crysis-warhead posts

The CEO of Crytek has made some sly digs against the competitors of its CryEngine 3 game development tools in a new article at Computer and Video Games. While Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, who is developing the sci-fi shooter Crysis 2 with CryEngine 3, did say up front that it's up to the people who use game engines to judge "whether our engine is better or not", he added, " .. I can say that Crysis 2 wouldn't have been possible with any other engine, but pretty much any other game that has been shipped with out competitors' engines could have been done with the Crytek engine."

CryEngine 3 is the latest version of Crytek's game engine and development tools and its various incarnations have been licensed to be used by a number of other third-party developers. Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 continues to be the leader in being used by a large number of third party professional developers. However Yerli states, "I think we've never cared about what competitors do." He added, "We're trying to build an engine that's the most productive from a flow perspective, one that allows designers, directors, artists, programmers and everyone else in the whole development chain to be as efficient as possible."

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon but there's always time to save some money if you put a little effort into it. Today the PC game download site Direct2Drive has yet another set of games on sale. Until 1 pm Eastern time on Monday you can grab Crysis Maximum Edition, containing Crytek's first person shooters Crysis, Crysis Warhead and Crysis Wars, for $19.95, a 50 percent savings. Consider it a warm-up to the release of Crysis 2 in 2011.

Also on sale today is Sid Meier's Railroads, the spiritual successor to the classic Railroad Tycoon game that Meier first created years ago. The game is on sale for $5.95, a 70 percent price cut from its standard price.

Game developer Crytek has only released three games, all PC exclusives, in the past decade (Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis Warhead). Yet the Germany-based company has expanded rapidly during that time to include six studios all over Europe. What's driving that growth. In a chat with Gamasutra, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli admits, "Part of it is that we have a very good secretive engine business. We have some other contracts going on as well for some other non-game industries."

Indeed Crytek has scored a number of licensing deals for its CryEngine game development technology with Yerli stating, " ... we have a lot of contracts going on from gas and oil companies, General Electric, all the way to SOCOM." In fact he admitted that the non-gaming work is being handled by "a subsidiary of Crytek, but it's not called Crytek. It's studio number seven -- so secret I didn't even mention it! [laughs]." In the meantime Crytek's next game, Crysis 2, is due out in early 2011.

While Crytek released a free single player version of the original Crysis and also released a free LAN only version of Crysis Wars (with the ability to be turned into a free online supported game from time to time) it's not certain that Crytek will offer a free demo of their upcoming shooter Crysis 2. Develop reports that Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli stated, "That's something we need to think about, because we haven't fully decided on this yet."

In fact Yerli believe we may see less and less free demos released in the game industry overall, saying, " it becomes prohibitively expensive" to made them. He also feels that publisher Electronic Arts' announced plans to possibly explore ways to release a small version of a full game for $10 or $15 is "interesting." Yerli believes EA plans in this regard have not been explained fully, adding, "I understand why people are thinking that all EA wants to do is maximise profits out of the audience, but really, what it's really trying to do is get investment back but while being as fair to the gamer as much as it can. Ultimately, it will be a better deal for the game."

If you want to celebrate the end of 2009 by playing a classic or new PC game, the folks at Valve have a selection of games on their Steam service that have had their prices cut for one day only. The games include the recent PC port of Street Fighter IV which can be yours for $9.99 for the next 23 hours.

Other games on sale include Half-Life Source for just $2.49, Shattered Horizon for $4.99, the Multiwinia and Darwinia bundle for a mere $2.99, Crysis Maximum Edition (with Crysis and Crysis Warhead) for $13.59 and Medieval II: Total War for just $4.99. Remember, Steam still has a ton of games and game bundles on sale that will stay that way until January 5.

Update: The web site has apparently changed the sale prices since this post was released. We have changed the prices accordingly.

The retail web site GoGamer.com had a truly massive Black Friday weekend sale last week. But this week's "Green Friday" sales event isn't too shabby either. There are a ton of games with big price cuts that will last from now until 3 am Eastern time on Tuesday or while supplies last.

Some of the games on the list include titles that are priced at just $1.90 such as Infernal and Two Worlds. Other games include Prey for $2.90, Prince of Persia for $3.90, Psi-Ops for $5.90, Far Cry 2 for $9.90, Crysis Warhead for $17.90, Section 8 for just $19.90 and Left 4 Dead 2 for $34.90 (limit 1 per purchase for the last two titles).

You could create a DeLorean-Back to the Future car mod inside of Crysis if you really wanted to, but that's not particularly news worthy. However, creating a DeLorean-Back to the Future car mod that actually does use the flux capacitor to travel back and forth in time (in the game) . . . now that's worth looking into.

That's just what mod maker Mert Mimaroglu did with his very cool mod that can be used inside Crytek's 2007 first person shooter. The mod not only models the car, both inside and out, in great detail but as you can see in the video above you can use it to time travel in the game itself. All of the effects are spot on, from the electrical burst as the car hits 88 MPH to the frost the is created after a time jump to the fire trails it leaves behind when it moves out of the time line. Make sure Doc Brown and Marty see this.

Download the Crysis 'Back to the Future' DeLorean Mod (22 MB)

In the "Not a huge shock" category. Electronic Arts has announced that it has signed a new deal with Crytek to publish Crysis 2, the next game in their sci-fi shooter series. EA published the original Crysis in 2007 for the PC and a second game, Crysis Warhead, was release for the PC in 2008.

Little else is know about Crysis 2 other than it will be release on consoles as well as the PC and that it will be the first game to use Crytek's CryEngine 3 technology. There is no word of a release date nor if the game will continue the story left behind at the end of the original Crysis.

This patch updates Crysis Wars to v1.5, which includes a number of gameplay improvements, but the most notable one is the new multiplayer map Ruins. The mod SDK package has also been updated to support the new fixes and features. Continue reading after the jump for full patch notes. Steam customers can update their game through the auto-patching system.

Download Crysis Wars v1.5 Patch (511 MB)
Download Crysis Wars Mod SDK Package (55 MB)
Check out all Crysis Wars downloads

This trailer takes players through a fly-through of Ruins, a new multiplayer map that will be included in the v1.5 update of Crysis Wars. "Ruins is set in a church ruins environment where players are able to do combat both inside and outside the ruins."

Download HD Crysis Wars 'Ruins' Map Trailer (851 MB)
Check out all Crysis Wars downloads