Crysis


The voice of Duke Nukem himself, Jon St. John, endorses our podcast in the waking seconds of this week's show. Stick around to the end for Evan's mini-interview with the voice actor, sampled straight from the strip club parking lot (seriously) where the chat took place.

Live from our fidelity-capturing, professional podcast studio, Dan, Logan, Evan, Chris, Josh and Intern Anthony chat up the state of League of Legends, F.E.A.R. AI vs. Crysis AI and John Carmack's judo skills. At 40:30, Chris' debuts his segment "Truthiness and Falsity," where provocative statements and latent, unexpressed resentment among editors combine.

PC Gamer US Podcast 259

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Quote of the week: "Your videocard will not turn into a pumpkin." -Dan Stapleton

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

A brave Russian mod team has challenged themselves to port the whole of GSC's survival horror, STALKER, into Crysis' more advanced engine. The project's called Cryzone - Sector 23, and is far along enough for the team to have released a video of the mod in action. You'll find the video embedded below.

The mod is the work of a team called World of Stalker. It's still a work in progress, but famous elements from the STALKER series are already in there, including the bleak landscapes, anomalies, and groups of terse Russian men sitting around campfires.

The video shows off some of the destructability and improved physics that comes with the upgrade to Cryengine 2. The mod plans to add some new features to the game, including a Far Cry 2 style healing system, in which your character must fix wounds by injecting themselves, or removing bullets from wounds. For more information on the mod, check out the Sector 23 page on the AP forums. It's a staggering undertaking, but judging from the video below, the results could be pretty spectacular.

Crysis

The latest trailer for Crysis 2 seems to be narrated by the mad scientist who created the Nanosuit. He has a good old boast about how it grants his super soldiers "incredible strength", super speed, invisibility, bullet proof skin... okay actually that is pretty badass. Your arrogance is justified, mysterious old dude. The latest footage shows off the crumbling city environment, and also features plenty of aliens exploding. You'll find it embedded below.

The Crysis 2 minimum specs were recently revealed, though today Crytek clarified that they may be subject to change. They'll still give an idea of the level of machine the devs are aiming for. For more on the game check out the official Crysis 2 site, and our preview of the multiplayer. We've also got a multiplayer demo to look forward to before the game is released on March 25.

Crysis

A new trailer from Crytek showcases some of the fun you'll be having in Crysis 2's multiplayer. You can watch it after the jump.

The footage shows off some death match and Crash Site action (where players must defend drop pods from the opposing team). It does a good job of demonstrating the Nanosuit's various abilities, including stealth kills and kicking cars over. It is, naturally, all very pretty.

Unfortunately for us PC crowd, the final message is a bit of a kick in the teeth: "Xbox 360 exclusive multiplayer demo begins January 25th". Nice one, Crytek. Nice one.

Crysis

Crysis may be a few years old, but it's still one of the most graphically powerful games you can play. Normally that power is used to render huge islands, armies of panicky Korean soldiers and invading alien forces, but what if you took all of that power, and used it to create the biggest explosions you possibly could? Five brave gamers have done just that. Below you'll find videos of some of the biggest bangs in gaming. One man drops a fleet of helicopters out of the sky, another belly-flops onto a huge tower of exploding fuel trucks, and another man spawns a pile of 3,000 barrels and causes an explosion so ridiculous that he can't look directly into it for more than two seconds without it crashing his PC. You'll find videos of the five most insane Crysis explosions embedded below.

1. Fuel Truck Apocalypse

2. It's raining 'copters

3. 3000 barrels, one bullet

4. Mass demolition

5. Good old fashioned massive nuke
Crysis

There's only one thing better than a huge bundle of great games, and that's a free bundle of great games. You know what's even better than that? Five free bundles of great games. By stunning coincidence that's exactly the number of EA Store game bundles we have to give away today. There's more than £1700 worth of games up for grabs, so read on for a chance to get your hands on Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the Dragon Age 2 Digital Deluxe Edition, both Mass Effect games, Crysis, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and more.

Five lucky winners will scoop a copy of each of the following games, courtesy of the EA Store.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Digital Deluxe Edition

The huge, destructible battlefields of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 play host to some of the most frantic and explosive multiplayer scraps on the PC. As well as a wide range of tanks, helicopters and attack drones, there are tons of unlockable weapons for each of the game's four classes, so you can customise your load out every time you go to war. You'll also get a copy of the recently released Vietnam expansion which adds four new maps and a collection of new weapons and vehicles to fight with.

Dead Space
Dead Space is a third person survival horror set on board a spaceship infested with aliens. The key to taking these creepy beasties out lies with Dead Space's arsenal of surgical weapons that let you clip the limbs off your foes one by one until all that's left is a wobbling torso. Disgusting? Yes. Satisfying? Even more so.

Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition
Whether you start out begging for scraps in the Elven slums or fighting rebellion in your castle as a human noble, in Dragon Age: Origins you're ultimately destined to become a hero of Ferelden, one of the Grey Wardens responsible for putting down the menace of the Darkspawn uprising. You'll also get Dragon Age: Awakenings, an expansion set after the events of the main adventure of the first game, and a copy of the Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition which comes with all of the game's nine content packs, adding extra armour and quests to the game.

Mass Effect
If you've ever wanted to command your own spaceship and save the universe, Mass Effect will let you do exactly that. There are few better lead characters than the charismatic and occasionally violent Commander Shephard. Spend your career through the universe punching out reporters and shooting suspects, or play it cool and become the saintly saviour of the cosmos.

Mass Effect 2
Commander Shephard returns to once more take on the galaxy's greatest foes. Mass Effect 2 builds on almost every aspect of the first game, adding even more characters, more spectacular locations and a brace of satisfying new combat abilities.

Crysis

It's been out for more than three years now, but Crysis is still one of the best looking games you can buy. The sandy beaches of the game's massive island are a beautiful setting for the game's superhuman firefights. Your character's nanosuit lets you tear up your enemies with invisibility, super strength and super speed.

Crysis: Warhead
Crysis: Warhead explores the emotional range of Psycho, one of the background characters from the first game. He even sheds a tear at one point. Then he pulls himself together, leaps onto a gatling gun and mows down an alien invasion singlehandedly.

The Sims 3
The best soap opera sim in the world, The Sims 3 lets you create your own family and control every aspect of their lives. Help them find a better job, true love and happiness, or just trap them all in a windowless room and watch the fireworks. You'll also get three expansion packs. The Sims 3: World Adventures lets you take your sim adventuring abroad and hunt for treasure among famous monuments. Ambitions lets you control your sim on the job, letting them become a firefighter, private investigator, doctor and even a ghost hunter. The Sims 3: Late Night takes the game to the nightclubs, letting you take charge of your sim's big nights out.

FIFA Manager 11
Take command of your favourite football team and lead them to victory in FIFA Manager 11. You'll have to manage every aspect of your team, from their finances to player signings, to your tactics on the pitch if you want to have a chance of taking home football's finest silverware.

FIFA 11
If you'd rather be scoring goals than managing your strikers, you won't find a footballing sim better than Fifa 11. The revamped engine means even more realistic ball control than ever before, and a sublime animation system adds extra crunch to every tackle.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

In Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit it doesn't matter if you're a crook or a cop, you'll always be behind the wheel of a steaming supercar. As a cop you'll be enforcing the law at 200 miles per hour, ramming boy racers off the highways of Seacrest County. As a criminal your job is to beat your fellow racers while evading capture, earning rep and buying new cars as you go.

If you fancy entering, there are a few terms and conditions. The offer is valid in the UK on www.eastore.co.uk, and is valid for PC Download only, and that no pre-orders, points packs or time cards are included and that offer can not be redeemed in conjunction with any other offer.

The best thing about the space-borne survival horror, Dead Space is the array of ridiculous weapons you can use to cut up your alien enemies. To win, post in the comments below with a weapon capable of dicing the toughest monster. Tell us what it is, what it does, and give it a name. You must live in the UK to enter. The five entries that make us laugh the most will take home a bundle.

Come back tomorrow for another great giveaway. The gift giving will continue all the way up to Christmas day.

Winners!

JamesG

tomo123456

talon03

MrCazzah

Faceinstien

I will get in touch with the instructions on how to claim your lovely prizes. Huzzah!
Crysis

Video Game Plants Never Looked So PrettyWhiteSilentTiger has a simple goal: create a good-lookin' little video game forest. I'd say it's mission accomplished!


What's most impressive about this scene isn't that it was made by a modder, it's that it was made using the "old" CryEngine 2, which powered Crysis all the way back in 2007, and not the more recent version that will be running the upcoming Crysis 2.


I don't know about you, but all I can think about watching this is playing Elder Scrolls V on my PC...



Crysis

Crysis Developers: Consoles Are Holding PC Games BackThe fact so many games now appear on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC is a blessing for PC gamers who used to miss out on a lot of console games, but according to Crysis developers Crytek, it's a mixed blessing.


"As long as the current console generation exists and as long as we keep pushing the PC as well, the more difficult it will be to really get the benefit of both", Crytek boss Cervat Yerli tells Edge magazine.


"[The] PC is easily a generation ahead right now. With 360 and PS3, we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is. You won't be able to squeeze more juice from these rocks."


Interesting comments coming from a man who now has an interest in PS3 and 360 game development, what with Crysis 2 appearing on all three platforms (whereas the original game was a PC-only affair). He's going to hurt someone's feelings with talk like that!


Really, though, is it that hard to scale a game's engine to such an extent that a PC version looks the generation ahead he claims it is? Half-Life 2 looked amazing on PC back in 2004, but still somehow found its way onto the original Xbox.


Crytek say "PC is easily a generation ahead", being held back by consoles [PC Gamer]


Crysis

Crytek have announced their next game. It's a free-to-play multiplayer military shooter called Warface focused on the South Korean market. Read on for more details, and the first two screens of the game.

The game is being developed in Seoul, and will be aimed at the Asian market. It's a PC exclusive free-to-play military shooter powered by Cry Engine 3. The game will include a regularly updated player versus environment universe, interspersed with class based multiplayer fights and co-op missions. Beyond that, all we know at the moment is that it's set in the near future, and they called it Warface. Here are the screens.





Crysis

The Future of PC Gaming, According To The Creator Of CrysisFor PC Gaming Week, Kotaku has invited top creators to predict the future of computer gaming. Today, Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, makers of legendary PC-only first-person shooter Crysis and 2011's PC and console Crysis 2.


PC Gaming in the Future.

The Future of PC Gaming, According To The Creator Of Crysis
When I started developing games for the PC nearly 20 years ago, both the Commodore 64 and the Schneider CPC 6128 were incredibly popular. Since then, the PC platform and its market have totally changed and I saw several trends coming and going.


Within the next five years, the PC market is in my opinion growing and declining at the same time. While the market for Online PC Games (I mean Free-2-Play Games, Social Games and Casual Games) is continuously growing, the retail PC Games market is declining. Over the past two years it became apparent that more and more people play all kinds of online games and lots of the former retail PC Gamers switched to console games. By changing their consumption attitudes, the consumers "force" developers to rethink their strategies, thus, to some degree.


What does that mean?

For me, the business model of the future is "free-2-play" since consumers in the future won't be willing any longer to spend $50 or more for a AAA PC Game. So developers will start offering more and more free to play online PC games that at the same time allow for premium content.


All leading PC game developers will serve the free-to-play market and turn their backs on the retail market.

The current online games are characterized by low development costs (only about one tenth of the costs for a AAA title) and comparatively low quality. But, at the same time, they have fun gameplay. In contrast to the traditional retail PC Games, the pressure for initial quality is much lower with an online PC game. This means, that developers release an online game with a certain quality and then improve it over the time, bit by bit, together with the community. This is incredibly customer-friendly and so it is what the whole market become.


The user is king. Over the next years a significant number of online PC Games will enter the market and due to that big amount of games, the quality pressure is going to rise in these markets, as it is now in the PC retail Market. The current price competition between retail and F2P Market will evolve into a content/ quality competition within the F2P Market only – similar to today's retail market. Consequently both, the costs and the quality will reach a AAA level. Since gamers thus basically get AAA games for free, the complete traditional retail PC Game market breaks down. After a while gamers will then see a major progress in gaming quality overall again in the PC Gaming Market.


But how do developers then earn money?

The community is key to the success, specifically the amount of free-to-play users that a developer is able to transform into buyers. An average 5-10% of all online PC game users buy premium content in the form of special items, boosters, etc. via micro transactions. "Non-monetized" consumers, on the other hand, will be turned into revenue contributors through community-driven advertisement that is experienced through social media networks supporting these games.


To sum it all up: I am convinced that in the medium term, all leading PC game developers will serve the free-to-play market and turn their backs on the retail market.


Cevat Yerli is president and CEO of Germany-based game development studio Crytek. His first games and development experiences go back to the 1980s with the Commodore 64 and the Schneider CPC 6128, where he worked on simulation games. His passion has always been creating and playing games. While studying economics, he began working towards his dream of founding a game development company. The dream became reality in 1999 when he founded Crytek with his two brothers. Cevat gives creative direction for all Crytek products.


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