Crysis

Remember when everyone was in a gamer’s haze over the next-gen videos at E3 two years ago? For awhile, console gamers got bold. Claims that console gaming would soon catch PC gaming in terms of visuals fired up quickly, and many stated that the PC as a gaming platform was dead. Just as console gamers felt like they were catching up, here comes the FPS Crysis playable the following year to show how far away they really are. Set to be the most lifelike game ever created, if PC gaming was dead, Crysis aims to be a Phoenix Down.

You can tell that these guys love their own name, as Crysis is developer Crytek’s followup project after 2004’s FarCry. The game takes place in 2020 when a mysterious asteroid crashes on the Spartly Islands in the South China Sea. You and your US Special Ops group are sent to investigate, only to find out that the Korean military has beat you to it. Korea closes off the island and tensions build between countries as your team tries to infiltrate the crash site. Just when things really start to get heated, the asteroid cracks open and an alien the size of 20 football fields/pitches rises from the rubble. The ship creates a huge sphere-like perimeter where everything inside becomes a frozen wasteland, including a part of the islands. US and Korea quickly forget about their little fued and become buddies to try and stop the alien invasion. The main objective: Get to the top of the ice sphere where it’s weak, enter, and blow up the alien ship inside. The story changes throughout the game depending on how you complete certain objectives. When squad mates die, they die for good. This can lead to difficulty when you need them later on.

Because Crysis’s groundbreaking graphics are so integral to the game’s gameplay, you must talk about it first to fully explain how gameplay works. Crysis uses the newly created CryEngine2 to introduce fresh elements never before seen in gaming. The attention to detail makes the comparison to real-life uncanny. Clouds are created in real-time and act like they would in reality, so expect great battles in the sky. Other elements recreate the effect of the human eye towards objects allowing the game world to look better then ever before. When things move, your eye sees a slight split-second motion blur beginning from where it starts and ending with where it stops. This effect is not usually used in gaming, and thus objects moving instead go just frame-by-frame. It’s appears here, then it’s there. In Crysis, moving objects use that blur to make everything look eerily lifelike as if you were seeing it in person. There’s also Depth of Field, which is a term for how your eye reacts to objects close or far away. The example used in a tech demo was looking at an enemy soldier through a cover of foliage. You could see the soldier clearly, but the foliage around you is slightly blurry. Shadows blur based on their distance from the object instead of being the same all around. Everything in Crysis is fully interactive/destrucable. If you walk through a fern it will react to your character. Shoot any leaf, on any tree, and it will react to your bullets. Trees and buildings can even be knocked down, which can create some interesting battle situations. The islands are under a dynamic day/night cycle, so while you’re doing things time will change. Natural disasters and weather will also produce during your mission, creating infinite scenarios. Crytek wants Crysis, like real-life, to be all about variables and dynamics.

In 2020, you and your squad are equipped with Nano-Muscular Suits, or suits with microscopic robots that can arrange themselves to alter your abilities. The suit configurations are things like Speed, Strength, and Armor, and can change your situation greatly if you use them correctly. They can all be switched in the field also, but don’t try fumbling with your suit while aliens are picking off your buddies. Weapons are fully customizable, and you can choose everything from your gun’s bullets, to attachments like a flashlight or grenade launcher. You’ll have to choose wisely to complete your objective, but your weapon is completely under your command.

The final build of Crysis is set to feature 32-player online combat. Solo and team-based Deathmatches, along with Capture the Flag come as no surprise. What may though, is the new Power Struggle mode which is targeted towards veteran FPS gamers. Power Struggle will have you getting resources to buy weapons and vehicles, and will result in long battles. It will be interesting to see if this mode will work, as it could become the next staple in online FPSs

Crysis has some pretty visuals, no doubt about that. Eye-candy can only take you so far though, a game to back it is the key. It’s also going to be a pain on most modern computers. Predictions at nearly 3.0ghz processors minimum, it’ll take nothing short of SkyNet to run. EA and Crytek need to deliver one hell of a game to make it all worthwhile. If we can find a space station that fits the requirements, we’ll review next spring.

Star Wars Empire at War

Don’t even get me started. When people mention Star Wars around me I’m known to go into a quote-reciting state of nerdom. I apologize in advance for any corney puns. That’s what Star Wars does to it’s fans though, immerse you into a world where good and evil is set in stone and it’s easy to know which side you’re on. It’s the perfect modern-day mythology. So why is it so damn hard to make a game for it? Some SW games have merit (Battlefront, KOTOR, and Rouge Sqaudron) others are embarrasing (Super Bombad Racing, Obi-Wan, and any portable title) but I think all fans can agree that even KOTOR and Battlefront have their flaws. Star Wars is practiclly made for videogames, yet we haven’t seen one that takes it to the next level.

Lucasarts and Petroglyph hope to change that with the highly anticipated Star Wars: Empire at War. EaW is another take on Star Wars gaming. Instead of the player wielding a lightsaber and becoming thier own one-Jedi wrecking crew you control entire armies. Petroglyph isn’t the first plunge into the Star Wars well and pull out a RTS game. Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds was decent but felt so little like Star Wars it isn’t worth mentioning again. Empire at War on the other hand is trying to blend space and ground battles, keeping you in the SW experience. The controls are normal to RTS junkies with standard click-and-drag slection to pick your units. The game features three modes: Galactic Conquest, Campaign and Skirmish.

Galactic Conquest is the showcase mode. First, players must choose between a 5 or in a impressive 44 planet galaxy. Similar to Battlefront’s Galactic Conquest mode, the goal is to capture every planet until you have conquered the galaxy. Unlike Battlefront, the map is in real time so you must be fairly quick about how you go into battle. Playing Emperor with the planets isn’t easy, you also must watch your opponents moves and buy new supplies. This is a nice twist on the usually mundane Conquest modes found in other games. The galaxy map has a day and night system and everyday you collect money from the planets you’ve captured. Conquering a planet is not a simple task if a fleet is defending it, first you must take the battle to space. Select some bomber units, like the Y-wing, to take out the big ships while the other ships take down incoming fighters. Once a space fleet is destroyed you must take the battle to the ground.

Ground battles take a different view of traditional RTS games. Instead of just building up and going to attack the enemy forces, you must capture reinforcement points. At the beginning of a battle you start with a small number of reinforcements, or how many units you can have on the field at one time. Units include all infantry and vehicles like AT-ATs AT-STs. As you progress through the map you must capture reinforcement points in a king-of-the-hill type of way. Once a point is captured your unit limit will increase and a small perimeter will form around the captured point. Inside this perimeter is where new reinforcements will spawn. This is a unique approach that puts more skill and less luck into the normal RTS maps. Campaign games work the same way except you follow the story of your faction, like the creation of the Death Star. Heroes also join the battle, so be perpared to see Darth Vader open up a can of darkside on some Rebel scum. Skirmish is old school RTS-style: create a spacestation or army base, build up your army and go. It plays just like Age of Empires with stormtroopers.

Star Wars: Empire at War’s graphics are impressive, detailed terrain and impressive lighting when the time changes during battles. Battles are intense, a word that is seldom used in RTS games because of the speed and flow. EaW is shaping up to be one of the greatest Star Wars games ever. Lets hope my fellow Star Wars fans, I have faith. The force is strong in this one. Star Wars: Empire at War comes out next month.