The delightfully outspoken Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, apparently believes visuals are by far the most important aspect of a game.

“People say that graphics don’t matter, but play Crysis and tell me they don’t matter. It’s always been about graphics driving gameplay,” he told X360 Magazine.

“Graphics, whether it’s lighting or shadows, puts you in a different emotional context and drives the immersion, and immersion is effectively the number one thing we can use to help you buy into the world.

“The better the graphics, the better the physics, the better the sound design, the better the technical assets and production values paired with the art direction, making things look spectacular and stylistic is 60% of the game.”

Hey, Caevat? Minecraft’s on the phone with a few objections. In all seriousness, our review of Crysis 3 praised both its visuals and its gameplay, although other critics haven’t been as kind, something Yerli finds frustrating as he feels it’s the best one in the series.

Source: X360 Magazine

We enjoyed Crysis 3, a lot, in fact. The storyline wasn’t very interesting but the graphics and gameplay more than made up for it, but it seems that the majority of critics don’t agree — and it’s frustrating Crytek’s CEO Cevat Yerli.

“It is better than Crysis 2. It is better than Crysis 1. Technical and creatively, and storytelling — all aspects,” he said to Gamasutra, describing it as “our masterpiece”.

Yerli apportions some of this blame to console fatigue. “there’s a certain fatigue level with the old generation currently. The markets are down, people’s expectations are much more radical than the current generation of games are doing.”

In the same interview, Yerli also mentioned that Crytek could have done a lot more with the PC version if they hadn’t had to develop for multiplatform, but they would have had a far, far smaller budget if that was the case. “The consoles are eight year old devices. Of course, in one way or another, they will limit you. It’s impossible not to be limited by a limited console. By definition it’s the case. So if it were PC only, could we have done more things? Certainly, yes. Could we have afforded a budget to make a game like Crysis 3 PC only? No. People have to understand that this is a journey of give and take.”

Source: Gamasutra

Thanks to the small fact that over five hundred of you entered our massive Crysis 3/ASUS AMD giveaway, we ended up completely missing our deadline to have all the winners sorted and announced. Please accept my apologies; I am only human and my bones are so weak. Now, though, the sorting has been finished — and we are ready to hand out the prizes. Let’s begin.

First Prize

An ASUS AMD RADEON HD 7970, a PC Hunter Edition of Crysis 3 and a Crysis 3 shirt

Nacimota – GPU Toolbox Mode

Enter a world of limitless possibilities by taking full control of the graphics card.

Make the CELL soldiers think they need glasses by enabling Depth of Field or destroy their vision entirely with Bloom and Lens Flares that would burn even J. J. Abrams’ retinas!

Torture your enemies by gradually reducing their polygon count until they resemble origami lepers!

In the event of poisoning, activate Anaglyph 3D mode to quickly induce vomiting!

Rage-quit in style by triggering the BSoD of your choice! Today’s favourite is IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Second and Third Prizes

An ASUS AMD RADEON HD 7850-DC2-2GD5, a PC Hunter Edition of Crysis 3 and a Crysis 3 shirt each

Aphyosis – Overcharge Mode

Suit energy is discharged at a high rate, arcing onto any nearby metal objects, enemies and incoming bullets. Arcs can continue a limited distance and vaporize bullets, but on depletion of suit energy leave the soldier in a vulnerable state as the rapid discharge requires longer to recover from.

The more targets/objects surrounding the player, the faster the suit drains power and produces more arcs. In practice, use in a enclosed, metallic or dense environment would create a violent AOE effect for nearby enemies. In a open area, the suit depletion would be slower, but would vaporize enemy fire and potentially arc back to the enemy if close enough.

Use would need to be judged finely, as overcharge could leave the soldier vulnerable if used poorly. Alternatively, correct use could provide a lethal edge in a aggressive assault or when leaving cover.

schkorpio – Maximum Life Coach

You realise that the “bad guys” aren’t really bad guys; they’re just doing their job. You can disarm any career challenged opponent with your earnest look of empathy mixed with a hint of disappointment.

Approaching the misguided fellow – once he is in melee range you can hold the crouch button, which engages “I’m a good listener” mode.

You both sit down on a beautifully rendered moss covered rock, and have a one on one, man to man chat about where things started to go wrong in his life, and what prompted a series of negative life choices which eventually led him to work for such an evil corporation. He cries, and you put your nanosuit covered finger over his lips and say “shhhhhhh”. You give him a man hug and whisper in his ear: “let it all out, you’ll feel better”.

Runners-Up (in no particular order)

These fine people take home a PC Hunter Edition of Crysis 3 and a Crysis 3 t-shirt

lithian – Sticky Hands Mode

You’re a busy man. An important man. A man with places to go, despots to depose, and alien hordes to send packing.

You need to be able to stalk prey, flip vehicles and toss enemies like ragdolls. Maybe you’ll also wear that nanosuit into a bar and buy a lady a drink, the kind with a little umbrella.
You can’t afford to look shabby, and nothing ruins a black nanosuit like cat hair.

Introducing Sticky Hands (TM) mode, developed by a secretive, underground defense company for cat lovers everywhere. Simply activate Sticky Hands, pat down your suit, and let our futuristic military tech do the rest!

Whether you’re leaving for a night on the town or a suicide mission on a tropical island, you want to be able to pet Mr Whiskers goodbye and still look your best. Buy Sticky Hands today, and have the confidence to be you.

tacticalkent – Maximum Intelligence

Estimated courses of enemies appear, health, armor and weapon status is displayed beside them and recommended use of weapons is shown. The mode also displays cones of vision, hearing ranges and level of suspicion/skepticism in the enemies personality, allowing the player to know exactly how to play to their style.

DarthLondar – Wireframe Mode

Can’t handle all those fancy graphics? Turn on wire frame mode and get rid of those pesky GPU intensive textures! No need to worry about fill rate anymore! Watch your frames per second fly through the roof! Comes complete with 16bit colour scheme for improved performance!

Relaxed_Possum – Maximum Commander

This mode is a complete reconfiguration of the suit to provide advanced construction capability. The suit can produce mass extractors and energy generators which provide the resources to allow the further construction of land, sea & air factories and a number of defensive and auxiliary structures. The suit then allows the wearer complete control over the automated buildings as well as the robotic army they produce. To facilitate effective battle control the suit launches a high altitude UAV providing complete strategic zoom over the battlefield. Once enough energy has been generated the suit may also deploy the D-gun providing massive direct damage to any enemy it hits. The Maximum Commander mode can provide supreme dominance over any battlefield; has been responsible for planetary annihilation and has even been rumoured to be capable of total annihilation.

Darth Robbo – Call of Honour Mode

User gains several abilities:

1. Able to regenerate damaged tissue and superficial damage within seconds by staying out of the line of fire. Even deep shrapnel wounds from grenades are healed magically.
2. Tunnel vision is activated, which forces the user to follow a straight path, indicated by large neon arrows and brightly-coloured objective markers. The Nanosuit also props up invisible walls and inexplicably non-opening doors to ‘assist’ the user.
3. The Nanosuit also injects endorphins into the user’s cerebral cortex, in order to block out the trauma of murdering thousands of soldiers simply following orders. This allows the user to focus on sweet killstreaks and deploying UAVs and bomb runs.
4. Lastly, the state-of-the-art visor adjusts colour and hue in the environment to a more dull, grey/brown mixture similar to the contents of a soiled nappy. This is known as the ‘Next-Gen Filter”.

Fireslide – Maximum/Minimum Mass

Having the ability to rapidly increase or decrease the mass of the armor & wearer. In the proximity of an explosion? Shift to maximum mass to retain your position like a stoic rock, or shift to minimum mass and be blown around like a leaf on the wind. Once you are up there above your enemies, increase mass and fall on them from above mario style. Combine maximum mass and maximum speed to turn into an unstoppable juggernaut, plowing through paper thin walls or doors, or minimum mass and maximum speed to run across water like a graceful lizard. The possibilities are endless.

SonicFRAG – Doughnut Mode

Your Nanosuit is now… doughnuts!
Hungry? Just rip off some of that doughy meaty suit to snack on! It grows right back!
Awww why am I so tasty? Lure enemies with the mighty scent of fresh sugary yeast!
Attack! Hot syrupy wonder nozzle – for external use only!
Double Glazed choc defend! Crunchy chocolate coating deflecting projectiles win!
The all-in-one sugary treat mode is now wearable! Do so at your own risk… of protection!

Honourable mentions

Without blowing this article out too far, I’d like to name some of the other entries that we thought were superb. Our congratulations to Specimen, J-Me, libbaz, SomeXspeC, MacrossFiru, Element, Shuth, meph3x6, our_mate, skitzor, Siveth, WhiteKnight210, Giraffe, jncord, The Rockodile and Ragee for their excellent entries.

Thanks to everybody who entered! Winners, you should receive a PM from me momentarily asking for your details so that we can get your prizes organised. Massive thanks to EA, ASUS, and AMD for supporting this excellent competition, and congratulations again to all the winners!

Crytek have announced the release of two patches for Crysis 3: the first one a full patch to being it up to version 1.1, and the second a data patch called ‘Data Patch B’ that fixes multiplayer problems.

“Patch 1.1 will be a physical update requiring you to download it when prompted from Origin/XBL/PSN and contains numerous bug fixes and updates,” reads Crytek’s announcement. “Data Patch B is a behind the scenes update and is automatically downloaded when entering Multiplayer.”

Click through for the full patch notes list, both of which are live right now for PC users. If you’re not sure whether or not you’ve got the multiplayer patch, check the bottom left corner of your multiplayer screen for the words ‘PATCH_B’.

Patch 1.1

• Fix for users getting stuck in the Pinger
• Fix for Flashbang/Smoke grenade reactions not displaying in Kill Cam
• Fix for crosshair becoming invisible after certain actions
• Fixes for squads joining and disconnecting from servers
• Fix for players being unable to fire or reload occasionally
• Fix for users occasionally being able to hear VTOL damage siren constantly
• Weapons retrieved from the ground now have the correct attachments
• Fix for players getting stuck if ripping HMG off VTOL during destruction
• Fix for being unable to detonate C4 after host migration on consoles
• Fix for game not ending correctly if last opponent triggers a host migration
• Fix for issue where sometimes rip and throw weapons would not deal damage in smoke grenades
• Fix for relay in CTR becoming stuck if picking up relay during shotgun reload
• Fix for icons disappearing occasionally in CTR
• Fix for players occasionally spawning with wrong loadout in Assault (PC Only)
• Last Man Standing no longer displayed in Hunter for players that have just died
• Fixed issue with teams during host migration in Hunter/Assault
• Significant optimisation to Medium detail settings (PC Only)
• Particle optimisation (PC Only)

Single Player also receives the following fixes:

• Fix for crash when loading a checkpoint under certain circumstances during <final sequences of the game>
• Fix for the player not being able to pass the first hacking challenge in Jailbreak if the “melee” action is assigned on the “F” key
• Fix for the Hammer pistol laser pointer attachment not being unlocked after completing Jailbreak which prevented players from reaching 100% completion
• Fix for rare bug at the end of the River mission which resulted in the player losing most of their inventory, the possibility to pick-up items and the bow
• Fix for lack of feedback sounds when the player pickups ammo from weapons on the floor

Data Patch B:

• Melee whilst sliding damage reduced to match patch A’s melee damage
• Typhoon mid range damage reduction
• Bow sensitivity reduced to match Assault Scope values on PS3/X360 as they have similar zoom values. PC remains as before
• SCAR+Laser long distance effectiveness reduced.
• Threat Awareness module levelling targets reduced to 3/10 enemy C4′s destroyed
• Potential fix for “Incoming!” Skill Assessment not levelling up correctly
• Fix for Social Challenge skill assessments not being tracked correctly

Source: Crysis Forums

Have you seen our massive Crysis 3 and ASUS AMD card giveway? Probably, it’s on the background of the site right now. I’d be worried if you missed it!

But have you entered? If you haven’t, you have until midnight tonight (Adelaide time) to do so.

With over 460 entries, this is one of our biggest competitions ever — and with some great prizes to give away including an ASUS AMD RADEON HD 7970, that’s no surprise!

Get on over there now. Go on! Get.

If you’re playing Crysis 3 this weekend — and why wouldn’t you be? — then you’ve probably already found one or two niggling things you’d like to change about it. Well, thanks to the majesty of PC gaming and console commands, you can do just that. Below, you’ll find a huge list of commands that will allow you tweak nearly everything, from field of view to the view distance ratio of vegetation-specific rendering.

To open up the menu, simply hit the tilde (~) key, type in the command, and hit enter. For example, typing cl_fov 90 will set the field of view to 90. Have a play around and let us know how you go, and share your successes in the comments section.

The command list below comes courtesy of Gamefront, who had the full list emailed across to them by EA, so you know it’s legit!

Gameplay

Field of View
CVar: cl_fov
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
The vertical field of view in degrees.
This controls several individual FOV controls That you can tweak manually if you prefer:

cl_FOV – The main field of view
r_DrawNearFOV – the field of view for nearby objects (held weapon, etc)
pl_movement.power_sprint_targetFOV – The field of view while power sprinting
Default Value: 60

HUD Bobbing
CVar: cl_bobhud
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Controls the amount of bob hud which is applied.
Default is 1.0

HUD Canvas Adjustment
CVar: hud_canvas_width_adjustment
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Multiplayer only. Multiplies the width of the HUD’s virtual canvas in cases where it may overlap monitor boundaries in multi-monitor setups. NOTE: before this multiplier is applied, the HUD clamps itself to a 16:9 res.
Default is 1.0

Hud Hide
CVar: hud_hide
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
If this cvar is true the HUD will be hidden from view completely.
Suitable for screenshots or very immersive play. NOTE: This feature is not fully supported, and this cvar value might need to be reset in game, e.g. on loading a save.
Default is off (hud visible)

Music Volume
CVar: s_MusicVolume
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Controls the volume of Music, in the range from 0.0 to 1.0.
Default is 1.0, full volume.

SFX Volume
CVar: s_SFXVolume
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Controls the volume of SFX, in the range from 0.0 to 1.0.
Default is 1.0, full volume.

Dialog Volume
CVar: s_DialogVolume
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Controls the volume of Dialog, in the range from 0.0 to 1.0.
Default is 1.0, full volume.

Max FPS Limit
CVar: sys_MaxFps
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Limits the frame rate to specified number.
A value of 0 means no limit.
Default is 0

Input

Toggle Crouch
CVar: cl_crouchToggle
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Makes the crouch key work as a toggle.
Default is on

Toggle Zoom
CVar: cl_zoomToggle
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Makes the zoom key work as a toggle.
Default is on

Mouse Smoothing
CVar: i_mouse_smooth
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Set mouse smoothing value, also if 0 (disabled) there will be a simple average between the old and the actual input.
(1.0 = very very smooth, 30 = almost instant)
Default is 0.0

Mouse Acceleration
CVar: i_mouse_accel
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Set mouse acceleration, 0.0 means no acceleration.
Default is 0.0

Mouse Acceleration Max
CVar: i_mouse_accel_max
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Set mouse max mouse delta when using acceleration.
Default is 100.0

Mouse Sensitivity
CVar: cl_sensitivity
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Sets mouse sensitivity.
Default is 30.0

Graphics Features

Particle Collisions
CVar: e_ParticlesObjectCollisions
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls what objects particles will collide with.
Default Value: Static (Low/Medium), Dynamic (High/Very High)
None: No particle collisions at all.
Static: Particles tagged for collisions will interact with static objects.
Dynamic: As with Static, but dynamic objects also.

Particle Motion Blur
CVar: e_ParticlesMotionBlur
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables motion blur effect on fast moving particles.
Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Force Soft Particles
CVar: e_ParticlesForceSoftParticles
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Forces all possible particles to use soft intersections with geometry – increases the cost but will all but eliminate hard edges on particles.
Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Tessellation
CVar: e_Tessellation
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables DX11 ALL tessellation.
Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)
NOTE: Currently not tweakable in the latest build of the game.
Will be tweakable soon.

Water Ocean Tessellation
CVar: r_WaterTessellationHW
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables DX11 tessellation for the ocean water surface.
Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Pixel Accurate Displacement Maps
CVar: r_SilhouettePOM
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables the Pixel Accurate Displacement Mapping (VERY GPU intensive).
Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Real-time Global Illumination
CVar: e_GI
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables real-time Global Illumination.
Default Value: Off (Low), On (Medium/High/Very High)

Real-time Volumetric Cloud Shadows
CVar: r_FogShadows
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables Real-time Volumetric Cloud Shadows.
Default Value: Off (Low/Medium), On (High/Very High)

Volumetric Water Shadows
CVar: r_FogShadowsWater
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables the Real-time Volumetric Shadows underneath water.
Default Value: Off (Low), On (Medium/High/Very High)

Screen-space Reflections
CVar: r_SSReflections
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables the Screen-Space reflections effect on glossy or reflective materials.
Default Value: Off (Low/Medium/High), On (Very High)

Depth of Field
CVar: r_DepthOfField
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables the depth of field blur effect.
Default Value: OnNOTE: Currently not tweakable in the latest build of the game.
Will be tweakable soon.

Explosion Blur
CVar: g_radialBlur
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables the radial blur effect applied after an explosion.
Default Value: On

Color Grading
CVar: r_ColorGrading
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Enables or disables the artist controlled color grading post-processing effect.
Default Value: On

Graphics Tweaking

Sharpening
CVar: r_Sharpening
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls the level of the post-processing image sharpening filter.
Higher values give more sharpening, but too high values will create artifacts
A value of 0.0 is off
Default Value: 0.25

Chromatic Aberration
CVar: r_ChromaticAberration
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls the level of the post-processing chromatic aberration.
A value of 0.0 is off
Default Value: 1.5

Filmgrain
CVar: r_HDRGrainAmount
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls the level of film grain applied to the final image to help alleviate artifacts from lack of colour precision in 32-bit colour displays.
A value of 0.0 is off
Default Value: 0.0

Bloom amount
CVar: r_HDRBloomRatio
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls the level of bloom used to simulate over-bright areas of the screen
Default Value: 0.15

Bloom threshold
CVar: r_HDRBrightLevel
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls the brightness level threshold used to compute bloom
Default Value: 1.0

Ambient Occlusion Method
CVar: r_ssao
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Chooses the ambient occlusion method
Default Value: SSAO (Low/Medium/High), SSDO (Very High)
None: No ambient occlusion is used.
SSAO: Screen-space Ambient Occlusion.
SSDO: Screen-space Directional Occlusion.

Texture Pool Size (MB)
CVar: r_TexturesStreamPoolSize
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Sets the size of VRAM that is available in a pool for texture streaming.
Value is in Megabytes, and may be clamped based on the amount of video memory detected
Default Value: 192 (Low), 384 (Medium), 512 (High/Very High)

Shadow Timeslicing
CVar: e_GsmCache
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Saves GPU performance by updating distant shadows less often.
Default Value: On (Low) Off (Medium/High/Very High)

Shadow Casting Light Scale
CVar: e_ShadowsResScale
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls the resolution of shadow maps used for individual shadow casting lights.
Value is an arbitrary multiplier, so doubling this will double the resolution of each light
Default Value: 3.4 (Low/Medium/High), 40 (Very High)

Tessellated Shadow Cascades
CVar: e_ShadowsTessellateCascades
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Determines how many shadow cascades to apply tessellation for.
A setting of 0 disables tessellation in all shadows.
Default Value: 1

NOTE: Currently not tweakable in the latest build of the game. Will be tweakable soon.

Shadow Pool Size
CVar: e_ShadowsPoolSize
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Sets the size of the shadow pool render target – increased size produces more resolution available for, and fewer artifacts in shadow casting lights (NOT including the sun). Value should be a power of 2 (128, 256, …)
If the pool is too small to fit the minimum size for the shadow casting lights, the GPU will thrash and performance will be severely impacted
Default Value: 2048 (Low/Medium/High), 4096 (Very High)

Sun Shadow Map Size
CVar: e_ShadowsMaxTexRes
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Sets the size of each sun shadow cascade – increased size produces more resolution available for sun shadows.
Default Value: 512 (Low), 1024 (Medium/High/Very High)

Global Illumination Timeslicing
CVar: e_GICache
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Sets the number of frames to cache GI results for before regenerating
A value of 0 disables all caching and regenerates GI every frame
Default Value: 7

Global Illumination Iterations
CVar: e_GIIterations
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Sets the number of iterations to perform when calculating Global Illumination
A higher number will reduce bleeding and lengthen the light propagation distance
Default Value: 10

Tessellation Distance Limit
CVar: e_TessellationMaxDistance
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Changes the distance in metres where tessellation will stop applying to objects
Default Value: 30

Tessellation Triangle Target Size
CVar: r_TessellationTriangleSize
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
The length of a triangle edge in pixels to aim for when tessellating.
Default Value: 8

Grass Instance Animation Distance
CVar: e_MergedMeshesInstanceDist
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Distance fudge-factor where interactive grass instances will stop animating.
Default Value: 4.5 (Low/Medium/High) 8.0 (Very High)

Grass Instance Max Distance
CVar: e_MergedMeshesViewDistRatio
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Multiplier controlling where chunks of interactive grass instances will disappear in the distance.
Default Value: 50
LOD distance ratio
CVar: e_LodRatio
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls how close objects drop to lower Levels Of Detail. A higher number means a longer distance before this drop happens.
Default Value: 4 (Low), 6 (Medium) 20 (High), 40 (Very High)

View distance ratio (General)
CVar: e_ViewDistRatio
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls how close objects will stop rendering in the distance.
Default Value: 25 (Low), 35 (Medium) 100 (High/Very High)

View distance ratio (Vegetation)
CVar: e_ViewDistRatioVegetation
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls how close vegetation will stop rendering in the distance.
Default Value: 21 (Low), 31 (Medium) 100 (High/Very High)

View distance ratio (Detail)
CVar: e_ViewDistRatioDetail
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls how close certain objects marked as ‘detail’ by artists will stop rendering in the distance.
Default Value: 19 (Low), 24 (Medium) 100 (High/Very High)

Miscellaneous

Skip Intro Movies
CVar: g_skipIntro

Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Skips the introduction movies that play before the main menu at game boot.
Default Value: Off

Fullscreen window mode
CVar: r_FullscreenWindow
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
When enabled, selecting ‘fullscreen’ in the menus will use a window that fills the screen, allowing easy alt-tab.
Windowed mode will behave as normal.
Default Value: Off

Disallow Fullscreen Pre-emption
CVar: r_FullscreenPreemption
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
When enabled, Pop-ups such as instant message windows and other focus-stealing windows will not minimise the game.
Default Value: On

Force Output Monitor
CVar: r_overrideDXGIOutput
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Gives the number of display to use when creating the game window. 0 is the default/primary monitor and 1, 2, etc are displays after that. Allows you to create the window on a different monitor from your primary monitor (e.g. a TV or other external display)
Default Value: 0

Multi-GPU Support
CVar: r_MGPU
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Determines Multi-GPU support in engine.
Default Value: Autodetect
Disabled: No multi-GPU support.
Forced: Multi-GPU support is force-enabled.
Autodetect: CryEngine auto-detects whether or not to enable Multi-GPU support.

Hardware Gamma Level
CVar: r_Gamma
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Changes the hardware gamma level. Affects desktop as well.
Default Value: 1.0

Internal Occlusion Culling
CVar: e_CoverageBufferReproj
Recommended to be placed in autoexec.cfg
Controls the internal occlusion culling. You shouldn’t need to modify this cvar, but if you encounter any popping with rapid moving, experiment with disabling this.
Default Value: On

Game Network Port
CVar: g_blaze_gamePort
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
The network port games connections will be made on.

Enable Blaze VOIP
CVar: net_blaze_voip_enable
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Toggles whether Blaze VOIP is enabled or not.
Default Value: On

Enable Blaze VOIP PTT
CVar: net_blaze_voip_enable_ptt
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Toggles whether Blaze VOIP Push-to-talk is enabled or not.
Default Value: On

Enable Blaze VOIP
CVar: net_blaze_voip_playback_volume
Recommended to be placed in system.cfg
Sets the Blaze VOIP playback volume, in the range 0.0 to 1.0.
Default Value: 1.0 Full volume

Fresh from our massive Crysis 3 review and big ol’ Crysis 3 giveaway, we’ve got yet more Crysis 3 for you: this time, a screenshot gallery of the screens taken by Nick during his review.

All screens are taken on a PC with a GTX 680 and an i7 3770. Click ‘em up to enlarge.

Got Crysis 3 screens of your own? Upload ‘em and show us the links in the comments below!

With thanks to the good folks at ASUS, AMD and EA, we’ve got 10 copies of Crysis 3: Hunter Edition on PC and three shiny new ASUS RADEON HD cards to give away! Oh, and a bunch of sweet Crysis 3 t-shirts, too. How can you win this amazing prize? Read on!

What I am winning?

Our first prize is an ASUS AMD RADEON HD 7970. The 7970 comes with 28nm GPUs and 3GB GDDR5, as well as a GPU Tweak utility, PCI-E 3 connectivity and AMD Eyefinity support. First prize winner also goes home with a PC Hunter Edition of Crysis 3 and a sweet, sweet t-shirt.

Second and third prize winners will each walk away with a ASUS AMD RADEON HD 7850-DC2-2GD5, which features DirectCU thermal direct-contact heatpipes for 20% cooler and quieter performance, a GPU Tweak utility, PCI-E 3.0 and AMD Eyefinity support. These lucky people will also go home with their PC Hunter Edition of Crysis 3 and a t-shirt.

Seven more runners-up will all go home with a PC Hunter Edition of Crysis 3, and a fully sick t-shirt.

Dang! How do I win?

Entering is easy! Simply leave a comment on this article that explains, in 150 words or less, what new mode the Crysis nanosuit should have. We already have armour, speed, and stealth — but that’s boring. What extra mode should the suit have to make gameplay even better?

Answers can be funny, serious, satirical, or even completely insane — the 10 most creative entries will walk away with the prizes. No images allowed though!

Please remember this competition is only open to Australian residents.

What else do I need to know?

This competition runs from now until 11:59 PM ACDT on February 28 (Adelaide time). It is governed by the Terms and Conditions listed on this page.

Good luck, and have fun!

Crysis 3 is like that friend you had in high-school who topped every class, was on a bunch of sports teams, and yet still had time to hang out with you. It fills you with awe and envy all at once, and then you find out that he has a weird thing for poodles, or he won’t eat anything with the letter L in its name, and that super-human shimmer dulls a little.

Crytek are historically known for pushing the graphical boundaries with their games. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that a good portion of Crytek’s game sales come solely from people who want to use the latest title as a graphical benchmark for their machine. It helps that the games have been pretty good, and Crysis 3 is no exception.

Set a couple decades after the events of Crysis 2, Crysis 3 is the story of a suit. I know this because every second line of dialogue mentions the Nanosuit that your character, Prophet, is wearing. Prophet himself? Not so important. That suit, though… that’s where it’s at. The Ceph and CELL factions make a return, and Crysis 3 also brings back the character Psycho from Crysis: Warhead, and gives you ample time to get to know and love the back of his bald head.

And it is, yes, an astoundingly well-rendered bald head. Everything in Crysis 3 is a visual masterpiece, so long as you have the hardware to do it justice. Running on a GeForce GTX 680, Crysis 3 ran at an average of about 30 frames during the more hectic sequences, with every feature maxed out. And it looked absolutely superb (all the screenshots you see here were captured on my machine). I regularly halted my progress to look at a gorgeous stream, or mess around in the grass, or shoot a squirrel.

It’s so stupidly gorgeous, that there are moments that make Crysis 3 feel ill-suited to the FPS genre, with all the blood and user-interface effects crowding out your view of the wonderful scenery. It should have been a first-person-looker.

But like the rest of the series, the mechanics in Crysis 3 provide the groundwork for a huge amount of fun. All the mechanics from Crysis 2 have carried over with the exception of the ability to stick to cover and peek around corners. You can still sprint (this time without expending energy), kick cars, jump massive gaps, stealth, and boost your armor. The removal of the cover system, while a bit of a bummer, has made room for the introduction of a hacking mechanic.

Battlefields are scattered with mines and turrets that can be hugely threatening if you wander in unprepared. But with hacking, which involves a short timing-based mini-game, you can turn these threats to your side, perhaps taking out a few foes that were otherwise hidden from your view. Hacking provides a substantial amount of tactical depth in a game that is already crammed with options for the player.

Most of the game is comprised of surprisingly large set-pieces, some of which span kilometers entirely seamlessly. You’re typically given an objective or two, and a marker tells you where the objectives are. How you actually get there, though, is totally up to you. I found myself taking what I assumed was the best path there, only to later find there were half a dozen totally different ways I could have gone about it.

I could have also used a long-range weapon to deal with my enemies or tried to sneak up into melee range for a stealth kill. Or I could tweak my weapon with several different modifications to change how it aims or fires or how much ammunition it can hold. Or I could tweak my actual suit abilities with upgrade points that are scattered throughout.

But for all of the great things in Crysis 3, there are still a few missteps. Later in the campaign, the game eschews its open-world vibe and throws a rather awkward and very linear driving portion that plays clumsily, and undermines some of the values the player has come to expect.

The middle portions of the game are also a great deal stronger than the final chapter or two. During the better portions, the focus tends to be on the fun of playing hide-and-seek with deadly dudes in the massive playground of New York. It plays to Crysis‘s strengths; mobility, choice and breathtaking visuals. The latter portions, by contrast, are visually drab and often lock you into much more narrow areas, with fewer tactical choices and more frustrating – but not necessarily more difficult – foes.

It also introduces a frankly ridiculous invulnerability mechanic which removes all of the challenge from what is meant to be the most tense portion of the game. It’s silly, and once you understand how to make the most of it, even the toughest aliens become trivial. And by “the toughest aliens”, I mean the final boss. So that’s disappointing.

There are also a handful of bugs. Twitchy corpses, objects that fall through the world or fly through walls, and sound clips that skip or cut out completely are all fairly frequent occurrences. But they’re not really frequent enough to ruin the overall experience. And they certainly don’t affect how frickin’ awesome overgrown New York looks, so get over it you dumb baby.

The campaign is pretty short – about six hours, give or take – but there’s a comprehensive multiplayer suite with your typical ranking system and item unlocks, and all the suit-powers and weapons from the campaign. You may want to avoid using Quickmatch, as it threw me into a game in the UK, where I had a 700+ ping (I still totally came second. Yeaaaah) and instead rely on local servers – coincidentally, did you know games.on.net is running 25 Crysis 3 multiplayer servers right here in Australia? How about that.

There are also a whole bunch of story-related collectibles, if you really want to dig down into Crysis‘s pretty silly plot. Crysis 3 isn’t the greatest shooter ever made, but it’s hugely entertaining, lets you play creatively, and is currently the single best way to fry your video card. If that’s not a great reason to check it out then I don’t know what is.

Good:

• Look at those graphics.
• Seriously, look at those graphics.
• There’s also a game that goes with those graphics.
• And it’s pretty fun.

Bad:

• At least until you get to the driving sections
• Or the last couple chapters.

When February 21 rolls around and your download of Crysis 3 finishes, look no further than games.on.net for your multiplayer fix.

We’re rolling out no less than 25 servers across our Australia-wide network, so if you enjoyed your time with the multiplayer alpha and you can’t wait to get your hands on it again, stress less.

Just hit the server browser and look for games.on.net, and you’re set! You might also want to prep up for the game by grabbing the latest Crysis 3 beta drivers. AMD users can find theirs here, while NVIDIA users should go here (32-bit also available).

See you in game!

Crytek’s Cevat Yerli, who has personally glimpsed Microsoft and Sony’s next-generation console hardware in action, claims “without breaking NDA” that it’s “impossible” for next-generation consoles to even come close to how well current PCs are able to run Crysis 3.

“Without breaking NDAs that are in place, realistically, from purely a price point perspective, it is impossible,” claimed Yerli to Eurogamer. “It’s impossible to package $2000-3000 into a mainstream, let’s say $500 console. I’m not saying they are $500 consoles. They may launch a console at $2000, but the consumer pricing is usually much lower than that.”

“So, given consumer pricing, and given the cost of production of a gamer PC and the amount of watt of power it needs, which is like a fridge, it’s impossible.”

Yerli joked that his was the only company were people were angry that they could easily run their games, rather than the other way around.

“With Crysis 2 we tried to make the spec available to as many PC gamers as possible. Then we heard back from the loudest group, which was enthusiast PC gamers, ‘our PCs are running this game at 200 frames. What the hell? We should be running at 30 frames.’”

“Our graphics programmers said, ‘we’re going to give them a game they can’t run any more.”

Crysis 3 launches this Thursday, February 21.

Source: Eurogamer

The sixth episode of the 7 Wonders of Crysis 3 videos came out yesterday, entitled “The End of Days”. In this one, Prophet really breaks the mold and shoots some things.

Really, as we approach the launch of Crysis 3 on the 21st of this month, the trailers are not getting any more imaginative. Prophet uses stealth and/or a bow and/or a gun to take out various bad guys doing things that Prophet doesn’t want them to do.

They’re nice trailers. Everything is super pretty. They just… do not spark my imagination. Maybe you disagree with me? Watch it below and let us know. Do you agree? Or could you definitely stand to see a few more?

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has said that a new console cycle won’t help the competition keep up with his team’s graphical prowess.

“I don’t think Crytek can do more on current generation consoles than Crysis 3. I actually think people will be astonished that next gen launch titles from other companies might not be much different from Crysis 3,” Yerli told CVG.

If more than an idle boast, Yerli’s comment is a little disheartening; the best thing about new consoles is the way it inspires developers to push the graphic envelope a bit further, something our late-cycle gaming PCs can usually handle with ease. But the not-so-modest executive apparently has us covered, noting that Crytek’s own efforts in that area won’t disappoint.

“Crytek’s projects generally will be way above what we’ve achieved on the existing consoles,” he said.

Although Crysis 2 wasn’t the graphical powerhouse we’d hoped for, the original Crysis inspired a wave of hardware upgrades with its astoundingly demanding requirements and set a benchmark for visuals. Crysis 3 is supposed to be a return to form.

Source: CVG

If you weren’t already aware for some reason that Crysis 3 releases on the 19th of this month, then, well… there’s probably no hope for you. I’m sorry. But for the rest of you, Crytek’s latest rig-melting outing is set to launch in a mere 11 days, and EA are releasing trailer after trailer to remind you of the fact. This latest one is set to the tunes of Muse’s “Liquid State” from their new album, too — so if you like both those things, then this is the trailer for you.

Not to be outdone by NVIDIA’s offering, rivals AMD have announced the release of their own beta drivers, improving performance for Crysis 3 players.

The new 13.2 beta drivers offer 15% improvements to MSAA in Crysis 3, as well as significant improvements in Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, DmC Devil May Cry and Crysis 2. It also resolves texture-flickering in some DirectX 9.0c applications.

You can download the drivers right here from our file library. Enjoy!

One of our community members has spotted that the EULA for the Crysis 3 beta test contains a passage identical to the one in the EULA for the SimCity beta, specifically the one which allows EA to ban you from all their games if you fail to report a bug.

SimCity‘s EULA has since been changed, but the one in Crysis 3 remains the same. Speaking on Twitter, Crytek confirmed that it was released as part of the beta before the EULA was changed for SimCity.

“It was baked into the Beta before we realized it had the ‘Bug Ban’ clause. We aren’t enforcing that,” wrote Crytek on Twitter, before adding, “We’ll be releasing a blog post about that soon, but for now rest assured we aren’t banning players for finding bugs.”

Source: Thanks PalZer0 and Mythor

If you wander over to the ‘Demos’ section of your the store in your Origin client, you’ll find a nice surprise waiting for you: the Crysis 3 beta.

It’s a 3.3 GB download, so fire it up once you get it and hop onto our very own games.on.net Crysis 3 servers, running both Hunter Mode and Crash Site games for your pleasure.

See you in game!

The open beta test for Crysis 3 will kick off later today, and games.on.net is doing our part by booting up our multiplayer servers so that you’ll have a solid Australian presence to kick ass and take names on.

But what can you do to prepare? Well, NVIDIA owners can grab the latest drivers for their cards, with the company promising that these 313.95 beta drivers can improve performance in Crytek’s latest rig-melter by 35%.

“Other highlights include sizeable SLI and single-GPU performance gains of up to 27% in Assassin’s Creed III, 19% in Civilization V, 14% in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, 14% in DiRT 3, 11% in Just Cause 2, 10% in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, 10% in F1 2012, and 10% in Far Cry 3,” claims NVIDIA in their announcement.

“Rounding out the release is a SLI profile for the newly released DmC: Devil May Cry, and an updated profile for the free-to-play, third-person co-op shooter, Warframe.”

We’ve uploaded these new drivers to our file library to save you the quota: grab the 64-bit Windows ones here and the 32-bit Windows ones here.

Source: Thanks, PalZer0!

January 29 will be the day that the Crysis 3 multiplayer beta opens to all, announced EA today. It will run for two weeks on all platforms, and feature two different modes and two different maps.

Hunter mode means that two players spawn as permanently-cloaked aliens, with the other players spawning as vanilla human troopers waiting for extraction. Each time an alien kills, the trooper respawns as an alien to join in the hunt — if any humans are left alive at the end of the countdown, the humans win.

Meanwhile Crash Site mode, which will be familiar to alpha players, sees alien pods randomly landing across the map which must be captured to earn points. The pods can be ripped apart and used as weaponry or simply lobbed at people with super strength as a high-speed bludgeoning device (spoiler: this rules).

As with the alpha, games.on.net will have servers up and running — so mark the 29th in your calendars, and get ready!

We recently spoke to Crytek, where they claimed they won’t be held back by inferior console hardware this time around.

This is my weapon. She weighs 150 kilograms and fires $200 custom-tooled cartridges at 10,000 rounds per minute. It costs $400,000 to fire this weapon for twelve seconds. Ahah — oh, sorry, wrong video. Where was I? Oh right! Crysis 3 has a gun called the Typhoon, and it fires 500 rounds a second. It’s no Sascha, but hey, it’s a start. And these aliens don’t like it at all. Not one bit.

Crysis 3 hits on February 19 — check out our massive PC gaming release list and see what you need to mark on your calendar.

Some silly fool’s gone and uploaded this Crysis 3 video in reverse! Well, we’ll watch it anyway I suppose. It is the third episode in a series called ‘The 7 Wonders of Crysis 3′ (bit of a humblebrag, there). This is a delightfully dramatic trailer, including but not limited to seeing a helicopter spiral back up into the sky and firing a missile that happens to land comfortably snugly in Prophet’s missile launcher.

I understand that it looks good and I understand what cause and effect are, but what I don’t get is what this trailer is really trying to say about Crysis 3. It’s fun to watch in any event, so you should go ahead and check it out below.

With Crysis 3 almost upon us, naturally Crytek are starting to think about the future — and surprisingly, they’re considering other genres beyond the FPS when it comes to the next Crysis title.

“I think the Crysis franchise itself has life left in it,” said Crytek’s Michael Elliot Read to Dusty Cartridge.

“Whether it’s in a different game type format or whether it’s expanding upon this, it’s hard to say. That’s going to be up to the designers at the end of the day. Crysis was always intended to be a trilogy, and I think that over that time we’ve built a really cool universe. We haven’t really gone in and said, ‘Hey, let’s put Nanosuits and clown suits and stuff and completely violate and sell our IP.’ We have a lot more life left in that to go back and try some unique stuff. Whether it’s FPS or not I have no idea, but there’s definitely a future in the franchise.”

We recently spoke to Michael about Crysis 3 also, where he claimed that Crytek weren’t going to let consoles hold them back any longer.

Source: Dusty Cartridge via PC Gamer

At the recent EA summer showcase, using the aid of his nanosuit’s cloaking mode, Bennett Ring snuck into the dressing room of Michael Elliot Read, Producer on Crysis 3. Unfortunately the cloak energy ran out just as Michael was taking his pants off, so to defuse this awkward moment Bennett quick-fired off a list of things he’s been wondering about EA’s upcoming sci-fi stealth blaster. The result was this interesting insight into Crysis 3’s approach to linearity, local matchmaking, hardware requirements and more, with not a peeping tom violation in sight.

GON: Crysis 2 played best when you were in the open areas, but there were also frequent linear sections. How are you approaching that mix of linear versus open in Crysis 3?

Michael: A lot of people came back and said Crysis 1 was very open, in fact a lot of people called it open world, which is completely incorrect. When you look at Crysis 1 and the areas you had to deal with, you’d come up on a vista and you’d be able to see a beach, then a village with trees, and mountains in the background, creating an open visual reference to where you could go. In Crysis 2 there were other areas where, yeah, it did open up a little bit, but dealing with the urban grid and the skyscrapers of New York City created a closed feeling to where things were, and where you could and could not go.

In Crysis 3, we’ve basically taken New York City, taken jungle elements, and thrown those two into a pot and combined them together. You have these large vistas, you have these large open spaces, but still you’re able to traverse through these. We’ve opened that up with these having these more open spaces, for exploration and secondary objectives, which encourage people to explore the maps.

GON: Variety of enemy type and AI is crucial in shooters these days, with games like Borderlands 2 having dozens. Crysis 2 didn’t have a wide range though — how are you improving it this time around?

Michael: There’s been a huge focus with AI and how we handle that. Back in Crysis 1, the AI had multiple alertness levels, from green to yellow to red. In Crysis 2, they only had two states – green and then straight to red. In Crysis 3 we’ve added the middle mode back again. On top of that we have some new tools in the engine that are available to us, like the AI navigation mesh. That allows our level designers to build out maps, and the system then says the AI can walk in these specific areas. You’ll find when you’re playing that when you come into a map, you can take 50 different people playing through it, and each experience will be very different depending on how the AI reacts and where it goes. We’ve done a host of tweaks to the AI and it’s really coming into its own now. It’s feeling really good.

GON: The multiplayer of Crysis 2 had some interesting elements, but didn’t really take off with players. What are you doing this time around to make Crysis 3 stick?

Michael: We’ve looked at what didn’t work in Crysis 2. We’ve brought in large numbers of groups with the help of EA and their internal teams, and also brought in groups which we call “The Experts Club”. These are comprised of people who play on consoles and PCs, and who have and have not played other Crysis games. We brought them in and did a whole series of feedback sessions with them. We found out what would make the game easier for people to get into, what would increase the pace of the game. We did a number of things based on this.

One is taking the nanosuit and changing how the energy dynamics work, breaking those down into armour and cloak, having completely independent bars. That’s been a huge hit with people. We did a closed alpha back in October, and people saw the pace of the game increase. We’ve also added in things like auto armour modules, which come in after a few levels in the game. These can be used in a perk slot, which will automatically flick their armour on. It’s kind of like training wheels. But it takes up a slot, and as you unlock more of these perks, you can start choosing which ones to use. It’s about getting used to those aspects of the game, and that’s what we had found was a barrier to entry. The maps themselves were also tighter, now they’re significantly larger than Crysis 2.

GON: Your Hunter mode seems to be inspired by a mod called The Hunted. Are you familiar with this, and was it an inspiration for your game?

Michael: I am not familiar with The Hunted, that’s probably something for my game designers and where they came up with the mode. I know it’s something that had been toyed with for quite some time. As you might know, Crytek UK is the former Free Radical studios, which is known for multiplayer titles like TimeSplitters. These were things that they had talked about for a long time and really wanted to get into the game. Eventually they started pushing that forward. He doesn’t like me using terms like Zombie mode or Infected, but there is inspiration from a lot of different things. The Hunter mode really worked well with the nanosuit, and having the bow there as well, just seemed to work.

GON: How do you balance the use of the bow while cloaked in Hunter mode, to stop it being hugely overpowered?

Michael: There’s a few things that tie into that. One is that you’re not fully cloaked, you’re slightly visible. There’s lighting and stuff that we’ve had to tweak for each map so the suit isn’t the most predominant thing, but is hanging back on the edge of your vision. Even walking through water will show where it is. In addition to that, all the Cell troopers have the ability to know when a hunter is near. There’s a clicking sound that gets louder and louder as the hunters get closer to you, so you know there’s a hunter near you and it puts you into a bit of a panic. It’s those kinds of things. We’ve seen games go in a number of ways, from Cell surviving for the entire game through to hunters dominating. It throws it both ways.

GON: When Crysis 2 launched, Aussies had massive problems with the matchmaking. Has this been a focus for Crysis 3?

Michael: Yes, there’s been a lot of stuff done on the back end and the way that we handle servers and technology, which has been influenced by EA’s experience as well. With Crysis 2, yes, there were a lot of complaints around the server technology and people having connection issues, not just in this area of the world, but pretty much all over the world, which we were never able to fully go back and resolve. Now we have the blade server technology which a number of EA titles are using, and PC gamers will have dedicated servers, which means servers anywhere in the world. There’s matchmaking on the console, I can’t really speak specifically on how that’s going to work, but I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a much more refined experience.

GON: People still make jokes about whether their PCs can run Crysis 1, but Crysis 2’s graphics options were basically non-existent. What are the plans for the level of configurability for Crysis 3?

Michael: There is a lot of configurability in Crysis 3. Let’s rewind a little bit, we basically had to take the engine, break it down and allow it to work on consoles and PCs. That was our first foray into the console world. We managed to do that with Crysis 2, but unfortunately there were some things that ended up getting left behind. One was the day-one high-res texture pack and DX11 support, both things that we really wanted to have there on day-one. Those are going to be there day-one for Crysis 3. In terms of options, we have full AA modes, sliders for pretty much everything, they’ll all be there in Crysis 3.

GON: Will it have a benchmark mode?

Michael: I can’t comment on that. Possibly, I’d have to look into that one specifically, but nothing I can comment on right now.

GON: We played the recent multiplayer alpha, and it was very demanding on even beastly PCs even on medium detail. Why was it so demanding? Is that going to be an indication of the hardware requirements we can expect of the full game?

Michael: The performance of the alpha, we were in an alpha stage where it hadn’t been optimized for performance. That was more of a technical test more than anything, to prove that our server back end was working and that we were able to support this properly. Also to get feedback from the client as well. Yes, there is definitely going to be a step up in hardware requirements, we’ve released the minimum specs and recommend specs. They’re relatively high. That’s what we’re moving forward with.

GON: Do you think aiming for relatively high PCs will be a benefit? We see so many games targeting low end systems and they miss some of the huge benefits of newer PC hardware.

Michael: If you look back on Crysis 2, people were like “this didn’t push my PC hard enough, and I didn’t have the options to do so”. We have a number of facets inside Crytek that we’re dealing with. One is the CryENGINE and things we need to do there. Not only pushing our own titles, but pushing support for our partners, and really finding out what we’re able to do and how hard we’re able to push that. Just because consoles are there and we have some eight year old technology doesn’t mean we should be holding back. We’ve really looked at that, and asked how hard can we push this engine, and I think gamers want a reason to upgrade their hardware. Crytek’s been known for several years to do that. Crysis 2 was a big challenge for us, having to pull back for consoles, to allow our engine to be a cross-platform engine, but now we’re not being held back by that.

Click here for our recent hands-on with Crysis 3.

The next in the ’7 Wonders of Crysis 3‘ video series, directed by The Book of Eli‘s Albert Hughes, has been released. This one shows Prophet stalking through the long grass and using his bow to deal with alien enemies, in a manner delightfully reminiscent of Jurassic Park: The Lost World‘s velociraptors in the long grass scene. Great movie, great movie. Here’s a video:

We actually just played this section for ourselves the other day — click here to read our hands-on impressions.

As Crytek’s first multi-platform game, Crysis 2 on the PC wasn’t all that it could have been. I’m not just talking about graphics options or eye candy – even the gameplay itself had many of its finer nuances tuned out to create a more accessible experience for the console crowd. Enemy AI was only capable of two alert states versus the three in the original, and most areas of the game had a singular path between beginning and end.

While it proved to be a hit with controller crowd, PC gamers weren’t too impressed. During my recent hands-on with Crysis 3, the developer went to great lengths to emphasise that Crytek had learned its lesson, and that yes, Crysis 3 will once again feel like a true PC experience. I spent 30 rather enjoyable minutes discovering whether or not these claims were true.

The demo commences at the bottom of a set of stairs, with a couple of ammo boxes ripe for plunder. The only way out is up, leading to a large hallway that appears to be an abandoned train station. Rusted carriages line the tracks, while enemy soldiers man elevated walkways. One unlucky soul is positioned with his back to me as I enter the area; ramming my knife through his throat silently removes him from the complex equation of death that I’m about to solve.

Using my suit’s visor, I scan the area, zooming to take in the length of the long hall. Enemies in my line of sight are first identified with a highlighted outline, and the longer I hold my scanner on them the more info appears about them. I can see immediately that several of the guards are heavily armoured, while two automated turrets further down the room are just begging to be hacked, turning on their unsuspecting masters.

My first attempt of the room uses the successful “shoot anything that moves, grenade it if it’s still moving” approach that I employed so successfully in the last game. Within seconds of being spotted, the enemy AI has called out to his pals, sending them all in my general direction. They’re a talkative bunch, telling me where they think I am, and how they’re going to get to me. As three of them converge on my crouched hiding spot behind a barrel, I activate my suit’s armour mode, managing to pick one off before the other two send me hurtling back to the reload screen.

Climbing the stairs once again, I decide that stealth is the better option. Again, Mr Back-Towards-Me swallows my blade with the nape of his neck, but this time I head downstairs. Activating the cloak mode with its new unique button (major powers now each have a unique key press, making them easier to activate) I immediately notice how much longer the cloak ability now lasts.

Not long enough though; as I cross half way across the room I wink back into visibility, immediately spotted by one of the walkway guards. Rushing to more cover, I re-engage cloak and move on, watching as the enemy AI converge on my last known position. Soldiers fast-rope through the ceiling, providing me with the perfect opportunity to test out the air-burst bow ammunition, mowing three down with just two shots, before I’m picked off yet again.

I eventually clear the room after five tries, and each time the AI reacts to my actions totally differently. I end up completing it by playing much more cautiously than I’ve ever had to play a Crysis game, approaching it in the same way I did Dishonored, with stealth. I silently pick off enemy soldiers one at a time, keeping close track of their movements, until I’ve whittled them down to a small enough group that I can go in all guns blazing. Despite getting my butt resoundingly handed to me by the AI, it rarely ever feels like it’s cheating; each time I die I know it’s because I’ve made a mistake, not some super-human AI ability. Eventually I make it to the next major area of the demo with a sigh of relief, and encounter a huge outdoor area with head-high grass.

As the grass bends and moves with the wind, it’s easy to appreciate the leap in graphical fidelity compared to its predecessor. As I sit there, enjoying the detailed view of the vast space before me, with god rays lighting up the decrepit ruins around me, an alien creature uses the high grass to sneak up on me and tear me to shreds. The next fifteen minutes are some of the most tense first person shooting I’ve experienced in years, as I navigate through lengthy patches of this grass, with only the shrieking of incoming aliens to warn me of my impending doom.

By the end of the demo I’ve also expressed my inner nerd rage via a satisfying turret section, and taken in a spectacular train-ride through a heavily scripted sequence. I’ve also had more fun playing this demo than any singleplayer first person shooter of 2012 – that’s saying a lot considering the demo took place in a crowded, noisy, gaming event. If my short hands-on is anything to go by, Crysis 3 has abandoned the tired linear shooting gallery formula that we’re all so sick of, instead presenting gamers with large open-ended arenas chock full of clever AI, leaving it to us to figure out how to get through.

It might have taken three attempts to get it right, but Crysis 3 could be the one that finally delivers on the series’ promise.