Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Crytek last night announced the latest incarnation of their engine, CryENGINE 3 is now available to be licensed. Now that may not affect you or me (unless you’re a games developer of course), but there’s some interesting implications of this latest tech. Of course, it first of all means games are going to be prettier – these are the people who keep bowling us over with each new engine as it creates vivid beaches and jungles. But it’s also looking to streamline development across multiple platforms – letting programmers see how the game will appear in PC, 360 and PS3 on the fly. And rumours abound that it may be the engine of choice for STALKER 2.

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The Crysis 2 teaser site is up, and it’s quite an entertaining idea: it’s a brochure site for the Nanosuit 2, the next version of the powered armour worn by the super-soldiers of the original game. At the time of Crysis I felt as if the Nanosuit was the best idea, with its constraints actually being a little too tight on the player and hampering the hilarity of carrying opponents around by the throat. Hopefully this time we’ll see less limits on super-soldier action, and a more over-the-top deliver from the super-punching, super-jumping, cloaking death-armour. Anyway, there’s nothing of the game to be see yet, but the PDF leaflet detailing the capabilities of the new suit is fun. It possibly gives away some features of the game, too: “with Crynet’s optional Necro-Organic Metabolites plug-in (NOM), the N2 can even extract usable energy from battlefield carrion.” Hmm. Icky.

Hot off the E3 grapevine is news that Crytek’s ultro-graphics shooter Crysis is definitely due a sequel. A proper sequel, that is, and not another Warheadesque expandalone: Crysis 2 will even sport a whole new engine. No further details whatsoever, and certainly no whiff of a screenshot, but hopefully all that stuff’s inbound later today. All we do know: it’s now multi-format. Oh, won’t someone please think of the children, etc. Me, I just hope it’s a better game than the underwhelming first two Cryses. Let’s start the guessing now, though – will Crytek stick to their tried and tested tropical setting, or elect to demonstrate the might of their new Cryengine 3 in a whole new locale? Urban would be fun… The press release, such as it is, is after the jump.

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News of another free week of Crysis Wars has turned up over on the community forums, and BigDownload reckon it’s from April 9th. Word is that the official community portal – the existential-sounding MyCrysis.com – will have details on how to get in on the free week from Monday. (And Crysis Wars, in case you were wondering, is the multiplayer aspect of Crysis: Warhead. In it everyone gets the super nano-suits, and can do each other harm with MAXIMUM-strength, vehicular escalation, and cloaker-sneaking goodness. It’s actually a bit of a laugh, although not one of my all time favourites for online FPS.)

CryEngine 3 has been unveiled at GDC, and shown off with a new video. Nothing on the new “what you see is what you play” editor (WYSIWYP, clever eh?) or any hard tech facts so far, and sadly the crappy compression of the trailer means the impact is lessened somewhat. But it still looks fractionally more impressive than Crysis, and that’s the main thing. Right? Okay then.
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Crysis Wars is the multiplayer accompaniment to recent Crysis… paraquel? That can be a word, right? Anyway, it’s the multiplayer project that came along with Crysis Warhead, only its been a bit delayed. To make up for this lag in release dates the Crysis Wars teams are allowing people to register on the official site for a weekend of free Crysis Wars play from the 10th to the 12th. So if you’re at a loss for how to sink your idle hours this weekend then this might sort you right out. Of course you’ll need to be a fan of fast-paced multiplayer FPS games, and be comfortable with the idea of being punched to death by that guy who is miraculously incredible at the game, despite having only played it for half an hour. You know the one.

A pacey trailer that features a lot of nanosuits getting spectacularly whacked follows after the jump.
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(From Crysis Warhead). That’s going to make perfect sense to people who get confused by system specs. Am I a gamer or an enthusiast? I just don’t know! What if I’m both? Is that illegal? And if I’m not mainstream, does that automatically make me edgy and avant-garde? Cos that’d be great.

For fun and frolics, imagine if this list of presets were in a different order.

Now here’s a thing. Rousing myself from hangover horror enough to glance briefly at my inbox, I notice a press release about Crysis: Warhead coming to Steam. “Oh, that’s nice”, I think before collapsing into another hour of semi-concious agony. It’s only later that I have a waitagoshdarnedminute moment – this means EA are now prepared to stick their games on Steam. Which is, y’know, a big fecking deal. I believe this means there’s now no remaining major publisher who hasn’t signed up to Valve’s world-devouring download service. Edit – apart from Vivendi, as Theory observes. I is stupid. Still, it’s a fairly momentous occasion, making it increasingly hard to argue that Steam isn’t the iTunes of gaming.

Additional, post-coffee edit – yeah, this seems more to do with Crytek than EA, but EA are mentioned in the press release, and must have at the very least okayed this. It’s a positive step even if it’s not as big as I first thought.
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This is a little old, but we somehow didn’t post it when it hit the web a week ago and since I’ve been deep in Crysis: Warhead today for a magazine, it seemed appropriate. It’s a video showing Crysis Warhead’s included re-imagining of the Crysis multiplayer. In short: more short. Intense. More thoughts on FPS-multiplayer and completely random Mass Effect stuff beneath the cut.
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Wahey, it’s another video! But it’s a bank holiday, so you should be grateful you’re getting anything at all out of us tradition-spurning Brits, quite frankly. Plus it’s apparently a leaked video, which adds the scintillating thrill of watching something you’re not supposed to. Because seeing footage of games that might make you want to buy them is a bad thing. Yes.

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