Yesterday brought official word that a profitable videogame would see a follow-up. Surprise! But while we got to ogle a few Crysis 3 screenshots, we didn’t get to see it in motion. We still don’t, because life is harsh and cruel and that’s a lesson that we all need to learn at some point. Now go to bed without having any dinner. Once you wake up tomorrow, starving and miserable, we might just let you watch this footage of the latest update to CryENGINE 3, which might just offer some visual hints about what to expect from Thrysis. Included – more ear-shaped ears, diving fish-guys, a man with multi-coloured stubble, the kind of fantasy castles that we all wish Skyrim had, a lovely waterfall, a man taking out his existential rage on a window and a shed. (more…)

Here is a poorly-kept secret: I’m not a very tall man. Here is another one: Crysis 3 is happening. Even before evidence turned up last week, a fourth nanosuited adventure seemed something of a given, but it’s taken the EA-Crytek announcengine this long to formally confirm the next game. I’ve just played Press Release Bingo and I’ve got a “stunning”, a “state of the art”, an “unparalleled visuals”, an “ultimate”, a “leveraging the latest technology” and enough pre-order unlocks to kill a small horse.

Confirmed: we’ll play as angry baldy man Prophet (those who’ve finished Crysis 2 can probably work out why that’s the case), that bow and arrow is legit, it’s due next Spring, it’s using CryEngine 3, it’s going to have “sandbox gameplay” and it’s set in a New York trapped inside an Nanodome which has caused it to transform into an ‘urban rainforest.’ (more…)

While struggling to think up a headline pun to accompany the unsurprising news that there’s almost certainly going to be a third (well, fourth technically speaking) Crysis game, the ‘crap rhymes’ part of my imagination dredged up No Way Sis, who were at one time deemed the UK’s premier Oasis tribute act and enjoyed far too much success of their own. Even a hit single. What a terrible, terrible world this can be.

Anyway, Crysis 3. A spot of digging by Neogaf and Eurogamer’s German arm has turned up assorted hints that Crytek’s third nanosuit oddyssey is due for a reveal soon. They even found a picture of a Crysis dude with a bow and arrow. Which seems sort of incongruous to the nanosuit, but maybe the Strength mode will enable us to shoot arrows that fly for over 20 miles. EXTREME HUNTING. (more…)

Would you call Minecraft in the Crysis engine Mynecraft or Minecryft? I prefer the second, because the first could >be a typo, whereas the only legitimate reason for coming up with the second is if there’s a Crysis mod that adds Minecraft to it. Wait, there is! And it’s called… what, ‘Craftable‘? Seriously? (more…)

This week, a few mods that I’ve been monitoring but haven’t had a chance to have a proper go at yet. In some cases, that’s because they haven’t been released yet, in others it’s because the hours in every day are sadly limited, and as well as playing games and writing about them, I very occasionally sleep. I even venture outside from time to time, although admittedly not in the current political and meteorological climate. Too chilly. Too bitter. All too real. Onward to fantasy. Preferably with decent central heating.

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I use the word potential> all the time. To the extent that it becomes annoying to the people around me. But it is an important word, especially in this still youthful industry. It’s locked in the bizarre ideas forming in the mind and on the hard drive of the smallest indie developer, and it’s evident in the expanding technical prowess of the largest blockbusters. It’s not just in the future though. I also love the potential of what already exists, the engines that have been built and the histories they have produced. And that’s why I love mods. They can make the old new in so many ways: balancing, tweaking, expanding, subverting, or being something self-contained and entirely new. Take The Worry of Newport. It’s a self-contained, Lovecraftian mystery that’s pretending to be a mod for Crysis. (more…)

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.

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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“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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