Look at that! That's what a game should be about. Punching a speeding car so hard that it crashes on your fist. This is not Far Cry. The nanosuit your character wears in this spiritual successor turns you into a full-blown superhero, and it renders you near-unstoppable.
That means they've had to make your task exponentially harder to compensate, of course. This time you're taking on whole armies, fleets of vehicles, aliens the size of volcanoes and stranger things still. The resulting conflict is action of a higher order of magnitude. Every ten seconds something explodes, and a Crysis explosion is a hell of a thing to see.
You and a small team of similarly nanosuited marines are sneaking your way across a Pacific island, toward the place where a very large alien craft fell from the skies. The place is crawling with Korean troops - with whom the US can't risk a war - but you and your black ops comrades are firmly off-the-books, plausibly deniable and fifth-freedom. That means you can kill them. Your teammates have their own objectives rather than following you like dogs, so they don't cramp your style for the brief sections when you're with them. And you don't need to stick together much, because as you can see, one nanosuit tends to be all you need for a given situation.
So what's left for the devs to do on Crysis? Well, the chickens are too relaxed. Right now the chicken AI is simplistic, and when an earth-quaking explosion epidemic erupts around them, they seem improbably aloof. See that car? There's probably a chicken waddling calmly across the road behind it. Personally I think they should keep this in - after the deafening bangs, scorching shockwaves, screams and gunshots, the sight of a unflustered hen sauntering around as the shells tinkle to the floor is rather soothing. And if you don't feel that way, you can always pick it up and throw it into a fence.
Yes, you can pick up, throw and even beat people with live chickens. You can pick up, throw and beat people with anything smaller than a car, and in this I include wheelbarrows, spades, tree trunks, grown men and even most of a car. At one point in my playtest I shot a man's helmet off, caught it, beat him to the ground with it, shot him again and dropped it on his body. Anything smaller than a tree can be held in your left hand while you fire with your right, even when you're using an assault rifle or shotgun, so alternating between bonging people with a spade and shooting them in the face is seamless. They even encourage you to beat people when they're down by introducing a chance that a fallen soldier will get back up if you don't. This, again, is what a game should be about.
Crysis is nuts. Whacking people with a log is every bit as central as fighting ice-spitting aliens in zero-G. It might look more serious and realistic than Far Cry, but the stuff it lets you do is just absurd. You expect a successful and wealthy developer like Crytek to go all 'professional' and make a serious, pared-down game like Half-Life 2, concentrating on doing a few things really well. Instead they've gone crazy with seemingly superficial niceties such as being able to break vegetation at the precise point you shoot it, grab anything that's lying around, and customise every weapon. The result is incredibly freeform, incredibly fun and incredibly silly. However sinister your sleek nanosuit looks, you can't keep a straight face wearing it when you're holding a bunch of bananas to throw at the Korean military.
Every sane person is wondering how all this is going to run on their system. We asked Cevat Yerli, Crytek CEO, what gamers with a limited budget should buy to make sure they can play Crysis well, and his first answer was two gigs of RAM. The single gig most of us have is going to struggle with environments of this size, and with this much smashable stuff to keep track of. Next on the shopping list is, predictably, a GeForce 8800 - but the GTS model in that range is fairly affordable, and not a huge step down from the GTX. The surprising part is that Cevat says a Core 2 Duo E6600 processor - the £140 mid-level chip in Intel's dual-core range - is enough to run Crysis on Ultra High settings with that setup. That chip is likely to undergo another price drop before Crysis comes out, too, so don't rush.
If you don't have any of these things and you need a new motherboard too, you're still looking at a hefty layout, but to play at max settings this seems surprisingly reasonable to us. Well, not quite max settings. Crysis actually has graphical features built in that no PC available this year will be able to make use of. Cevat estimates it'll be 18 months after release before technology catches up with his game. They put these features in partly to keep Crysis current after release - they say it'll be the best-looking game for the next three years - but also, let's face it, because they're enormous graphics geeks.
But here's the really crazy part: it took Crytek two years to make it possible to shoot a tree in half. They got it working the day before they had to demo it to the press, a video of the presentation quickly went online, and just as quickly racked up 50 million downloads. So it was worth doing, but it was inordinately hard.
A big part of the reason for that is that the AI has to understand that a fallen chunk of tree is cover. It has to deal with and exploit an environment that can dramatically change with every gunshot. When they first implemented this, Senior Game Designer Bernd Diemer discovered that he could grab a fallen tree and hold it in front of him to become completely invisible to the AI. This tactic is frowned upon in the real military as unsporting, so it had to be tactfully explained to the AI that a walking tree is deeply suspicious.
Bernd says that if they'd realised just how insanely hard full destructibility was going to be, they wouldn't have even tried. But now that they've done it, everyone who plays Crysis - myself included - has a hard time going back to anything else. Things just don't feel like they're made of wood unless they snap the way they do in Crysis. And it's so darkly satisfying to shoot the base of a tree you suspect a soldier's hiding behind, then nail him in his shocked face while he scans for alternative cover.
At some point before you reach the crashed alien craft, its inhabitants activate an on-board weapon that freezes the entire island to make it more habitable for them (they come from a subzero world, naturally).
This is what they're planning to do to the whole planet, and if the effect on this island is anything to go by, it will highly suck. The tropical paradise turns into a surreal Siberia, and the aliens come out in force now that they can roam more comfortably. Your team regroups to cope with the alien onslaught, hostilities with the Koreans are dropped in deference to the greater threat, and you press on to the craft itself as a team.
The aliens' cryogenic weaponry can freeze any of you in your tracks. Centrally heated nanosuit supersoldiers such as yourself can shake off the ice with a brisk wiggle of the mouse, but Korean soldiers in their breezy fatigues aren't so lucky. If they get frozen, they shatter, and the shards of their icy flesh become lethal shrapnel.
The temperature theme runs throughout everything about the aliens: they're actually blind to everything except the infra-red spectrum. That means if you're standing right by something that's on fire, you're almost invisible to them. But even if you're crouching in the darkest corner, you're lit up like a firework unless you're using your suit's Cloak mode to bring your surface temperature down.
Naturally, turning the whole jungle into a brittle popsicle of its former self only heightens the cathartic fun of smashing everything in sight. But despite the enormous amount of effort that went into the destructibility system, Crytek don't consider it the most important feature of their futuristic new engine. That, they say, is the sheer size of the areas it can chuck around.
Far Cry let you boat around huge rolling vistas before picking an angle of approach, but Crysis levels are bigger still; the one we played - the third mission of the game - takes two and a half hours to complete.
It's actually becoming a problem: it takes a tester the whole afternoon just to play it through thoroughly once. It's pretty easy to remember what you were doing if you have to stop and reload the mission later. The fragility of the terrain means you can see at a glance "Oh yeah, that's where my jeep exploded." Areas that aren't flat and black tend to be areas you haven't been to yet.
Levels are divided up into what Crytek call 'action bubbles': areas with a high density of enemies that would constitute levels in a lesser game, such as a barracks or a Korean-occupied plantation. In Crysis, these are connected in ways they couldn't be if they were separate levels: if the soldiers in one camp have time to contact the others to call for reinforcements before you take them out, jeeps and choppers will cart fresh meat in from one to the other.
You could even use that to your advantage, sneaking round a camp and attacking it quickly before moving on to the next, so that troops leave your real objective to protect the other. It's Far Cry writ large, a more complex equation and a more engrossing experience altogether.
It's also more consistent. Crytek are painfully aware that the indoor sections of Far Cry were banal and unworthy of the rest of the game, so you're outdoors for almost the entirety of Crysis. Even when you are indoors, they've built every interior around what they call their 'veni vidi vici' philosophy: you come, you see the whole area, then you choose how to go about conquering it. Tight corridors and linear paths don't let you do that, so they've done away with them completely.
All of which raises the question - do they have any idea how rubbish the last few levels of Far Cry were? They do. When I asked Cevat Yerli how he felt about them, he used the word "horrible" three times in one sentence. He admits they were rushed to get the game out before Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, and they were considered the least important sections since the fewest players would reach them. But the betrayal of their principles clearly still pains the developers, and they've paid particular attention to Crysis' final section to make it up to us.
It plays out almost entirely inside the alien craft, in zero gravity. The challenge was to create a situation that would raise the intensity and difficulty, but without compromising the veni-vidi-vici approach. They want scares, but they refuse to script them the way Doom 3 does. If you do that, Cevat points out, the game's the same every time you play, and completely unfrightening after the first play-through. And Crytek games are built to be replayed to death.
The solution is what Cevat calls 'systematic horror'. The mothership is designed without a sense of up or down, and is riddled with nooks and crannies. So even though you can see the whole area before you float into it, you're constantly going to be - shall we say 'surprised' - by things springing out at you from angles you didn't think to check. He says this part won't be complete until it's so traumatic that playtesters can't get through it in one go without needing a break to recover. And for many, that's already the case.
This tactic is frowned upon in the real military as unsporting, so it had to be tactfully explained to the AI that a walking tree is deeply suspicious.
OMG its sounds absolutely brilliant, feck i want it now
I hope the specs are correct, if so i should be able to pick up my 8800GTX next month, and with 4 gigs ram and a 6400 OC to 3.5Ghz, Ultra high should be my graphic setting of choice , probably only at 1280x1040 though even though my native is 1680x1050, grrrrr
This sounds phenomenal, and my system should hopefully cope with it in DX9 on low/medium settings...but after reading, buyting a new PC just seems like the right thing to do!
I just built my new PC 5 weeks ago, cost me 1100Euro for all the parts, E6400,4gig Corsair XMS2 6400C 4-4-4-12, EVGA 680i mobo, 400 Gig Sata 2 perpindicular drive. Samsung 226BW 22" widescreen LCD, Scythe Mine HSF( to allow a 3.5Ghz overclock )
Already had XFX 7800GTX, G5 mouse, logitech keyboard, Gigabyte Case, 600W FSP SLI PSU( NVidia Certified ) and a XFi Xtrememusic
I sold my old PC for 700Euro( AMD 4200+ dual core, 2 gig Ram, 320Gig harddrive, x850pro, XPPro non OEM, 19" HP LCD ), cost me another 100euro to buy a case with PSU, keyboard and mouse for it, so my new PC cost me 500Euro altogether
Stuck Vista Ultimate and another 500Gig harddrive on it, well upto spec apart from the GPU and an 8800GTX next month will sort that
All in all having a top end PC is possible for about 200Euro a year by just selling a previously built one. Oh and building PCs is great fun
Come release day,there's going to be some very happy people,and a lot of jealous ,console owners !
They'll have Halo 3/ Killzone though
I'm sure it will eventually make it to consoles, just in a very diluted way. This is what I wanted from next gen games, I hope they have raised the bar and all developers will try to follow them. Share the technology guys.
Looks amazing but i don't think i will be upgrading my PC just to play this game on the highest settings.
My PC specs are; Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Extreme X6800 Dual Core Processor(2.933GHz,4MB Cache,1066MHz), Windows Vista Home Premium, ASUS P5W DH Deluxe - Intel® 975X Chipset- Core™ 2 Duo - ATX, 2048MB DDR2 900MHz Memory -( 2x 1024MB Kit), 600GB (2x 300GB Serial ATA Hard Drives), 1GB (2x 512MB GPU) nVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2,
Hopefully that should be enough to do a little bit of justice to the game. If not, tough luck! Im not upgrading anytime soon!
Yeah, speed-wise that's plenty. The only caveat is that you won't get the DX10 graphical niceties, but it looks gorgeous without them. It's the only game I know of that actually runs faster under Vista, even on a DX9 card. Cevat reckons about 5-10 fps.
Yeah, speed-wise that's plenty. The only caveat is that you won't get the DX10 graphical niceties, but it looks gorgeous without them. It's the only game I know of that actually runs faster under Vista, even on a DX9 card. Cevat reckons about 5-10 fps.
seriously? Vista is actually faster ive had to butcher my services and what not to get decent performance in Vista. Its a pity you guys didnt clarify the resolution that we can expect to run on ultra high @ if we have a 6600, 2 gig and 8800GTX
Hmm. It wouldn't actually be possible for creatures that see in infrared to see anything in a tropical jungle. They would be blind. Wonder if the aliens are confined entirely to icy bits then.
Meh, I must be the only person on the planet who actually doesn't care about this game one bit. We should all know by now how stupidly hyped these games get and how excited PC Gamer get by them.
Come release day,there's going to be some very happy people,and a lot of jealous ,console owners !
They'll have Halo 3/ Killzone though
Yeah it's likely Halo3 will be rubbish , great comment.
Point is that what is Halo going to do that's new? My mate is a great Halo fan, but he admits the main draw to buying Halo 3 is just to see how it all ends. Crysis pushes the boundaries more than any game since.. Half Life 2 imo. We'll just have to hope it comes out well.
But I am majorly excited about this game. Probably my second most wanted game after Episode 2 for the PC. And out this year? Jesus yes!
My specs meet with that fairly well. 2 gigs ram. AMD duel core 5600+. But only a radeon X1300 pro atm. Gonna upgrade probably to a GTS this summer.
Crysis, Halo, I don't really care about them... I got bored of Halo pretty quickly, same with Far Cry. Yeah, sure, the physics will be fun for a while in Crysis but basically there's nothing new in it. It "just" looks great.
The really good games I'm looking forward to are BioShock, Jericho, Assassin's Creed, Brothers in Arms3, to name a few.
It looks and sounds utterly fantastic, but I can't help feeling that a final level set inside a zero gravity mothership will bore me to tears. I'm just not a big fan of "weird" stuff. I prefer real world locations, and realistic ground based physics.
Come release day,there's going to be some very happy people,and a lot of jealous ,console owners !
They'll have Halo 3/ Killzone though
hmm,perhaps on release day,yea,but according to xboxworld360 mag,crysis WILL be coming to the 360.so you have to question the system requirements to play a game on p.c that the developers say could take 18 months to catch up with,when it will run on a 18 month old console you CANT upgrade.prob come out on ps3 too.the money you guys spend on upgrades every 6 months could be spent on both these consoles.for that you get TRUE next gen gaming,TRUE hi def,TRUEhd-dvd,TRUE bluray.plus everything you run on them is GUARANTEED to be compatible,how many games do you pick up,then put back on the shelf coz you dont have enough memory or a powerful enough graphics card.no,dont think there will be any jealous console owners.
Hmm, well the first thing I want to say is; "What a great and informative article!"
Secondly, it'd be cool if this came out on PS3 (what with the 8 parallel processors and all)
Thirdly, this game really does look amazing, and I can't wait to play it.
The physics look completely mental, and the graphics are going to be immense in my opinion. I know that I won't be able to play it on the highest settings going, as although my pc is pretty rad for games, it's not as high spec as to what it needs to be for Crysis.
For example:
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2(means dual core, for those who may be unaware) 4200+
Motherboard: Asus gaming motherboard - A8N32 Sli Deluxe
Memory: 1gb (just a 1gb stick, so I should get another soon, but they aren't too pricey)
Graphics card: BFG Geforce 7900 GT overclocked out of the box
So yea, hopefully my game should be able to run it on fairly high settings, but I'm pretty unsure.
My monitor is pretty old too, and can only handle 1024x768 viewing resolution, so hopefully if I get some money, I'll get a good 19 or 20 inch monitor.
Anybody at CVG or PCGamer know if my specs are any good for this game?
Thanks a lot. Looking good though, can't wait to try a demo, if one actually comes out that is.
Come release day,there's going to be some very happy people,and a lot of jealous ,console owners !
They'll have Halo 3/ Killzone though
hmm,perhaps on release day,yea,but according to xboxworld360 mag,crysis WILL be coming to the 360.so you have to question the system requirements to play a game on p.c that the developers say could take 18 months to catch up with,when it will run on a 18 month old console you CANT upgrade.prob come out on ps3 too.the money you guys spend on upgrades every 6 months could be spent on both these consoles.for that you get TRUE next gen gaming,TRUE hi def,TRUEhd-dvd,TRUE bluray.plus everything you run on them is GUARANTEED to be compatible,how many games do you pick up,then put back on the shelf coz you dont have enough memory or a powerful enough graphics card.no,dont think there will be any jealous console owners.
Jez the same old tired my console cost next to nothing and you pc guys spend a fortune on upgrading. Ok ill start: 1. Consoles are sold under cost 2. You pay 300-400 quid on a console, console games here in ireland are 55-75euro, for the PC games are 35-45euro. Over a lifetime of a console you'll accumulate maybe 20games, at a avg 15-20quid difference, thats 400euro on top of that its 5 years live subscription or whatever 3. No matter what price second hand or old console games get they'll never be the 10-15euro price of pc games 4. You say that for the price of upgrading a PC we can have True High Def gaming, eh? PC has been playing in higher than 720p resolutions for 7 years now, as for the 1080p, emm, we PC gamers actually prefer to play games at higher resolutions than that 5. Watch ID's new trailer on their new technology, and listen to what they say - "if you want the best GFX you need a PC" 6. What is TRUE Blu-Ray or TRUE HDDVD, i thought they were a standard? 7. Ive never ever in my 20 year gaming had to put a game back on the shelf cos my machine doesnt meet the specs 8. A console lasts 5 years, a PC can easily last 10 years or indefinately just replacing parts after a few years. 9. A top end PC without screen can be built for 1000 euro, 370 quid more expensive than a PS3( easily made up for in the difference in price of peripherals and games 10. PC's are more than just for gaming, downloading movies/music, converting them, general web surfing, writing documents, writing code, testing new technology 11 GFX with an 8800GTX or even GTS will destroy a console
Im not pro/against anything( i have consoles myself ) but your analysis on the differences between the platforms is utter nonsense, take your 14year old puberty head out of that cardboard box its in or should we just scrap PC's and put the world in time freeze and develop software on consoles?
I've had my eye on this game for a very long time, and everytime I read or see something new about it, it just makes me want it even more! Needless to say I can't wait to get my hands on Crysis. Its gonna be awesome!
Hmm. It wouldn't actually be possible for creatures that see in infrared to see anything in a tropical jungle. They would be blind. Wonder if the aliens are confined entirely to icy bits then.
I think I'm going to do something other than moan about min/max specs here- Thanks for the article, it was insightful, funny and genuinely entertaining to read. I'm aiming to secure a 8800GTS for launch Cheers!
Hmm. It wouldn't actually be possible for creatures that see in infrared to see anything in a tropical jungle. They would be blind. Wonder if the aliens are confined entirely to icy bits then.
Wow, you must have found Predator hard to follow.
I believe Predator is only partially based on fact I know it's only a game but I was just pointing it out. Someone somewhere will make a major issue out of it.
At the end of the day. Games are developed on PCs.PCs tend to be constantly ahead graphics wise. Im all for console and PC. I have a PC (just a laptop at the moment cos my pc died but im waiting to dish out for a new system for crysis and hl2:ep2) and a 360, and I just play on whichever depending on the game. If I had a choice I would play a FPS on my PC (mainly for mouse and keyboard) but if an excellent title came out for the 360, I wouldnt complain, I would just be glad that I got to play it. With a console you never have to worry about compatibility or performance, but you can always just upgrade parts of a PC, and components are getting cheaper and cheaper. Consider the cost of the GeForce6800 when it was the dogs b******s, approx £300. Now its can still handle okay but now for that same price you can be on your way to getting a 8800GS or for a little bit more a 8800GTX, but if you are going to pay around £300 for a graphics card, I would rather just pay an extra £100 and get top of the range, but thats just me. Anyway, back to the point, people should just play games on a particular format because of the game, not just because it's their favourite format.
Ok, so i might be a little excited as i think a little bit of pee came out as i read this. Should be immense but as another poster said "share the technology". i completely agree, i want to see this kind of physics when playing the next WWII shooter in the Ardennes or some awesome multiplayer combat over a large area. Just make it happen .... and as quick as possible.
It may be coming out on 360 but you never said in what state. If tech wont catch up with game for three years then you can bet that your precious console wont even run it at half. Consoles are great but the PC will never be beaten for immersion and all round goodness. My Pc is around five years old, only paying for internet and games, and it runs company of heros perfectly. Now tell me pcs dont last
hmm,perhaps on release day,yea,but according to xboxworld360 mag,crysis WILL be coming to the 360.
Crytek have consistently denied that Crysis will be ported to any console. In fact, they have stated baldly that neither PS3 nor Xbox 360 are good enough to run the game. So are you going to believe the developers or a fanboy magazine?
This sounds fantastic - "alternating between bonging people with a spade and shooting them in the face is seamless."
Finally, they've made my perfect game!
Some of my favourite gaming moments have come from just reloading various levels of Far Cry and trying them again from different angles. Sounds like I'll be able to do this with Crysis too. Dammit. Time to spend another few hundred quid on bits .
hmm,perhaps on release day,yea,but according to xboxworld360 mag,crysis WILL be coming to the 360.
Crytek have consistently denied that Crysis will be ported to any console. In fact, they have stated baldly that neither PS3 nor Xbox 360 are good enough to run the game. So are you going to believe the developers or a fanboy magazine?
I dont think consoles would be able to handle it as is, however it will definately be released on consoles in some form or other, same as Ubi released FarCry on consoles, it will be EA pushing and developing a console version, ever heard EA shy away from a few quid?
The name itself will sell a shedload on consoles regardless
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LOL 
, probably only at 1280x1040 though even though my native is 1680x1050, grrrrr
ive had to butcher my services and what not to get decent performance in Vista. Its a pity you guys didnt clarify the resolution that we can expect to run on ultra high @ if we have a 6600, 2 gig and 8800GTX 
, great comment.
