-style multiplayer game seemed more substantial than in previous titles (we're reminded of PlanetSide, but only in the best possible way).
The deal with Power Struggle breaks down as follows: two teams vie for control over specific locations on a fairly large map (a few city blocks in size). The twist comes from the tactical significance of each location, and your team will notice benefits resulting from the capture and control of different types of structures. Indeed, the whole concept behind Power Struggle revolves around capturing factories capable of manufacturing newly discovered alien technology and the energy generators to power these factories so that your team can ultimately produce insanely devastating siege vehicles to take down the opposing team. Along the way, this process is facilitated by the capture of bunkers which can be secured as new spawn points for the rest of your team.
At first, playing in this mode was sort of confusing, and the action was considerably muddled by a cacophony of befuddled gaming editors trying to wrap their minds around what was going on. Still, it didn't take long for us all to grasp the basic mechanics of capturing and defending installations, even if the actual execution of defending was difficult due to the never-ending onslaught of enemy players.
There is a lot of satisfying back-and-forth to the battles in Power Struggle, and the balance of power shifts continuously during each conflagration. Our ultimate goal was to destroy the heavily fortified enemy HQ, but actually accomplishing this goal was impossible without first controlling enough structures to produce a vehicle with enough firepower to take the turret-studded fortification down.
In order to build these vehicles, our team had to take control of the Proto-factory, energy-producing alien crash sites, and the armor factory. In theory, this should be an easy progression, but in practice it is an exercise in both patience and persistence as both sides of the conflict pass these facilities back and forth as they shift their focus from one tactical position to the next. What we ended up with was a bunch of half-heartedly coordinated strikes slapped together in a haphazard fashion, but this didn't seem like a great representation of the real world potential of Crysis's Power Struggle mode because, lacking headsets for adequate communication, the collection of game editors in attendance simply weren't the best example of coordination to begin with.
While what we experienced still seemed to need some refining, if Crytek can tighten up the frame rate on the finished product Crysis will undoubtedly live up to the hype surrounding it. Clearly designed from the ground up to appeal to the more mature and tactically-minded PC gamer, Crysis impressed us with its vision and still remains one of our most anticipated PC titles this year.
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