Crysis 3 Is Now Official

EA and Crytek announced today that Crysis 3 was a real thing. Not that much of a surprise really. Their first foray into the console space yielded decent results.

Crysis 3 promises more jungle and city elements, but most importantly — for Crytek and graphic whores — the best visuals out there. Will they succeed? The screenshots below seem to be an indication.

 

We can all expect Crysis 3 in Spring 2013 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Crysis 2 Campaign Xbox 360 Review

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Remember that scene from Terminator 2 at Cyberdyne Systems where Arnold kicks the office desk through a window with a mini gun in hand and began laying waste to the police vehicles below? Crysis 2 may be the only game that can recreate that sequence in its entirety using in-game mechanics.

Think about it. Ripping off a stationary machine gun, power kicking the desk and using armor mode to absorb enemy fire. I can even do the whole scan for life signs through smoke using the “Nano Vision”.

Crysis 2 would have been a great Terminator game.

But let’s talk about what we have on hand and not what could have been.

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LTTP: Crysis: Warhead

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I finally got around to playing the first game powered by CryEngine, Crysis: Warhead. (This one didn’t count, remember?) Warhead was a distilled sampling of what made Crysis enjoyable. More firefights involving suit powers and less time spent in silly tanks or ships.

I’ve learned many lessons from my time with Crysis and it seemed like Crytek and its satellite team Crytek Budapest did as well. First off, I played the game in DirectX 9 mode from the beginning. I’m not sure if it was the rendering mode or optimizations made to the engine, but I did not experience the turbulent framerates found in the original. The next technical improvement worth noting was the substantial drop in scripting issues. I only experienced two of them and they went away after reloading the previous save. This may seem sarcastic, but I was genuinely pleased by that.

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Checkpoint: Split Steam Install Edition

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Note: I recently posted this on NeoGAF, but decided to spruce it up a bit for here.

I recently upgraded my OS drive to a OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB solid state drive. Even with Windows 7 and a handful of applications, it has approximately 35 GB worth of free space. That’s more than enough for a game or two, but not my entire Steam directory.

Steam and it likes to keep everything under one directory. So I did a bit of searching to see if I could somehow split my Steam install. Apparently, you can. I found this little trick on the Steam forums. (Note: this only works with Windows Vista and Windows 7)

It essentially works like this:

  1. Install Steam and games on Hard Drive 1
  2. Move required games folder/files to Hard Drive 2
  3. Use Windows command to point Steam to folder on Hard Drive 2

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LTTP: Crysis

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Crysis was a tech demo to sell CryEngine 2.

There was an open island filled with lush jungles and forests to demonstrate the sandbox shooter. A frozen landscape to prove that this engine could pull off the polar opposite of a tropical paradise. Zero gravity corridors teasing the possibilities of a new Descent game. A vehicle chase sequence to prove that they could do scripted events well. There was even an air combat segment which can only be described as a poor attempt to attract lovers of flying machines. Crysis screamed:  ”Hey, this engine can be used for just about any game you could think of.” And, to some extent, I agree with that. Unfortunately, this engine cannot provide fun out of the box as Crytek has so clearly proven.

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A Handful of GamesCom 2010 Highlights

Announcements

  • Mass Effect 2 is coming to PlayStation 3 in January 2011. No word on the original Mass Effect as of yet (via trailer)
  • Resistance 3 announced for 2011
  • Ratchet & Clank All 4 One announced for Fall 2011
    • Developed by the 30 man Insomniac North Carolina studio
    • Features 4 player co-op

Trailers & Teasers

Resistance 3 Teaser

 

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