By Nathan Grayson on October 2nd, 2012 at 9:00 am.
Do you think Crysis needs more lightsabers? I think Crysis needs more lightsabers. Evidently, the folks behind the original Crysis’ four-years-in-the-making StarCry mod agreed, so they chucked ‘em in – hopefully skewering an Ewok or 12 in the process – for good measure. Wait, good measure? Why would I ever say such a thing when lightsabers – much like love – are all you need? Mainly because they join 1000 new sci-fi-themed objects, 2000 textures, 20 weapons, and 1000 lines of dialog as part of a seriously formidable overhaul package. Intrigued? Well, unfortunately, the RPS lot is fresh out of sci-fi-themed vehicles for break-traversing purposes. We do have Syfy-themed vehicles, though. Might I recommend the Supergator?
That was a lot of things. However, it was also just a handful of the whole-lot-more-things included in the final package, which you can download here. StarCry definitely strikes me as the type of thing that could end up flattening its own forward momentum with one (thousand) too many sci-fi references, but the dev team apparently made a deliberate effort to avoid that.
“We estimate around eight hours of gameplay for a first playthrough. The mod contains many references to famous science-fiction universes (movies, TV shows, video games – famous or canceled) alongside original creations, while still having a coherent storyline… It is not based on the Stargate franchise, even if some models have a similar design (the main character is a SG fan). Maybe it is a prequel to Crysis 1, a dream, or you are connected to the alien’s matrix? You will see.”
The creators also tout a ruthless difficulty level and not-so-easy-to-drive vehicles – the latter of which they justify by noting that you’re piloting alien tech, not our primitive dinosaur-bone-powered ape cars.
So StarCry might not be for everyone. It still seems like an impressively ambitious piece of work, though, and – for better or worse – I’m quite enamored with the idea of picking through this sort of thing for the inevitable flood of “See what we did there?” moments. Also, we live in a world sadly bereft of virtual Firefly adventures. It seems likely that, if nothing else, I’ll at least find one brief, fleeting wink or nod in StarCry. And I will savor it in near-orgasmic fashion, like a person with a tremendous headcold sucking on a lozenge. Then I will weep.
02/10/2012 at 09:09 furiannn says:
One question, when?!
02/10/2012 at 09:24 Nathan Grayson says:
Now! Follow the mighty “download here” link. You can also grab it on their ModDB page.
02/10/2012 at 09:16 diebroken says:
Nice, but I just couldn’t help thinking about hearing some of Serious Sam’s quotes when watching that… and then a kamikaze started screaming around the 2:55 mark… XD
02/10/2012 at 09:16 Grey Ganado says:
It’s not Stargate? Then why does the trailer look like nothing but Stargate?
02/10/2012 at 09:27 mondomau says:
I was wondering that. I’m not the most hardcore of SciFi nerds, but I’m fairly sure I only saw one or two nods to franchises other than SG-1.
Still though, pretty impressive.
EDIT: Ah, ok. It was Nathan’s description that threw me – Looking at the source article, it does seem to be a perfunctory ‘don’t C&D us’ statement. The little nods are just that, it’s clearly supposed to be an SG-1 mod with a few idiosyncrasies.
02/10/2012 at 10:14 andash says:
Yeah this is weird, why would they deny it? Think they are not going to get shut down if they simply… don’t say it out loud?
Cheyenne Mountain with a stargate. Practically Goa’Uld with staffs and ships. A FN P90… I’m sure there was more.
I’m honestly glad that they are doing this, but they need to be honest.
02/10/2012 at 11:05 Heavenfall says:
They probably reached an agreement with the rights holders. If the devs say it’s not X then the rights holders promise not to come after them for infringing.
02/10/2012 at 20:33 Baines says:
Possible. Or it could just be the (sometimes justified) belief that if you don’t go around shoving it in people’s faces, then the people most likely to object won’t ever notice, and the others won’t see it as a big enough reason to object.
Various fan projects appear to survive through means that involve never having officially made themselves known to the properties’ lawyers. Employees at some companies have come out and (unofficially officially) said that they “don’t want to know” (at least as long as the fan project is reasonable and a fan project, not some attempt to profit), because knowing means they would be obligated to step it.
02/10/2012 at 10:15 eks says:
Probably so it doesn’t get a C&D. Does it really matter though? He even says he is a fan, but we are in an age where embarking in any fan mods/projects is basically suicide for a project.
02/10/2012 at 11:24 The First Door says:
Yeah… it really does look like a Stargate game with a few random, out of place references here and there. Random Star Wars and Star Trek weapons and models in an Egyptian themed world which you get to through a Stargate. Hmm…
Still, it does look quite good fun!
02/10/2012 at 14:55 Baardago says:
Yeah, they basically picked everything they have in the mod from other sci-fi stuff, games, TV shows, movies, etc.
From what I saw in the screenshots, they have loads of Stargate stuff, Star Wars Lightsabers, vehicles and guns from Gears of War, guns from Halo, etc etc.
Funny thing is that they keep repeatedly denying (from what I saw in screenshot comments) that it’s based/looks like (or simply is) any of those.
Either they’re trying to protect themselves against being shut down (which, I think, might be a stupid move since doing stuff similar to already existing content and denying similarities/inspirations might be even worse than admitting it), or they’re just copying/plagiarizing it and not caring.
I bet it’s the former, really. With companies going batshit with lawsuits all over, I’m not surprised fan-mod developers are trying to cover their bases.
02/10/2012 at 21:51 deependdriver says:
Come on man, there is 20 seconds worth of SW light sabers killing SG baddies on Kami’s lookout from DBZ, isn’t that enough diversity for you?
02/10/2012 at 09:19 c-Row says:
That picture… teleportation gate, snowed in landscape… Outcast flashbacks.
02/10/2012 at 20:26 Bobtree says:
There’s a mod project to recreate Outcast in the Crysis Wars engine. It looks a lot like Outcast: http://www.moddb.com/mods/open-outcast
03/10/2012 at 12:38 zebramatt says:
Oh good grief, yes!
I’ve been looking for a reason to replay Outcast for ages!
02/10/2012 at 09:33 JohnArr says:
Impressive that something containing Stargate content actually managed to release without being lawyer-stomped.
02/10/2012 at 15:01 DrGonzo says:
There’s also a Stargate HL2 mod that came out a few years back and is still in development.
03/10/2012 at 00:37 ResonanceCascade says:
It’s the FAR-gate. “EFF.” It’s different from that movie which I have never seen.
02/10/2012 at 09:38 sharkh20 says:
Might as well be an SG1 game. Even uses sounds straight from the show. I like that they clearly show the player shooting everything in the stomach where a symbiote would be.
02/10/2012 at 09:44 Mr. Mister says:
I want a chopper with light-bladed helixae.
02/10/2012 at 09:48 Tomac says:
1:21 in the video looks exactly like Kami’s Lookout from DBZ
02/10/2012 at 09:49 Miltrivd says:
I never played Crysis since I was a bit bored of FPS at the time (plus my PC prolly wouldn’t have been able to handle it smoothly), but this makes it worth a shot now. Getting Crysis now to try this mod. Buying ArmA 2, now Crysis. An exciting year for mods, yes it is.
02/10/2012 at 09:50 Slinkyboy says:
Freaking awesome. Maybe I can finally finish the shitty campaign after playing this.
02/10/2012 at 10:31 Vurogj says:
622 a’s. Which is quite a lot of space, it has to be said.
02/10/2012 at 10:36 MeestaNob says:
It does raise an obvious question: How has there NEVER been a Stargate game? (The old Mega Drive one and the MMO of a few years ago don’t count, because they’re shit).
It seems like the easiest thing in the world to make.
02/10/2012 at 13:37 Chaz says:
Did the MMO ever get released?
02/10/2012 at 14:27 deadly.by.design says:
Stargate Universe got cancelled.
:p
02/10/2012 at 14:57 Chaz says:
That’s what I thought.
02/10/2012 at 17:08 deadly.by.design says:
The SGU show got canned.
No idea if the MMO project was named that or not, but I was trying to be clever.
02/10/2012 at 15:43 emertonom says:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate:_Resistance
The company went belly-up trying to make the MMO, but they did briefly have another game out, at least according to Wikipedia.
02/10/2012 at 11:13 yurusei says:
1:22 That looks like the Palace of Kami-san in Dragonball Z
Reference : http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100816151016/dragonball/images/c/c4/Dragon_ball_z_attack_of_the_saiyans_24.jpg
02/10/2012 at 11:19 greg_ritter says:
Why so much hate towards Ewoks, man?
02/10/2012 at 11:29 Rao Dao Zao says:
‘Ewoke up on the wrong side of bed, I think.
02/10/2012 at 11:42 greg_ritter says:
Here’s hoping these hate speeches toward Ewoks will End-or.
02/10/2012 at 14:30 Sparkasaurusmex says:
I don’t think it’s so much the ewoks that are bothering him, but this game has jars and jars of mixed sci fi content that it must be annoying.
02/10/2012 at 15:05 Skabooga says:
I guess it just yub-yubs him the wrong way.
02/10/2012 at 18:59 Velko says:
All your posting rights should be rewoked because of such terrible puns.
02/10/2012 at 11:36 mckertis says:
It looked great, and then there were mummies that dropped ankhs…
Also, how come people are still so greedy with geometry ? Would it really matter that much for fillrate on modern GPUs if they used a 32-section cylinder instead of 12-section ? Really ? I’d rather see a lower-res texture than a pointy cylinder.
02/10/2012 at 12:14 Innovacious says:
Dear lord, that alt text tooltip almost stretched across all 3840 pixels of my horizontal monitor space.
02/10/2012 at 12:48 Davee says:
“This mod is not based on the SG franchise !”
I did in fact laugh out loud. But anything SG-related that looks okay is fine in my book. And this looks pretty nice.
02/10/2012 at 13:12 JoeGuy says:
The YouTube vids are all about SG, the weapons are from SG, a lot of the character models are from SG, the vehicles are from SG, the name and logo are from SG lol… Nope, its not about SG.
03/10/2012 at 06:28 Bart Stewart says:
Clearly this is not an SG-1 game.
Some of the locations didn’t look anything like Vancouver.
Incidentally, best moment of Dragon*Con 2012: Richard Dean Anderson slooooowly climbing back onto the stage during a panel discussion, then loudly humming the triumphant three-note riff from MacGuyver.
02/10/2012 at 14:18 adeptacheese says:
now do a post about mechwarrior living legends!
02/10/2012 at 16:21 Dances to Podcasts says:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/mechwarrior-living-legends/
02/10/2012 at 14:21 deadly.by.design says:
For some reason, that headline is very difficult for me to read.
02/10/2012 at 14:29 Sparkasaurusmex says:
Looks interesting but I would need to know more before I try to find Crysis (one of the last boxes I ever purchased) and reinstall it.
Stargate’s cool, but are there DS:9 references? Seriously though, is it fun like the fun parts of Crysis were?
02/10/2012 at 17:12 Shooop says:
I’m still anxiously awaiting CryZone 23. It’s basically the STALKER sequel we’ll never get from the original studio.
CryTek should stop trying to make games and just do engines, because that’s what they’ve succeeded magnificently at.
02/10/2012 at 20:28 ZIGS says:
Apparently it went multiplayer: http://www.moddb.com/mods/cryzone-online
Because that’s exactly what we wanted right?
02/10/2012 at 17:34 kevmscotland says:
Sometimes, less is more.
02/10/2012 at 22:17 The_invalid says:
What puzzles me, is that the dev team seems to have spent all this time and effort circumlocuting around the fact they’re doing a great big Stargate mod, why didn’t they just create some original IP instead?
Honestly, as a Stargate fan, I’d far rather see something done loosely ‘in the spirit’ of Stargate with a host of cool new takes on old ideas; than the show’s IP hackneyed and shoehorned into some pretend LOL NOT STARGATE mythos with BSG fighters pasted in. It’s cheap, dumb and uncreative.
I mean don’t get me wrong, I can see there’s a lot of love and talent gone into this, but I can’t help but feel that the way the Stargate IP has been handled in this only serves to detract from everything else.
02/10/2012 at 23:18 drkeiscool says:
I really didn’t enjoy the mod. The first mission was halfway decent, but the Cheyenne Mountain “mission” was basically an hour and half of fetch quests and cutscenes. And they’re all stupid and pointless.
For example, I have to help a scientist find a floppy disk. After finding it in the barracks (or whatever they are) I discover that some random soldier has it, and won’t give it to me until I get him a beer. Why can’t I just take it? So I go to the garage, and after a 6 minute cutscene of me getting a car and driving to a gas station, I walk up and get a beer. At this point, I was mind-numblingly bored (I’m more than an hour into the mod), so I literally smashed up the entire gas station. After ruining hundreds of dollars worth of food and equipment, I casually walk up to the attendant, have a pleasant chat, get a beer, and drive back in another cutscene. I finally got the floppy disk to the scientist after half an hour of pointless filler.
Mind you, this is at least two hours into the game, an hour and half after getting to Cheyenne Mountain, and half an hour before starting an actual mission. And the entirety of Cheyenne Mountain is fetch quests. I uninstalled after that.
Say what you will about Crysis, whether good or bad, but at least had momentum.