Crysis 2 Message Board older than one year ago

Crytek is denying a report from earlier this week that Microsoft plans to reveal the successor to the Xbox 360 as early as next year and that the studio posses next generation hardware...

The launch of Origin may have something to do with the weirdness between EA and Steam.

The confusing back-and-forth between Steam and Electronic Arts continues. Crysis 2 and Alice: Madness Returns listings all disappeared from Steam earlier this week, followed by a statement from EA stating certain business terms had changed.

The change violated an existing agreement Crytek had regarding Crysis 2 with another company, EA said, thus forcing Crysis 2 to come down from the store.

That didn't really explain what happened to Alice: Madness Returns, though.

Alice: Madness Returns returned to Steam today. EA sent me an odd statement explaining why.

"EA Partners and Spicy Horse Games appreciate Steam’s decision to sell Alice: Madness Returns," said the company. "The game is also available on several other download services including Amazon, Gamestop and Origin.com."

This doesn't answer several questions: why isn't Crysis 2 back? Why was it "Steam's decision" to allow Alice: Madness Returns back into Steam? Will Battlefield 3 ever show up? Does this impact future EA releases? What business terms changed that prompted this in the first place?

At E3, EA launched Origin, a proprietary digital platform for serving up EA content. Though neither company has said so, there's reason to believe these moves have to do with Origin.

I'm asking all of these to try and learn more. When (and if) I hear back, I'll let you know.

Did you buy the Crysis 2 ‘Retaliation’ map pack last month? Then you’ll probably be pleased to know that a second one, the ‘Decimation’ pack, has just gone on sale. Once again it’ll cost you $10, though this time you’re getting five new maps (instead of four) and two new weapons- the FY71 assault rifle and smoke grenades.

Tell you what, no video game smoke grenade will ever top the ones that were in the unpatched release of legendarily buggy 2004 soldier sim Söldner. Every so often you’d throw one that didn’t run out of smoke. Ever. It would just sit there, slowly filling the entire level with an opaque fog for minutes on end until the rendering engine crashed.(more…)

Featuring five all-new maps.

More maps, more guns, more near-future action.

THINGS ARE GETTING REALLY STRANGE NOW. Now being outside of UK office hours mean we’re yet to get our own EA response to why Crysis 2 vanished from Steam yesterday, but across-the-ponders have now received one. The upshot? Despite all this ‘only on Origin’ stuff, EA didn’t do it. So: who did?(more…)

The Crysis 2 Decimation Pack including 5 new maps and 2 new weapons is available now! Available on PC and Xbox 360, the Crysis 2 Decimation Pack brings all new maps and weapons to the Crysis 2 universe. Battle in all-new locations and once again prove yourself the master of the Nanosuit. Inclu...

Electronic Arts' new downloadble service, Origin, will host exclusive content for games such as Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3. Digital copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic will be exclusive to Origin. Crysis 2, released earlier this year, was pulled from Valve's digital games service Steam yesterday, fueling speculation EA removed the title...

While the waters around Crysis 2′s sudden disappearance from Steam last night remain somewhat muddy, EA Games prez Frank Gibeau has spilled a few heavily suggestive beans about the big brass balls the publisher has about its proprietary download service, Origin, and how it intends to keep any other download service’s grubby mitts off a few of its choicest games.(more…)

Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there’s very little for you to actually play. There’s a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That’s a lot of games! Read on to find out what’s what.(more…)

#virtualarmyofone Crytek's CryEngine 3 technology, which we've seen most recently in the company's own Crysis 2, is the driving force behind a $57 million project from the US Army aimed at teaching its soldiers how to fight. More »

Want to jump twice as high, run twice as fast, and shoot bullets that are twice the size of regular bullets? You ... um, can't. But, if you play Crysis 2 multiplayer this weekend, you'll be able to unlock the game's nanomechanical power-ups twice as quickly.

Once again, Amazon has elected to mark down select video games across a number of platforms as part of its Gold Box promotion. Check out the remaining clues after the jump! If you're not a fan of uncertainty, you can also grab Crysis 2 for $35 in Amazon's Deal of the Day.

Level up! Four of them, actually. The Retaliation map pack for Crysis 2 is now available for $10, say EA, presumably for purchase within the game because I certainly can’t see anywhere on the internet to buy it. The four maps, “Park Avenue” “Transit” “Shipyard” and “Compound” all look like they’d make a nice home for an excitable nano-warrior, and you can see all four in the following trailer, which is actually as much of an ad for the new maps as it is for Crysis 2 multiplayer in general. Look at those big men frolic!(more…)

The new Crysis 2 'Retaliation' Map Pack is out. While we haven't made up our minds what we think about it yet, we wanted to help you decide. Below you'll find the descriptions EA provided us for each map, along with some footage we took ourselves. Let us know what you think about the levels in the comments below -- just keep it clean, folks...

Beginning today, gamers can strap into their Nanosuits and return to the streets of New York in Crysis 2 with the brand new map pack, Retaliation. Retaliation features four maps that introduce new iconic locations to the fun, addictive and fast-paced multiplayer campaign that helped make Crysis 2 a critical and commercial success. New maps in Retaliation include "Park Avenue", "Transit", "Shipyard" and "Compound"...

Four new maps bring all-new ways to retaliate against your enemies in Crysis 2 multiplayer.

The cybernetic suits of Crysis 2 will soon leap, slide, shoot, and ground-stomp each other in four new DLC maps: "Park Avenue, Transit, Shipyard, and Compound." They're set to drop on May 17 as the "Retaliation" map pack.

The add-on is coming to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, though its availability on PS3 is dependent on whether or not PSN is back up by next week. No price is given in the announcement, nor the trailer, so we'll try to find out for you.

#blip Crysis 2 is about to get its first piece of downloadable content, in the form of four new multiplayer maps. It'll be out on May 17 on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 (PSN service dependent). More »

Remember Crysis 2? Eh? Bringing it back into our memories is the forthcoming release of a DLC pack of maps, for which the good folks at Trailer Making Inc. have made a trailer. Eyes down.

(more…)

#theoldcollegecry For about a year, Crytek has offered universities a free license to its CryEngine 3, the guts of this month's big release, Crysis 2. Since it made the offer more than 250 universities have asked for the code, the studio reports. More »

Back in November of 2009, Crytek detailed plans to offer free licenses to universities wishing to work with CryEngine 3. Apparently quite a few showed interest -- more than 250 different institutions over the last year, to be exact.

A missive on Crytek's site reads: "Academic institutions in a wide variety of fields including physics, computer science, architecture, film-making, art and design use Crytek's all-in-one game development solution for their projects." This should ensure that not only will future video games feature gun-wielding super soldiers in billion-dollar nanosuits, but also movies, paintings, science projects, book reports, fashion magazines and all of the skyscrapers downtown.

[Thanks, Andreas]

We know you're having a hard time choosing between all the different nanomachine-infused, suit-centric first-person shooters set in a ruined New York City. Why not go with the cheap one? Amazon's marked down Crysis 2 to $39.95 as its current deal of the day.

A new splashpage at CryMod, which is currently being overhauled, reveals that this summer will see the apperance of both a Crysis 2 editor and a CryEngine SDK. What does this mean? Well, it means people will be able able to make levels for Crysis 2, but also that they’ll be able to make non-commercial stuff for free using the CryEngine tech. Crytek’s Mr Yerli says: “In August 2011 we will be launching a free CryENGINE SDK. If you want to use it for fun, like all our previous MOD SDKs it will be completely free of charge, to anyone who wants to play with it! You just register, download the SDK with a personalized license key and you’re good to go! If you want to use it to make a game to launch commercially, we’d like to help you with that. If you want to take your product down a traditional commercial route, we will offer an innovative low cost licensing model if you want to release your game digitally.”

More details here.

Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, has posted an extensive open letter to Crysis 2 modders on Crymod.com laying out an impressive future for the CryEngine mod scene. First and foremost, Yerli confirms that a Crysis 2 editor is coming this summer, but that news is overshadowed by the announcement of a free CryEngine 3 development kit, which Crytek is making available in August.

Essentially, anyone who wants to will be able to download "the latest, greatest version of CryEngine 3," and go to town with everything from the engine code to actual game sample code (from Crysis 2), scripts and all of the tools Crytek used to make Crysis 2. This is big news for modders, as it presents a viable, no-cost alternative to Unreal Engine 3 (which has a similar plan available) and access to all of the shiny features for anyone interested -- though developers who wish to release a game commercially will still have to license the engine.

[Thanks, Jackal]

#pc A modding toolkit for Crysis 2 will release in early summer, Crytek said today in an announcement. If that's not enough freedom for you, the CryENGINE SDK releases to developers in August. The Crysis 2 modkit will be free, the company's CEO said. More »

#itsawonderfultown It's a shame that you miss it while you're too busy kicking cars and shooting things in the face, but Crysis 2 is a love letter to the city of New York, something that really shines through in the game's concept art. More »

#pc Crytek took it in the shorts from PC loyalists who felt Crysis 2 was handled in a way that catered more to console users than to PC gamers. In an interview, the studio's graphics engineer said Microsoft and Sony have way underweight RAM configurations, and whatever they build next needs 8 GB of RAM, minimum. More »

When Crytek announced that the third iteration of its ambitious CryEngine technology would appear on both PC and consoles, a portion of its hardcore fans became skeptical -- would the engine's progression be hampered by a dumbed-down ball-and-chain?

The company's R&D principal graphics engineer, Tiago Sousa, responds to that mindset in a new interview with Digital Foundry, saying that a multiplatform approach in developing Crysis 2 was beneficial to the company's central goal -- which is to make big-budget games, not just budget-hostile benchmarks. "The PC market just does not support that cost of development, but going multi-platform does," Sousa said. "If making a game that is bigger, better, more stable, performs better across a wider range of hardware, provides a continued visual benchmark for PC gaming, and more fun with a huge single-player and multiplayer offering is considered selling out, that seems like a really odd application of the phrase. The decision to go multi-platform has allowed us to bring a better game to everyone, which has been our goal all along."

That isn't to say Crytek opted for the easy route. The interview highlights Crytek's struggles with limited memory on consoles (just 512MB on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3), adjusting its workflow to eliminate the reliance on a single lead platform, and a lighting feature that didn't quite make the cut for every system. Oh, and you won't believe how much triangle culling there is. Just ... relentless slaughter of triangles, left and right.

Crytek has posted that, yes, the team is currently working on a DirectX 11 patch for Crysis 2. There are no details yet on when to expect it or what exactly it will do (early rumors of the patch, debunked by Crytek, suggested it would unlock an advanced graphics mode), but of course it will enable DirectX 11 compatibility for the game. Crytek says it wants to "get the best out of DX11."

The patch can't come too soon for poor PC Crysis 2 players -- as you can see above, they're really suffering. Who would bother ever playing a PC game that looked as bad as that?

[Thanks, Brian R.]