Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This is probably old news to you, but it’s new news to me and my ancient Egyptian ancestors told me during my hypnotherapy that the entire universe is just a figment of my imagination, therefore I can post it if I please and if you moan it’s only because I’m imagining someone moaning. Cloud gaming tech Gaikai has been offering streaming demos of various games – most notably Dead Space 2 and Mass Effect 2 – here and there for a while now, but I’ve just discovered that, over on Eurogamer, you can jump into browser-based slices of Crysis 2, Magicka, FIFA 12 and the Witcher 2.

Update: omigodomigodomigod. There are more demos on the Gaikai site. Including FARMING SIMULATOR. Yes! Also, try this link if you’re being region-blocked on the other. It might work: hard to say without catching a few jetplanes to the other side of the world.
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Rumours emerged this weekend that all isn’t happy-times at Crytek. The Crysis developer has been accused of mistreating staff, and sacking employees unlawfully, the accusations appearing on a Tumblr blog. But these are accusations Crytek’s co-founder Avni Yerli has rushed to deny, speaking to Develop. Amid suggestions that six-month crunch periods leave employees not knowing if they will still have a job, Yerli insists that Crytek respects and values staff.

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Attention modders! Hot on the heels of the recent DX11 patch, the Crysis 2 Editor is now available (with a bunch of other tools) to download at crymod.com and mycrysis.com, which was named after a fairly strong-handed self-help book expounding advanced military weaponry over sit-ins with your therapist. The Crysis mod scene came up with some properly fantastic stuff, and armed with all the tech and tools of the bleeding now, the CryEngine looks like it’s got it’s work cut out for it as all those artist types take full advantage of the “Make It More Shiny, My Portfolio Isn’t As Bright As The Sun Yet” buttons.

The official documentation is hiding under cloak over here. He’s shy and wonders what to do with his hands alot, but he’s gradually overcoming his public speaking issues.

Woo, fancy! It’s here.

When using the new “Ultra” spec, DX9 platforms will benefit from real-time local reflections and contact shadows. The owners of DX11 platforms, in addition, will be able to enjoy hardware tessellation (requires the installation of the “DX11 Ultra Upgrade”), parallax occlusion mapping and several improvements for shadows, water, particles, depth of field and motion blur.

Phwoar, eh readers? (You probably want to download the hi-res textures patch on the same page, too.)

Speaking with Gamasutra, Crytek bossman Cervat Yerli had this to say about the Crysis games: “Crysis 1′s intention was, if I were to play it three years later, it looks great. And it does, actually, it fulfilled that. But it made it difficult for entry-level players. So with Crysis 2, we took a different direction, and it backfired a little bit.” Yerli explained that the forthcoming high-end 1.9 patch for Crysis 2, which will introduce clevers such as tessellation, realistic shadows with variable penumbra, parallax occlusion mapping, and “Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field”, is a “gift” to the PC high-end community. “It lifts up Crysis 2 and gives a sneak peak of how PC gaming will evolve in the future,” says Yerli, “If you support a high-end preference.” I totally support a high-end preference. That sounds like some kind of innuendo, right? Eh? Guys? Mm.

The high-end patch is out next Monday, June 27th.

Did you buy the Crysis 2 ‘Retaliation’ map pack last month? Then you’ll probably be pleased to know that a second one, the ‘Decimation’ pack, has just gone on sale. Once again it’ll cost you $10, though this time you’re getting five new maps (instead of four) and two new weapons- the FY71 assault rifle and smoke grenades.

Tell you what, no video game smoke grenade will ever top the ones that were in the unpatched release of legendarily buggy 2004 soldier sim Söldner. Every so often you’d throw one that didn’t run out of smoke. Ever. It would just sit there, slowly filling the entire level with an opaque fog for minutes on end until the rendering engine crashed.
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THINGS ARE GETTING REALLY STRANGE NOW. Now being outside of UK office hours mean we’re yet to get our own EA response to why Crysis 2 vanished from Steam yesterday, but across-the-ponders have now received one. The upshot? Despite all this ‘only on Origin’ stuff, EA didn’t do it. So: who did?
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While the waters around Crysis 2′s sudden disappearance from Steam last night remain somewhat muddy, EA Games prez Frank Gibeau has spilled a few heavily suggestive beans about the big brass balls the publisher has about its proprietary download service, Origin, and how it intends to keep any other download service’s grubby mitts off a few of its choicest games.
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“Where were you when the war began, Daddy?”
“Well, little Ignatius H. Meer III, I was at my PC, staring vacantly at Twitter. Probably eating some crisps as I did. I’ll never forget that dark, terrible day. The day that EA decided they could fight Steam.”
“Daddy? Why are you crying, Daddy?”

Crysis 2 has disappeared from Steam, and is now described as being “Origin only.” Origin is, you may recall, EA’s newly-relaunched download store. Uh-oh.
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Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there’s very little for you to actually play. There’s a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That’s a lot of games! Read on to find out what’s what.
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