Crysis Warhead: Preview by PC Gamer Magazine

PC Gamer Magazine released preview of Crysis Warhead PC game by Crytek.





While you might have enjoyed the low-res scans provided by Crysis-Online, you might equally want to read its online version below:

How do you top the critically acclaimed launch of Crysis, a sci-fi shooter so genre-pushing, so technologically ahead of the curve, that it was awarded PC Gamer’s Game of the Year for 2007? For developer Crytek, the answer isn’t to churn out a quickie sequel - even though Crysis’ cliff-hanger ending surely demands one. Now.

No - first, Crytek has to deal with the “perception” problem. The perception that its CryEngine 2 tech won’t run on any rig less powerful than a Cray supercomputer. (It does.) The perception that Crysis was a financial flop. (Hardly - the game sold nearly 1.5 million copies worldwide, says EA.) And finally, following an interview in which Crytek president Cevat Yerli suggested that the company may not develop exclusively for the PC in the future, the perception that any new games in the Crysis series will be dumbed-down console ports.



To that last point, know this: Crysis Warhead is a PC exclusive. But, given that the Crysis series was supposed to be a trilogy, what it isn’t may surprise you. Read on for the story of one of the Crysis saga’s most unlikely new heroes.

Here’s what Crysis Warhead isn’t: a sequel to the original Crysis. It isn’t an expansion pack, or even a stand-alone expansion. It isn’t the continuing story of Nomad, the original game’s faceless hero. Instead, Warhead is a full-sized game that fleshes out the side adventures of one of Nomad’s nanosuited teammates, in a story that runs parallel to the events of Crysis. (Think Barney’s wild ride in the Half-Life expansion Blue Shift.) Surprisingly, that teammate isn’t Prophet, the squad leader whose unseen adventures sparked the most questions (such as, where he got that high-tech alien weapon), but Sykes (aka, “Psycho”), the colorful former British SAS soldier who disappears toward the middle of Crysis, and then suddenly shows up on the aircraft carrier at the finale.

Psycho is meant to infuse the proceedings with “more character, more personality, more emotion,” says Cevat Yerli, Crytek’s cofounder and president. He’s a straight arrow who’s more direct and “a bit of a redneck,” Yerli adds.

In addition to having a unique face and voice, Psycho’s presence as a playable character means you’ll get to see him in third-person view during the game’s cut-scenes, performing tricks with the nanosuit that you may want to attempt yourself - a purposeful way of teaching you some creative ways to use your suit’s enhanced strength, speed, armor, and cloaking ability. But what about Prophet? Warhead won’t touch on his story, but Yerli hints that yet another not-quite-a-sequel may be on the horizon. Crytek’s Budapest studio is developing Warhead while its Kiev studio is working on an “unannounced project.”



Warhead’s plot is still under close wraps, except for a few facts: The game starts when Psycho leaves Nomad mid-Crysis to help out another unit and ends sometime before he shows back up on the aircraft carrier. You’ll again fight North Korean soldiers and aliens - anyone else remains a surprise. The game will contain two new vehicles, a hovercraft and the gun-mounted Advanced Scout Recon (ASR). New weapons will include dual submachine guns and a grenade launcher. Expect a single-player campaign of about 8 to 10 hours, and a beefed-up multiplayer mode.

Fans of Crysis’ multiplayer will be overjoyed to learn that Warhead will include all its maps and content, including enhancements added post-launch. In addition to Crysis’ two multiplayer modes, Instant Action (deathmatch) and Power Struggle, Warhead will introduce a third that’s yet to be named. While Crytek won't share details about it, the team says it won’t be as complex as Power Struggle, but will offer more team play than Instant Action. Though the nanosuit’s powers will again be muted in multiplayer - a necessity for fun, balanced gameplay, say the devs - Warhead’s new maps will feature more vertical environments and wide gaps to encourage the use of strength- and speed-augmented jumps. All the vehicles from both games’ single-player campaigns will also be available in multiplayer, including the Amphibious APC.

What’s really new in Warhead is Crytek’s determination to satisfy critics of the first Crysis. Some players were turned off by myriad issues, whether perceived or real. Chief among these was the game’s pushing of hardware boundaries, especially it’s so-called “future-proofing” meant to allow its visuals to scale upward with the release of future hardware. Yerli says this feature was included with the best of intentions, but the backlash was intense - gamers wanted to be able to max out Crysis’ graphics at launch on existing systems. In hindsight, Yerli agrees that the move was a “mistake,” and that it would’ve been wiser to unlock the game’s highest graphics settings in a patch when better hardware became available.

Crysis’ high system specs were another bone of contention, and Yerli acknowledges that the launch specs were high. (Patches have since better optimized the code.) Warhead, he promises, will reward those who upgraded to play Crysis. “If you were able to run Crysis, you’ll be able to run Warhead better,” says Yerli. That’s not to say that Warhead won’t push the graphics barrier. In addition to those easier-to-digest system requirements, Warhead’s graphics will benefit from a new global ambient lighting system that will boost visual acuity in the game’s environments and models. Improvements in the way lights and shadows interact with the world enhance small details previously unnoticed, and spotlight the game’s shader effects. And, though it hasn’t been added to the engine yet, Crytek plans to include new particle effects that are “dense and intense,” says Yerli.

None of these enhancements will impact framerates on current-gen machines, he notes. “We tried to push image quality and particle effects, but not at the cost of hardware performance.” And don’t worry about having Windows Vista and DX10 on your machine - you’ll be able to max out all settings in Warhead with your DX9-capable videocard. Crytek also listened to complaints that Crysis’ enemy AI was lacking, and is working to improve it for Warhead, especially in the aliens, who will appear to have more human-like organization. Group tactics will be improved, and Korean combat chatter will receive an upgrade to better inform you of what the North Korean soldiers are up to.

Warhead’s overall pace will also be polished. While Crysis started out with sandbox-like missions that allowed you to strategize how best to accomplish an objective, its missions turned tightly linear by the end. In Warhead, the scripted and sandbox aspects will be better integrated, and the plotting will remain consistent throughout the game. For example, vehicles will remain an important part of the action, but Warhead won’t include any missions where you have to pilot one (VTOL level, anyone?). Instead, you’ll be able to switch vehicles - or walk - at will.

Taking inspiration from Call of Duty 4, Yerli says that Warhead will be more consistently exciting, with fewer slow periods than Crysis. Like its lead character, the action will be more explosive and noisy, with plenty of scripted sequences setting up objectives. To punch up the dialogue, the script has also received a treatment from Susan O’Connor, writer of acclaimed shooters BioShock and Gears of War.

“I think we announced [Crysis] too early,” admits Yerli, who adds that unrealistically high expectations ultimately hurt the game. To that end, don’t expect a protracted development schedule - Warhead will ship this year. In fact, if Yerli has his way, all of Crytek’s future games will be announced a mere three months before their release date. But wouldn’t that be too late to create buzz? “If you have the right product, it’s never too late,” he counters.

With pre-production for Warhead having started in February 2007, it’s unlikely that Crytek imagined then that Crysis would become a lightning rod for controversy. Now, Crytek is acutely aware of it. But it’s also clear that the team wants to make its core audience happy, and if at first it didn’t succeed, it’ll try, try again. Will Warhead perform well enough to guarantee that the Crysis saga continues? Like you, we’ll find out toward the end of the year, but this writer remains as bullishly optimistic as the battle cry of one of Warhead’s grunts: “See ya at the victory parade, mother f****r!”



Interview: Cevat Yerli

Recently, you’ve said that Crysis was [among] the most pirated games. How do you know that?

Well, we went into the Torrent statistics and there were charts for this. We learned that [piracy] harmed Call of Duty 4 quite a bit, too. We were hit even stronger because our spec requirements were, when we released, pretty high. There was a statistic that there were around 15–20 [pirated copies] per one copy sold; it doesn’t mean we would sell 15–20 times more, of course, but at least if piracy was lower, we would double our sales. For the PC this is a big issue, because if [piracy] continues like this, you will not see PC exclusives happening, because it’s prohibitively expensive.

Overall, our sales were good - I mean, they weren’t excellent, but we did break even... we did profit from the game despite the high development budget. We are okay with the results, but it’s not excellent. We had hopes it would do better. [EA says] sales surpassed expectations, and EA was happy, and we are happy. I’m just not happy with the fact that... with a game like this, because it’s exclusive, it should drive more [sales]. I don’t want to talk about Crysis 2 - it may come, it may not - but [its development] will depend greatly on Warhead’s success.

What would you say to someone like Brad Wardell, the president of Stardock, who argues that if you make a good game for the PC, it’ll sell well even if it is pirated?

I don’t agree with him. If your PC game pushes the need for upgrading hardware, then the gamer will [have to] choose, “Should I spend my money on hardware or software?” It’s a very easy choice, because software you can copy, hardware you cannot. This is where we got harmed. With Warhead, I think it will work differently. There’s a base of people who have the PC equipment [capable of running Crysis], and I hope this time, they’ll be honest enough to buy the game.

You say that Warhead’s success will determine whether Crytek makes PC exclusives in the future.

Yes, it’ll have a huge impact. I’m not saying we’ll give up on the PC. The question will be, how online will we be [using online authentication], and how many other platforms will we support in the future. We did announce CryENGINE 2 for the PS3 at GDC, so we have development there, but it is not Crysis-related.

The concern for PC gamers is that cross-platform development means that the PC versions will be dumbed-down in gameplay and graphics.

I think there is a different target audience for the console market. I wouldn’t say dumbed-down, but you have to distill the experience to make it easier to access, and you have to limit the number of options you have. If we were to do a multi-platform title, then the way we would approach it is that there would be a design team that works on the console experience and a design team that works on the PC experience.

What about technology? Would you continue to push PC hardware?

I think we wouldn’t be Crytek if each platform didn’t have its technology pushed.

Source

Crysys PC Game: Crysis Warhead - Preview

This week, IGN brings us a lengthy Crysis Warhead Preview with first video footage of the game. Enjoy:

Consider the warhead, an object that is both explosive and incendiary. A warhead is about destruction, pure and simple. Recognizing that is one of the key things to understanding Crysis Warhead, a stand-alone follow-up to last year's acclaimed first-person shooter Crysis. Keep in mind that this isn't a direct continuation of Crysis; it's not one of the trilogy hinted at by Crytek's CEO Cevat Yerli. Instead, Warhead is an offshoot story that focuses on one of Crysis' supporting characters. And since that character's nickname happens to be Psycho, you could rightfully expect some crazy things to happen.

In many ways Warhead is a different game than Crysis. The easiest way to think of Warhead is that it is Crysis with the action ramped up to 11. This promises to be a much more muscular shooter, with no shortage of huge firefights and explosions. In fact, the original Crysis may come off as being a much more cerebral experience in comparison. That game was about cat-and-mouse in the jungle, whereas Warhead is going to be about blowing that jungle up.

Warhead is set during the timeline of its predecessor. You play as Sergeant Michael Sykes, aka Psycho, the British-accented commando who goes off on a mission midway through Crysis only to reappear at the end, standing atop the flight deck of the aircraft carrier with a captured alien war machine. What happened to Psycho and how he comes home with such an oversized trophy is going to be the story of Warhead in a campaign that the developers say will be about the length of Crysis'. And before you can ask, since this is a one-off from the core franchise, the designers say that Warhead will pack a fitting finale.

While Crysis has sold more than a million copies and garnered many awards and accolades, Yerli said that there's was also plenty of room for improvement, and that Warhead will address quite a number of issues. "Some people had some concerns about the ending of the game and the linearity of some sections, or could it be a bit more scripted with the environment? We tried to make with Warhead something that is a bit more accessible and mainstream in that regards."

The fact that Warhead is built around Sykes also helps with telling a better story. In Crysis you played the faceless protagonist, and everything that happened in the game occurred from a first-person perspective. In Warhead, the designers can shift to more standard third-person cutscenes that have Sykes in them. Plus, it also helps that Sykes is a very colorful character. "He's kind of a rough diamond, an unpolished diamond," noted senior game designer Bernd Diemer. "He's the guy who likes to blow up stuff, he's the guy who likes to the cut to the point very, very fast. He doesn't have time for chit-chat or doubts."

"You tell him to go over there and take out that pillbox, he goes at it with a butter knife or C4 or whatever he has. That's kind of his characteristic, and that's where the name Warhead comes from. That's him, basically. He's explosive, he's aggressive, and we wanted the game to portray that in interesting ways."

The designers gave us a view of one of early levels in the game, Ambush. Right off the bat it's intense. VTOL transports are coming in to drop off Marines, the radio is full of chatter, and jet fighters are dropping bombs left and right. Think of the opening of the Crysis level Assault, but with that amount of energy sustained throughout. It's all very loud and frantic, but this isn't an attempt to make a linear-game like Call of Duty. Warhead still embraces the series' philosophy of the nanosuit, the high-tech power suit that lets you alter your strategy and tactics on the fly. The battlefields are still large and open, and this gives you an incredible number of options when in a fight. You can stealth and hide to restore your health or ambush an opponent. Use strength to leap atop buildings and hit your enemy from above. Or you can use speed to zip from one location to another. "The core gameplay is still Veni, Vidi, Vici," Yerli said, referring to the Latin term "I came, I saw, I conquered."

Since Warhead takes place concurrent to Crysis, it's not too surprising that you'll see many of the same assets that you may have seen before, like tanks and helicopters. Still, Warhead will introduce some new vehicles and weapons. We noticed a new type of armored personnel carrier, as well as an advanced scout vehicle, which comes in several variants armed with different weapons. Then there's a new submachine gun that can be dual wielded, doubling your firepower. There's more, of course, but that's all we caught a glimpse of in this early level.

Yerli and the others see Warhead as sort of a relaunch for the Crysis franchise. For one, Crytek's programmers have spent the last year optimizing and tuning the engine to improve both performance and visuals. For example, Warhead will introduce a new particle system as well as a new global ambient lighting system that boosts the image quality "at almost no performance cost" according to Yerli. Some before-and-after shots show off the new level of detail now achievable, right down to being able to see the grain in a wood plank or pores in human skin. "This is being done in DirectX 9," Yerli noted, which is good news for those who haven't or are unwilling to upgrade to Windows Vista and DirectX 10. And that brings up Crytek's second point, which is that the rest of the PC ecosystem has matured quite a bit since Crysis shipped last year. Since then, Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for Vista, which improved performance for 3D applications, and graphics hardware companies such as Nvidia have improved their driver support, which is critical for a game like Crysis.

There's also the fact that many gamers have upgraded their systems over the past year. The Crytek team wants to dispel the myth that Crysis or Warhead requires a high-end, expensive system to play. So they ran the Warhead demonstration on a $652 PC built with parts purchased online. Performance was astonishingly smooth and fluid even with a high level of graphical detail.

Then there's the other issue that Crytek wants to deal with: piracy. Yerli noted that for every copy of Crysis sold there were as many as 20 copies that were pirated. It's obviously a touchy issue with them, especially since quite a number of those pirating the game are willing to spend money to upgrade their machines. "I'm disappointed by the behavior of the gamers," Yerli said. "I'm not disappointed by the people who support us. I know there are a lot of people who support us, and I'm grateful and I thank [them] for that. But there are 15 to 20 times more people who don't care right now."

To combat this, Crytek plans to strengthen copy protection in Warhead, but how it will do so remains murky for now. Yerli admitted that it's a very difficult task. "If you want to have an anti-piracy mechanic, you have to spend a lot of time at the risk of incapability here and there. So you will annoy some people, but you will delay the amount of piracy. You will make 10 people angry for 1,000 more people who cannot copy… It's a dangerous walk to walk because the 10 people who are upset, they will get loud about it. And this is where we have to be good about it, and it's difficult."

While Yerli and other Crytek representatives have been quoted over the past few months that the company is flirting with no longer making games exclusive to the PC, Warhead will remain a PC exclusive. Warhead may be the litmus test that determines Crytek's future to developing PC-exclusive titles. "We'll look at how Crysis Warhead does," Yerli said.

Warhead is being developed by Crytek's new Budapest studio, and the developers there are bringing a fresh perspective to the series. Studio head Kristoffer Waardahl told us that many on the team are veterans of Hungary's real-time strategy development studios, which sounds like an odd skill to bring to making a first-person shooter, but it actually helps when developing the complex and scripted moments of the game. It also helps with improving the AI, and the developers promise better human AI and, more importantly, better alien AI.

Crytek has also learned a valuable lesson when it comes to developing games, as well. Yerli said that, due to delays, too much information came out for Crysis before it shipped. The long wait also built up huge expectations. Crytek is going to play Warhead closer to its chest, revealing a lot less than before. And there shouldn't be any long wait this time, as Crysis Warhead is on track for shipping this fall.

Source: IGN

Crysis PC Game - Full Version Preview by GameSpot

Gamespot have written an article which is really just one huge spoiler. But it's great for those who want to know what happens after the first level :)

Go to Gamespot Preview

After more than 18 months of anticipation, Crysis is almost here. If all goes according to plan, this highly-awaited first-person shooter will go gold in a matter of days, meaning that it's finished and headed for duplication and manufacturing. On Saturday, October 27, the single-player demo will be released, letting you play the entire first level of the game. We didn't have to wait that long, though, as we got the opportunity to play the first three levels of the game. We'll describe our experience below, but please note that what follows contains extreme spoilers to the plot. So stop now if you wish to enjoy the story unspoiled. Seriously.

Crysis begins with a radio call for help from a science team on a remote island. A female voice on a radio reports that the North Korean military has seized the island. There's more, though. "We found something buried in the rock," she says. The date is August 7, 2020. During the radio call, the screen shows images of something strange, almost alien. At the end of the transmission, the screen goes black and the words "Seven days later" appear on the screen. Then a C-17 transport appears high over a large, mountainous island. It's the Lingshan Islands in the Philippines Sea. Inside the transport are five members of the elite Raptor Squad, all clad in high-tech nanosuits. Everyone goes by a call sign here. The squad leader is Prophet. The guy with the Australian accent is Psycho. There's also Jester and Aztec, though they don't say much. And then there is your character, Nomad. The ramp opens, and the team jumps out of the plane at 30,000 feet. The mission: parachute into the island and rescue the science team.

Sure, you can shoot guys in Crysis, but grabbing by the throat is always a treat.

The freefall is a pretty cool experience. Condensation actually appears on your nanosuit's visor as you pass through the clouds, and you can stare at the island rushing toward you. When the parachutes open, however, something goes wrong. Some strange force causes the team to scatter, and your chute collapses on you, sending you hurtling toward the water. Thankfully, the nanosuit absorbs much of the damage, but you find yourself separated from the team. You've got to swim ashore, where your suit reboots, and link up with Jester, who landed closest to you. As you'd expect, this opening level serves as a tutorial of sorts, slowly introducing you to the many aspects of the game. You'll need to crouch and jump to navigate around the rocky beach, activate night vision to help see better, use stealth and silenced weapons to take out a lone North Korean soldier, and use binoculars to locate a North Korean patrol. You can choose to ambush the patrol, or bypass them. We chose the former, and using the nanosuit's cloaking ability we hid in plain view while the patrol stared right at our location. When they got close enough, switch to full auto on your rifle and take them out.

When you link up with Jester the next goal is to help out Aztec. His parachute got tangled in trees and he's helpless, plus there's a North Korean patrol near him. However, there's something else, too. As Aztec is screaming for help the sounds of battle erupt in the distance--and the sound of something unearthly, as well. You rush to his location, only to find the North Koreans and Aztec all killed. There's no time to mourn, though, and Prophet over the radio activates the self-destruct button on Aztec's nanosuit. Aztec and his suit disintegrate; the latter is far too valuable to allow the North Koreans to get their hands on it. You've got to move on and reach the next rendezvous point, which involves another long overland trek.

This island would make a great vacation spot if it didn't have any firefights.

You parachuted in at night, but now the sun has slowly come up and morning has arrived, which complicates things a bit, since your next goal is to knock out a GPS-jamming beacon at a small beach village, and then get across a bay to the next rendezvous point. We played this part of the demo back at E3, and it's just as impressive now as it was then, as you can try to take the long route and sneak around the many North Korean soldiers in the area, or you can engage in a hectic running battle. The beauty of Crysis is that there are so many different ways to get through each situation. For example, we fought into the village, blew up the jammer, jumped into a pickup, and screamed down a dirt road. Then we encountered a North Korean roadblock, so we jumped out of the moving pickup, then shot at the gas tank on the back of the pickup as it rolled up to the North Korean transport blocking the road. The pickup exploded, sending the wreckage hurtling into the North Koreans.

After you get past most of the North Korean resistance, you'll get a secondary mission objective to knock out an enemy command post. It's optional, and since we were in a hurry, we bypassed it and went straight to the rendezvous point. The team has found the location of the distress beacon from the science team, and the kicker is that while the beacon was on a boat, the boat itself is now sitting in the middle of a frozen patch of jungle. Jester and Psycho start to freak out at Prophet, demanding to know what exactly is going on, since the North Koreans obviously don't have freeze rays. However, an unearthly roar erupts nearby, the earth starts to shake, and a giant mechanical thing bursts out of the trees, grabs Jester, and darts away. The team runs after it, but it's too late. Jester's body is located and Prophet hits Jester's self-destruct button.

Jungle Warfare

With two squad members down, the mission is rapidly coming to a crucial point. Intel indicates that a member of Dr. Rosenthal's science team is being held in a nearby village, and a rescue is planned. It won't be easy; it's a fairly large village, and the North Koreans have had time to fortify it with minefields, machine gun nests, and a fence. Even approaching it won't be easy, as the surrounding forest is crawling with patrols. We will note that seeing the village for the first time is one of the "wow" moments of Crysis, as the village is in a lush valley. It's just an incredible vista looking down into the valley and seeing everything going on through your binoculars.

Use mobility to your advantage and jump atop things.

A direct assault on the village is difficult because the main entrance is heavily guarded. So we threw caution to the wind, used the nanosuit's speed to rush up to a relatively unguarded stretch of fence, and then used the strength boost to leap over the fence. That was a bit unwise, as it was basically the equivalence of jumping into a lion pit, only there are about 30 lions and they're all heavily armed. The ensuing battle was just frantic as we rushed from cover to cover, desperately trying to buy time for our nanosuit's armor and health to regenerate. The AI is challenging because it doesn't simply just stand and shoot at you or run straight at you. Enemies move, use cover, throw grenades, and make your life pretty difficult.

The main structure in the village is where the prisoner is being held. Get to that building and Psycho uncloaks next to you (thanks for the lack of help, dude), and you storm into the prisoner's room and take out her interrogators. It turns out that the attractive young researcher is a CIA operative who tells you that the situation is catastrophic. She's so shaken that she refuses to accompany you further. But there's no point to arguing, because at that point a whole bunch of North Korean reinforcements arrive, including a couple of tanks. And while the assault rifle in your hand makes short work of infantry, you're in for a whole other problem against heavy armor. It's time to find the North Korean arsenal in town and liberate some antitank missiles, though that means another running battle, dodging fire from the tanks while you find something to use against them. And here's one of the unnerving things about Crysis, as you may find yourself using what looks like a nice, solid building for cover, only to watch it collapse and disintegrate around you due to weapons fire. Yeah, that happens.

OK, survive that battle and time to move on. Next objective is to work your way to the excavation site. There's even more scenic trekking through mountainous tropical terrain, and battling a ton of North Korean patrols. These encounters are a lot more difficult than earlier ones, as the North Koreans are on alert now, so what used to be two- or four-man patrols are now eight or 10-man patrols. You'll link up with Prophet, only to watch as yet another one of those huge, metallic things bursts out of the jungle and flies off with him. At this point, friendly air units are looking to evacuate you, but you call them off, saying that you're in pursuit of the aliens. What follows next is a battle in a large tropical plantation, and then you'll work your way up to the toughest challenge in the game yet, an attack on a North Korean base that's located atop a small butte. There's just no easy way to approach the base, and to top it off, there's a North Korean helicopter gunship lurking around.

At this point you're probably about two or three hours into the game--but wait, there's more. Next up is the dig site itself, a small installation that is also heavily defended by the North Koreans. There are so many huge battles that even the most aggressive of players might want to start playing with stealth a bit more; it's far easier sometimes to bypass some of the smaller fights. Getting in a battle only raises the alarm, and that makes your job even tougher. Another option is speed; if you're in the middle of a huge battle, there's no shame in running away to fight another day. Switch your nanosuit to speed and get the heck out of there, find a place to hide, turn on cloak, and wait for the heat to die down.

Crysis is shipping on November 16, so get ready.

Regarding the graphics, we finally got to play using full DirectX 10 graphics, and the game looks phenomenal. The system we played on was using the recommended system requirements, which are a dual core processor (in this case, a Core 2 Duo) and an Nvidia 8800-class video card. We were also using the 64-bit edition of Windows Vista, which is supposed to offer better performance. The frame rate was smooth throughout the entire session, and the only noticeable stutters occurred during save points.

We could keep going, but you're probably getting a good idea of what the early levels of Crysis are like. There's tons of intense tactical action, but also lots of depth. We could probably replay the opening levels over and over again, each time using different approaches and methods. If we had more time during our play session, we would have definitely spent a lot more time skulking around in the jungle, sneaking up on North Koreans and dispatching them quietly. As it was, we took a very aggressive, run-and-gun approach due to time limitations. Thankfully, though, with the game coming out in a matter of weeks, we'll have plenty of time soon enough to explore the many possibilities of Crysis.

Crysis PC Game - Preview by GameSpy

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.