Crysis Wars: 13-Day Aged Prime-Cut Trailer

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.

I admit, considering the online component of a single-player game is something which I'm terribly glad I'm not a developer. It's a fascinating gamble. It's a lot of work to do. The more work you put into it, the more chance it has to pay off, but - fundamentally - if it doesn't take off, all that work counts as nothing. When it works, you become Valve, Infinity Ward or Bungie. When it doesn't, you become the game who you can't find someone to play with on the 360 two-months after launch, or the local equivalent. I certainly can understand why someone like Irrational after failing to begat any kind of online multiplayer world with their previous two games realised they were far better folding all their efforts from Bioshock into the single-player game. Part of me wonders whether that'd be true with Crysis - it's mechanics are lovely, but in a similar (though not nearly as pronounced as Bioshock) way, they're single-player mechanics. Some games skillsets, however wonderful, don't really obviously apply to multiplayer games. And this is talking as someone who really gave Deus Ex multiplayer a crack. Equally as true, some honed MP mechanics fall apart in single player - World in Conflict comes swiftly to mind for me.

At which point a mass of Crysis multiplayer lovers descend to explain while these feelings are amiss. And in my defence, I do say that it's not nearly as true as I suspect it'd be for a Deus Ex or a Bioshock.

Meanwhile, a tiny SPOILERY update from Walker's continuing Mass Effect Adventures.

John: Wow, I'm being asked to decide which of my team should go on a suicide mission.
Kieron: Say Alec!
John: I was going to make that joke!
Kieron: It's a joke?

Night everyone.