hose of us with mildly impressive PC
systems remember Crysis well. It did,
after all, manage to cause quite a stir amongst
the hardcore gaming community – bringing
even the beastiest system to its knees when all
of the game’s options were set to maximum.
Crysis was a game for the future, a title that sold
bucketloads by riding on its ability to impress in
the graphics and physics department. Sure, it
was actually a good game (and to be honest I’m
only halfway through it), but technology has
marched on a fair distance since Crysis’s
release. If you’re going to pump out another
game using the same engine, you’re going to
need something extra to impress today’s
market.
SWITCH SIDES
Enter Crysis Warhead, something that is at
once familiar yet also quite
|
different. This is not the second installment of the promised
Crysis trilogy; instead it is a companion title to
the original game, one that runs parallel to the
events of Crysis.
In Warhead, you’ll become Sergeant
Michael ‘Psycho’ Sykes – a companion
character from the first game who apparently
went off and did interesting things on the other
side of the island while you were busy saving
the world. Warhead will, much like Crysis,
mainly involve blowing things up, shooting
things dead, using your suit powers a lot and
basically having a blast. Psycho is a lot less
inclined to worry about the subtleties of warfare,
so you can expect Warhead to live up to its
name in terms of all-out explosive action.
TWEAKED
The game engine itself (CryEngine 2) has been
streamlined to scale much better on lower end machines, a
|
result of some serious tweaking to
the game’s programming architecture. All of the
new graphical tweaks have been implemented
using DirectX 9, which certainly points to Crytek
realising that not everyone has made the jump
to Vista.
Seeing as the game takes place in the
same location as Crysis, and at the same time,
Crytek can almost get away with a ‘more of the
same’ approach, but there will be new elements
in the form of dual-wielding submachine guns,
new vehicles and the aforementioned focus on
intense battles. The improved graphical tweaks
also promise some insanely detailed textures
and lighting effects.
The star of the show will still be the nanosuit,
with multiple options available during each
enemy encounter. Warhead will employ
massive, open levels; if you’re a sneaker
you’ll be able to use the cloak ability to get up close and scout
|
enemy sentry placements.
Alternatively, you may just feel like jumping
straight in, setting the suit to super strength and
whopping the shit out of an army of soldiers.
Actually, just thinking about Crysis makes me
want to fire it up again – perhaps I’ll pass it in
time for Warhead…
|
