Crytek beating the piracy drums again?
I’m not sure what the deal is with this guy. It should also be pointed out that this site(crysiswarhead.net ) is simply a fan site, we are in NO WAY affiliated with Crytek , Crysis , or any of their affiliates. That being said, I don’t understand why the CEO of Crytek keeps bringing up piracy. Don’t get me wrong, piracy is bad and I don’t condone it, but the guy is using the same type of arguments that the RIAA uses on music pirates. He was quoted as saying:
It’s crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now. For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that’s a big shame for the PC industry. I hope with Warhead I hope we improve the situation, but at the same time it may have an impact on [our] PC exclusivity in the future.
It seems to me that he’s implying the tired old argument that a pirated download equals a lost sale, everyone knows that’s bogus. If that’s true the mobile phone gaming industry should have died long ago, but no, right now it’s still a teeming business. Do they lose sales because of piracy? Of course they do. But everyone knows it’s far from a 1:1 ratio. I’d stick the number someplace near 1 loss for every 10 pirated downloads.
For example, one of the larger clans I’m in tried Crysis out, most of us played the demo and never really took a liking to the game and that was that. A few of them actually did like the game and I assume they either pirated or bought it. Let’s say, for arguments sake, that all three of the clan members pirated the game, the question is, did they like the demo enough to actually buy the game if pirating wasn’t an option? I think Crytek knows the answer to this as do we.
I like Crysis , don’t get me wrong. There are things I love about it and things I hate about it, unfortunately with the first Crysis there were more things I disliked than liked. Obviously we all loved the graphics because they are second to none, our computers may have not liked them so much, but we loved them. But a game can’t leave it’s success up to graphics, you need good gameplay , solid coding(multiplayer , updates, etc), and a good storyline.
Let’s start with the storyline, it was bad. I can’t express how disappointed I was when I heard that towards the end of the game you are no longer fighting humans but you start to fight aliens…not even like organic aliens that bleed, no they were like robot aliens. How depressing, no blood or anything. I finally got a chance to see this for myself one day at a friends house, definitely disappointing. I hope that’s something they stay away from in Warhead. You hear that Crytek ? No aliens please. If you insist on having aliens, at least make them bleed and appear to be an organic living creature.
How about the game play? Meh . Nobody likes to shoot an enemy 25 times to put em on the ground, it just ruins everything. I will say the sniper rifle was bad ass, very nice. The sniper rifle and the graphics were my favorite things about the game. The game is basically setup as a sniper rifle kind of game anyway with enemies that you can’t get within a football field of without being spotted. The only problem is you don’t get the sniper rifle till like half way through the game. If they had started you off with a sniper rifle then to be honest, the only complaint I’d have is the alien things in the end of the game.
Crytek programmers, designers, CEO, whatever, if you read this poorly written article just remember one thing: Listen to your customers! We are here, all over the internet forums, blogs, and sites telling you what the problems were. All you have to do is listen to the complaints and do what we want, keep in mind you’re making video games for users, not for hardware companies to use and be like “oh look, our product can run Crysis graphics on full without melting”. Seriously, stop complaining about piracy and just listen to what we are telling you and you’ll have a hit. And if you think it can’t be done, look at other FPS games like Battlefield and Call of Duty.
As for me, I’m definitely looking forward to Warhead, I have no doubt that they know what needs to be done and they’re going to do it.
CVG takes a test run on Crysis Warhead
CVG tested out Crysis Warhead recently and during their test run Crytek devs pointed out that even though they were playing with the settings on high, the PC that they were playing was purchased for the equivalent of £380 pounds. So apparently Crytek has really got their engine under control and playable for non-super computer users/owners.
Here’s the full article:
I’d spent half-an-hour back in the frosted glades of Korean-patrolled paradise when the Wizard of Oz’s curtain was pulled back on the PC I was using.
Despite the fact that I was playing Crysis Warhead on high settings with a smooth frame rate and barely an ounce of pop up, the guys from Crytek dropped the information that I was playing on a machine they’d bought for the Euro equivalent of £380 pounds.
You see, over the past year they’ve tamed the beast that is the CryEngine 2 and now I was apparently getting high settings from 2GB of RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 processor and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT video card.
Sure, it’s a fairly decent rig, but aspiration-wise it’s a hell of a lot more realistic for the average gamer.
Crytek are dead set on taking their game away from the PC elite and turning it into the people’s plaything. Viva la Revolution!
"When we started doing Crysis, being the tech-happy company we are, we started working with the latest and greatest in technology that we could get our hands on," explains senior game designer Bernd Diemer.
"I mean we had the first DirectX 10-capable card on the planet in the office, it was fantastic, but it also caused us a lot of pain.
"We were trying to get our minds around this new technology and we focussed on the ultra high-end part of the spectrum, the enthusiast part, the guys who really want the latest and greatest.
"This was our focus, and this is where the system specs came from, which were pretty steep at the time of release.
"Now the technology has matured a bit and we know how to use it better and how to optimise it - we’ve taken the high setting, which is still one of the best-looking games on the market and given it to our Budapest team with a games PC that cost about €480: we just said that was the machine it had to run on.
"What’s more, we asked for whatever could be optimised down from the ultra high setting to be put into it as well. Warhead really isn’t running on some super-secret ultra-high prototype thing."
Crysis was undeniably something special, but seeing as countless PC gamers dithered on playing it beyond the demo because they didn’t yet own a super-powerful rig many will have missed its supreme action bubble, washing machine lobbing and maximum armour combat.
In the process they will also have missed its somewhat duff final missions, occasionally confused AI and an irritating cockney geezer who went by the name of Psycho.
But these are three things that Crytek are dead-set on striking from the balance. Well, almost. Two out of three isn’t bad is it?
Alright Treacle?
For a character who cruised straight into the PC ZONE roll call of the most irritating game characters at a respectable number 10 (issue 191), suffice to say when this issue’s cover art, featuring Psycho’s mug, appeared in the office there was a stir.
Still, Crytek are promising a far less apple-’n'-pear eye-rolling this time round.
"I know he’s perceived as a bit of a stereotype, but we do use stereotypes as they’re fun - especially for people who aren’t familiar with Europe.
The American market basically," admits Diemer. "But we’ve now, honestly, put a British guy in charge of making the character. So I hope he’s not too much for your… er…"
Our more delicate tastes Mr Crytek? "Yes, just that. Your more delicate sensibilities. And we also have Susan O’Connor of BioShock fame working on the dialogue."
Problem, hopefully, fixed then. While we’re at it, those who wondered if Psycho’s accent was a product of the Dick Van Dyke school of pavement art jabbering can rest easy that his voice actor actually is British too - so British in fact that IMDb informs he’s been in Emmerdale, Peak Practice and Grange Hill.
With Psycho comes a whole new fixation with all-out action: more enemies, more explosions, bigger guns and far more casually discarded rocket launchers.
The cloaked stealth build-up to any assault remains sacrosanct, should you want it to be, but when everything goes wrong (as it always does) the pace of the game and the amount of flames on-screen far outstrips Nomad’s more reserved outing.
The parts of the island Psycho is exploring are clearly the parts marked out by the North Koreans for explosive barrel storage and parking facilities for vehicles with extra-big guns.
‘ello Love
The game itself will cover eight hours, ending with the bit where Psycho greeted you back on the US carrier, accompanied by a captured half-dead alien craft, close to the game’s ending with the line "Oi Nomad! Get a load of this ugly bastard!".
Meanwhile, it begins with the moment that he was called away from the harbour assault after sniping from a crane gantry.
In fact, that harbour assault - with its relentless military bombardment, encroaching dawn and complete open sandbox mentality - is very much the template for Warhead.
"We basically said to the design team - look at this, then make a game out of it." explains Diemer.
"We wanted to improve on the pacing and in the assault mission there’s a very high level of intensity at the beginning, then it
gets really, really quiet, then all action again - it goes up and down."
The plan for Warhead, then, is to make levels tighter, more varied in the number of approaches you can take and to never ever lock you tight in the generic ‘gun emplacement’ or ‘vehicle section’ dynamics that Crysis reverted to during its Medal of Honor: Alien Assault closing chapters.
You’ll never be securely strapped into a VTOL or Humvee without the option to hop out and blow stuff up on foot instead.
The game opens with a level called Ambush - and what follows is a balls-out study of licking flame and the heady aroma of petroleum gas. The amount of military chatter in your ear has been upped considerably, there’s more friendlies and enemies on screen than ever before and there’s a VTOL pilot raining death from the skies, while you re-accustom yourself to which way you have to point the mouse for your various suit powers.
Even better is another new arrival: flittering in the tall grass between frozen Koreans teetering on the edges of frosty craters, there are butterflies that you can shoot out of
the air. Hoorah!
Soon enough though, the pilot is shot down and you’re sent off to grab his black box recorder and kill everyone who lies between.
Around this point an experienced Crysis player starts to see slight differences - notably in the AI.
"Some of the changes we’ve made are honestly really subtle," explains Diemer as I attempt to tag some distant Koreans while failing to realise that there are five approaching from the bank of trees behind me.
"One of which allows the AI to react a lot more fluidly, so they hesitate less and thereby look less stupid.
"In Crysis they were thinking ‘Maybe I should run over there? No… over there? Or maybe I should reload?’ They were bogged down by a decision tree.
You know, drill sergeants tell every soldier that doing something constructive immediately is better than working out the perfect plan too late."
Korean AI isn’t the only digital brain to get a screwdriver set jabbed into it though, a major thing that Crytek know they have to get right in Warhead are the smarts of the aliens.
Essentially they’re now more like humans both in combat and in the way you approach them - being moved away from the relentless tactic-eschewing horde they once were.
"We started by making a bastard hybrid child of human and alien AI, with the group tactics that humans use - flanking, calling for reinforcements, cover fire," explains Diemer, before moving on to explain that you’ll now be able to tag them from afar and plan your assault just as you do with the Koreans.
But alien Hunters can’t exactly smoke cigarettes, lug boxes around and casually piss against trees can they? How do they act when they think they’re alone?
"They’re curious about their new environment. They’ve come out of their ship after, how many years? It’s a different world they’re encountering, there are these humans running around with this strange technology.
"When they’re not fighting they’re curious about what’s going on, wondering what the big yellow machine over there is, or curious about buildings."
At which point, presumably, just as their questioning tendrils are poking into the inner workings of a JCB you decloak, fire off a volley, incur their wrath and get killed by a spinning metal blade to the back of your neck.
Ricky! Biyankaa!
Now let’s get back to the levels at hand: the downed pilot is a chap called Sean O’Neill, who knows Psycho from way back for expositional background characterisation plot purposes.
There’s a lot of (decent) back and forth about "Fucking hell, I knew it… Sean O’Neill!" and tales about drinking beer back in various army placements ("Lovely!") before you have to escort him through the assembled enemy throngs and their conveniently placed petrol stations.
As is the mantra in this second age of Crysis, the vehicle you’re initially presented with as you protect O’Neill’s jeep has a bloody big minigun on it - but should you choose to pick your way through the bullet hailstorm on foot you very much can.
Even if the chances of death are somewhat higher. As ever, the anything-goes mentality of the game conjures up all manner of unscripted celebration - none bettered by myself reducing a hovering helicopter to constituent parts with my rooftop armament before holding its flaming hulk in the air solely with bullet strikes and somehow knocking it straight on top of an open-backed truck containing four terrified passengers.
Believe it or not said truck was even sitting next to a large cylindrical gas tank - and I went as far as punching the air when it went up in a ball of beautiful CryEngine flame.
Sooner rather than later, I find myself at a hastily constructed US landing pad on a valley ridge where I drop off my Irish-named comrade - and choose to hang around fending off an enemy encroaching from all angles, taking them down one by one before picking any enemy survivors up and power-throwing them into cliff faces - as is so often my wont.
Presumably this behaviour not only earned my character the name of Psycho, but clearing the landing area would allow for airborne support in the final stages of the level - a seaside assault on a cargo-strewn base where the Korean’s warhead had been stashed for my examination and retrieval. Even though, as was conveyed to me in a series of winks, nods and how’s-ya-fathers from the Crytek team, it’s highly unlikely for said warhead to be of the military nuclear persuasion that Psycho is anticipating.
You Pilchard
Every which way you look in Warhead, there’s an exploding barrel and, system requirement downsizing aside, that’s probably the primary thing you’ll notice when you play it.
Believe me, there’s no feeling like winging a Korean with a power-thrown barrel and watching him struggling to stand back up while a casket of flammable liquid merrily smoulders a few feet away from him.
Destruction and physics objects being tossed all over a sunny seaside are the order of the day - it’s a simple mandate, but one that doesn’t fail to entertain when placed in Crytek’s more than competent hands.
Other vital changes include the menu system being coloured orange rather than green and a new suit voice that’s a more sultry, feminine version that the previous two on offer.
Another neat detail that’ll only thrill Crysis obsessives, is that you’ll now be able to set spring-loaded mines in the single-player campaign, should you want to surprise those tracking you with an explosion around their midriff.
Ultimately, what Crytek want you to know (are desperate for you to know, some might say) is that Crysis is no longer a beast to be feared.
They’re not saying that it’ll run on a series of diodes attached to a Casio LCD watch, but it’s now certainly far further within the remit (and budget) of the average PC gamer.
Thing is though, that’s not the most important thing. The most vital piece of information, and the one that Crytek are most tight-lipped on, are what new animals are due to inhabit the new swathe of island that Psycho will merrily dance through.
As already stated, butterflies that can be shot from the air are a definite. The ‘bigger, better, more’ ethos means that where there was one bird casually flying far above your head there are now 10 and where there were two crabs scuttling away from the wheels of your jeep on the seashore there are now 20.
As for anything else, a glorious return of the Far Cry pig perhaps, Crytek are defiantly silent.
"I’m not telling yet. It’s for you to discover," sternly tuts Diemer, "and it breaks my heart when people like shooting them."
The petition starts now people, if we start clamouring for goats and monkeys as soon as possible then they might make it in by the time of release. Go to it!
Crysis Warhead Details Emerge; Success May Lead to Crysis 2, DX10 Not Required for High-end Effects
New details about Crytek’s PC shooter follow-up Crysis Warhead have surfaced in monthly gaming magazine PC Gamer, reported by Czech gaming site Tiscali Games.
According to the preview, the possibility of a Crysis 2 relies heavily on Crysis Warhead’s performance at the market. While the title isn’t necessarily a true sequel, the developers stressed that Warhead is a completely stand-alone, full title.
Echoing Crytek’s claims that Warhead would be optimized to run on cheaper PCs, the preview notes that the Windows Vista-exclusive DirectX 10 API won’t be required to engage the game’s highest levels of detail and visual effects.
As previously reported, the game focuses on new lead Psycho, one of Nomad’s teammates from the original Crysis. Not unlike Valve’s Half-Life expansion Opposing Force (PC), the events of Crysis Warhead run parallel to those of the first game, following Psycho on the other side of the island.
Warhead’s campaign is said to employ more free-roaming sandbox gameplay than its predecessor, clocking in at around eight to ten hours, and features dialogue written by BioShock scriptwriter Susanna O’Connor.
The preview goes on to suggest that the enemy AI has been improved in Warhead, better equipping foes in terms of organization and combat tactics. In terms of new additions to the game’s arsenal, at least two new weapons—including a grenade launcher and double submachine guns—have been added, as well as the new armored scout recon and hovercraft vehicles.
Likely to be Crytek’s final PC-exclusive effort, Crysis Warhead is slated to hit PCs this fall.
IGN Previews Crysis Warhead
June 25, 2008 - 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 Psyches, 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 Psyches 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 Psyches in them. Plus, it also helps that Psyches 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.
Crysis Warhead runs smooth on lower-end PC’s with settings on high?
Optimizations made to Crytek’s CryENGINE 2 will allow the upcoming sci-fi shooter follow up Crysis Warhead to run smoothly with high detail settings on cheap PCs, studio CEO Cevat Yerli has claimed.
Specifically, Yerli told German outlet PC Games that a 400 euro (roughly $620) PC could run the title, with high settings enabled, at 30 to 35 frames per second. Curiously, he did not detail the resolution at which this is possible.
Despite having stopped patch support for the original Crysis (PC), Yerli said these optimizations could eventually make their to the first game. “That will take a long time, because the fixes are fairly profound,” he noted. “We are still in the process of the steps, but first we want to conclude Warhead.”
Though even the latest video cards can’t provide a smooth framerate for Crysis at high resolutions with very high detail settings, Crytek is confident that the game’s system requirements did not affect sales.
“Other’s lower perceived hardware requirements did not actually translate to bigger overall sales numbers than Crysis,”business manager Harald Seeley explained earlier this month. “You only have to look at the comparative PC sales volumes of other prominent FPS games which shipped around the same time.”
Due out this fall, Crysis Warhead marks the last of Crytek’s PC-exclusive titles because of piracy woes and the likelihood of higher sales on consoles. In addition to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the company is apparently investigating PSP development.
Some new Crysis Warhead screens have appeared…
Some new screenshots of Crysis Warhead have popped up today. Not much, but still better than nothing, click on the thumbnail for a large view.
Is it just me or does it appear they may have toned it down a bit in the graphics department? I hope so, otherwise Warhead is going to be another flop. Lookign forward to seeing more and I’ll post just as soon as more is released.
UPDATE: Here are some more screenshots but the quality is so horrific I’m not going to even waste bandwidth on thumbnails, if you want to see them just click the links.
screen screen screen screen screen screen
Crysis on PSP?
European developer Crytek has already said they were expanding into console development, and a job listing for their Budapest office calls for a PSP programmer. Methinks the CryENGINE 2 will not fit on PSP in it’s present state (GI-normous.)
The Budapest office is currently working on Crysis Warhead which should be out this fall. Anyway, if Crytek wants to jump to all these consoles, they need to step it up. Just one blogdouche’s opinion.
Be sure to stop by the Crysis Warhead Forums too.
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A great post from a Crysis player
I just stumbled upon this post and I couldn’t agree with it more so I’m going to just copy and paste it here. Maybe someone from Crytek will stumble across it and relay the info the Warhead designers.
Electronic Arts and Crytek announced last week that Crysis: Warhead was on its way, exclusively, to the PC. While we’ll leave the questioning of the choice of a ‘parallel story’ for another day, we’re psyched about re-entering the tropical paradise seen in 2007’s hit FPS. Therefore we humbly present the top things we want to see from Crysis: Warhead.
We Want: A Fluid Storyline.
First off, if Crytek are going to go down the arguably lazy design option of a parallel story, we at least want it to make sense. It has to fit in flawlessly with Crysis’ narrative.
A sense of progression needs to be sustained, while at the same time making sure that it’s not a simple rehash.
We want to see unique set pieces, developments and genuinely interesting plot sections. If we don’t, then we’re essentially just paying for a redux version.
We Want: Not To Fight The Aliens Again.
Crytek admirably held its hands up and stated that Far Cry was a damn good game, until it spoiled the game with the mutants at the end.
We couldn’t agree more, hailing the statement as both an apology and a promise; one showing regret and rebirth.
Lo and behold our respect was thrown out the window when Crysis introduced the aliens. Yes, they could fly and showed some fancy anti-gravity physics, but they were repetitive, boring and borderline game-breaking. Drab, poor AI and lacking in any interest, we’re hoping (most likely in vain) that they’ve been buried.
We Want: Gravity.
Working along the same lines as the above, gravity is an important part of gameplay. Yes, Portal manages to pleasantly confuse you, as did Prey. Dead Space, EA’s upcoming survival horror seems to be utilising a lack of gravity to startling effect.
Crytek failed. Dreary corridors with nothing to do are not fun. Shiny crystal effects do not equal a fulfilling game experience.
It made it difficult to kill the enemy ethereal spirits and dropped the game a few points. We saw the space-ship and that was enough. This time around, we want our feet firmly on the floor.
We Want: Artificial Intelligence.
Look at the pretty graphics! Look at that car explode! Look how we can turn invisible by simply ducking behind a box.
Delta difficulty proved the easiest for Crysis, despite supposedly being the hardest. We enjoyed the enemies talking in Korean and for some odd reason; it was easier to kill them. What we didn’t like was the idiocy of your opponents.
We’ll ignore the nanosuit’s camouflage feature and focus on how dropping behind a box equalled ‘caution mode.’ The soldiers shooting at you would stop shooting and start searching for you. It spoiled the immersion and brought us back to reality.
We want the AI to flush us out, pin us down. Who cares if it’s difficult, we need a challenge on the hardest levels.
We Want: Stability.
This is quite possibly the most obvious of our choices. There’s no point having hyper-realistic graphical effects, DirectX 10 lovelies and shimmering water when nothing short of Stephen Hawking’s brain can run it.
Crysis does look nice on medium graphics, but nothing comparable to the virtual sex it could have been. We want a fully optimised engine without the crashes, low FPS or bugs.
It’s got to be done right, for the sake of PC bragging rights. Improvement to the destruction won’t go missed either. Let us decimate everything in a hail of fiery justice.
We Want: Animals.
We’re sure turtle-AI is up there in the design process, but that wasn’t enough. When staring out across the sea, listening to the soft sounds of Korean screams, we want to be able to spot fish, birds, insects, crocodiles, elephants, dinosaurs!
This is a tropical paradise and we were disappointed that all there was to throw was the odd turtle. As much as we love punching the hard-shelled creatures, it wasn’t enough.
We want to punch every tropical creature out there! Crysis: Warhead needs to be a living island, giving us something to admire apart from tree-tree-tree-bush-tree. It needs to provide us with something to do between each encampment. Howler Monkey-shooting anyone?
We Want: Go Go Gadget Helicopter.
As much as we all yearn for a new nanosuit powers, we’re sure it isn’t going to happen. After all, this is a parallel story, which often means a copy and paste affair. The hope that we’ll be hearing the words ‘seduction ray engaged’ has all but faded (Why would you want to seduce Korean soldiers … or was it the turtles you were thinking of? – Ed ).
We are expecting an identical suit with identical powers, because varying the gameplay might be ‘unexpected’. Why can’t the nanosuit be Terminator 2-esque and let us liquefy, clone the appearance of a soldier and walk in undetected.
That would be a better example of the adaptive camouflage system used in the original, which was blatantly ripped from the first Metal Gear anyway.
At the same time, we’d love to be able to sprout propellers from our head, and fly about, saving a lot of repetitive walking. That’s our subtle hint of asking for a controllable helicopter, which isn’t a long shot considering there’s a section in the controls.
We Want: A couple of extras.
The key point about Warhead is whether we get completely new sections to explore. We don’t want to play anything we’ve played before; otherwise we’d stick with the original Crysis.
We want new weapon options, new weapons and more vehicles. We don’t want the same sections with the same weapons. It’s got to be fresh, not a rehash with a single twist.
Marco Fiori
Crysis Warhead will be the last PC-exclusive Crysis…
Crytek business manager, Harald Seeley, said that after Warhead is released this fall, there will be no more PC-exclusive crysis games.
He also claims that the system requirements of crysis had nothing to do with the slumped sales. I find this very interesting myself considering it’s pretty common knowledge that’s one of the main beefs. I have a pretty nice computer and still wasn’t able to get near the full graphics mode. I’d say the most common complaints I hear are the super computer that’s required to play the game properly, and the overall bad gameplay. Nothing says lame like shooting an enemy 25 times and still having him running at you. I never bothered with the multi-player so I don’t know what it was like.
Here’s a quote from him:
"Other’s lower perceived hardware requirements did not actually translate to bigger overall sales numbers than Crysis," he explained. "You only have to look at the comparative PC sales volumes of other prominent FPS games which shipped around the same time."
OK then, it must have been just the bad gameplay and storyline. Whatever makes you feel good about yourself. Here’s a hint, pay attention to what COD4, BF2, and BFBC are doing…especially BFBC with all the objects in game being destructible.
He also confirmed that Crysis Warhead will be a PC-exclusive release, putting to rest rumors of a Warhead multi-platform release.
