While the PvPvE monster-hunting FPS Hunt Showdown continues its journey through early access, developers Crytek today launched what they’re calling its “first major content update”. It adds new scoped guns and new character traits to improve your monstermashing, and also takes a crack at solving the problem of camping. It’s no fun to slug it out with the big bad and walk away with its guts in your trophy bag, only to be picked off by the real monsters: campers. The solution is two-pronged, providing extra incentive to banish the beastie and reworking the map to add cover and weaken campgrounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Crytek have released the first “performance patch” for Hunt: Showdown, focused on making the early access PvPvE monster-hunting first-person shooter run better, and many players are reporting meaningful improvements. That’s fine news because, according to Fraser Brown, Hunt is “a clever competitive shooter and an excellent source of emergent stories. And disasters. Mostly disasters.” Framerates and stuttering and should be improved now, though the patch cannot do anything about your stuttering surprised cries of “M-m-m-monster!”

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Spider! Ah! Oh thank heavens it’s just an early access videogame. Easy mistake. The way they both scuttle out into the open, it’s very similar. But see, look closely and you’ll find that this is actually a lesser-spotted Hunt: Showdown – a multiplayer horror shooter set in the swamps and farmland of rural Louisiana, in which pairs of bounty hunters track monsters and shoot at each other. Not at all a slavering, monstrous eight-legged terror from the deepest chasms of the primordial human psyche. In fact, look at it from the side and you can see a launch trailer. That means it’s a male. The males are harmless. Read the rest of this entry »

As troubled as the studio have seemed lately, I must admit to loving the look and concept of Hunt: Showdown, Crytek’s upcoming competitive monster-hunting shooter. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been a sucker for Weird West settings. Plus, you just can’t beat a chunky six-shooter and a lever-action rifle as far as satisfying videogame shootin’ irons go.

Whether you’re in it to hunt the deadliest game, or whether the Cowboys Vs Hellspawn idea appeals, the first closed alpha event for the game is just a couple weeks away and signups are still open.

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The makers of Star Citizen have declared that the lawsuit against them by CryEngine makers Crytek “sacrifices legal sufficiency for loud publicity”, and asked the court to dismiss it. Crytek have claimed that Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) broke the contract under which they licensed CryEngine to build their space sim upon. CIG say these claims are tosh, mostly disproved by a simple look at the agreement – a text they claim Crytek had concealed from the court, and so have shared themselves. I prefer my legal drama to have jokes, songs, and closing arguments to the jury which are actually a metaphor for their failed marriage with the opposing lawyer who–oh god!–they’ve only just realised they never stopped loving, but let’s get stuck in.

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Crytek’s name might not command quite the same respect as it did during the height of the Crysis series, but their free-to-play FPS Warface has maintained a steady (and slowly growing) player-base over the past year, in large part due to a steady influx of fresh content.

While the previous update to the game was a predictable me-too Battle Royale mode, the latest addition is a co-op story mission set in the irradiated wastes of Pripyat, and a bit of a genre-shift towards overt sci-fi silliness.

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It wouldn’t be 2012-2018 (and who knows how much longer) without a Star Citizen controversy. Chris Robert’s mega-crowdfunded space-everything game has been subject to a great deal of scrutiny about what it’s spent its half-decade and its $173 million dollars on, but a brand new curveball is that his studios Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries are being sued by Crysis and CryEngine makers Crytek.

Up until last year, Star Citizen was built using CryEngine, but now Crytek are arguing there’s been a breach of contract and copyright infringement. They’re after an injunction which, if successful, wouldn’t mean good things for that release date we’ve been holding out for.
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Everyone’s trying to get some of that Plunkbat money, with Warface, Crytek’s free-to-play shooter, being the latest game to add a battle royale mode. It’s live now as part of the November update. Unlike Battlegrounds or H1Z1, however, the smaller scale of Warface means that it’s not quite as much of a messy free-for-all, what with only 16 players competing for the top spot.

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Crytek’s free-to-play face-shooter Warface [official site] is off to the city of Pripyat within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone later this year. Is Warface (WARFACE WARFACE WARFACE etc.) any good? Dunno. Am I keen to see this? Oh yes. I always enjoy video games travelling to that spooky abandoned land, from Call of Duty 4’s stealthy visit to the joys of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. Video game tourism is challenging when enemies are trying to shoot your face off, sure, but that’s part of the satisfaction. Would a view from a mountaintop be the same without a climb? Doesn’t a hike make the ruins you reach all the more delightful? Read the rest of this entry »

The first gameplay video of Crytek’s Hunt: Showdown has arrived and makes the monster-hunting multiplayer FPS look a lot more interesting than expected. I was disappointed when Crytek revealed that they’d turned the cooperative Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age into the competitive Hunt: Showdown [official site] and teased the change with a video of some cowboys shooting some other cowboys. Turns out, it’s not nearly as rubbo as suggested. Showdown will see five two-person teams roaming around big monster-filled levels, trying to find and kill a boss monster with a bounty on its head – while making sure they live to claim it. Watch: Read the rest of this entry »

Given Crytek’s years of terrible financial trouble and their focus on virtual reality games, I’m surprised by news that they are still working on Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. Well. They sort of are. What was a cooperative third-person action game about monster hunters in the 1800s, which sounded a bit ‘Left 4 Dead meets Van Helsing’, is now a competitive game named Hunt: Showdown [official site]. It still has revolvers and big cowboy hats but I did quite like the sound of the co-op Hunt. Read the rest of this entry »

Sega have bought Crytek Black Sea, one of the studios the financially-troubled Crytek was closing, and given it to Creative Assembly. Now that’s romance. Creative Assembly are, of course, the gang best known for the Total War games and Alien: Isolation, while Crytek Black Sea (formerly Black Sea Studios) were behind real-time strategy games Knight of Honor and WorldShift and MOBA Arena of Fate. Now they’re pals, working on mysterious unannounced games, and known as Creative Assembly Sofia. Read the rest of this entry »

Given that the term “exclusively” in video games often has an invisble “until a deal we can’t tell you about expires” attached (if you’re curious: this is visible only by the light of a blue moon), it’s probably not a surprise that Crytek’s PlayStation VR exclusive dinosaur adventure Robinson: The Journey [official site] is now headed for a PC version. Yup, Crytek may be closing several studios and laying off staff but they’re not done just yet. In January, the cybergoggle dinoventure will hit PC for Oculus Rift goggs. Read the rest of this entry »

Crytek is closing down five of its offices around the world after financial trouble has reportedly left many of its workers unpaid for months. Studios in Frankfurt and Kiev are staying open, the developers said in a classically verbose press release, but all other studios are being shut down, including offices in Seoul, Sofia, Shanghai, Istanbul and Budapest. “Management has put plans into action to secure jobs and to ensure a smooth transition and stable future,” said the notice. Translation: a large number of people are losing their jobs.
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Over the last year or so, you might’ve spotted Crytek’s lovely Back to Dinosaur Island VR demos. The Climb [official site] is the Crysis devs’ latest project – a virtual reality climbing simulator that charges players with scaling treacherous cliff faces in idyllic locales scattered across the world. The latest trailer visits the Alps.

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