I was, and still am I suppose, a big fan of Crysis. When I reviewed it over at Gamecell.co.uk I was pretty damn positive, despite the game’s very lacklustre second half. It’s still gorgeous and the first couple of hours where you spend most of your time beating the hell out of half the North Korean army by yourself is still one of the best experiences in gaming. A few days ago Crytek briefly teased, and then announced, the inevitable sequel called Crysis: Warhead. Details are scant, but it’s set at the same time as the original on the other side of the alien-infested tropical playground which we saw through the eyes of Nomad, with the player filling the hi-tech nanosuit of Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes (the only other friendly soldier anyone can remember) this time around.
Over at Next-Gen.biz they have a brief Q&A with Crytek’s Business Manager Harald Seeley. In it he says things like:
“So, after some careful consideration, we decided to continue our support for the PC Crysis franchise with this release. But yes, all new franchises we develop in the future will be created with a cross platform strategy in mind. Of course we’re also aware of the danger of making a game that is only designed for one particular audience and platform, and failing to meet the needs of the others. So any game we create will always offer something unique on each platform and will be carefully tuned to both the capabilities and strengths of that platform, as well as the intended audience.”
So, Crytek haven’t turned on the PC platform, as some had feared. “New franchises” would seem to imply games that aren’t Crysis or set in the Crysis universe, so it’s probably a safe bet that we’ll see the rumoured Crysis trilogy completed on PC. Console ports of the original game have been mooted for a while, but Crytek have yet to publicly express any real interest in taking Crysis cross platform.
Heeley also states that “While we are certainly very concerned about piracy and copy protection, we are also concerned about the potential opposite problem, that of inconveniencing legitimate buyers with newer measures that interfere too greatly with their enjoyment of the product.” Which is vaguely reassuring. The issue of what constitutes appropriate copy protection measures is still a very hot topic for PC gamers, and I’ve had my own share of grief with a number of different games and their over-zealous DRM. However according to Heeley Crytek are unlikely to announce what method of copy protection they’ll be using until after Warhead’s release.
Warhead will also be powered by a revised CryEngine 2, which’ll hopefully result in a more scaleable game for all those PC luddites who still have the temerity to stick with their ageing hardware (myself included).
The Irish Gamers 
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