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Crysis Vs. Crysis Warhead

Many, if not most, played Crysis for the graphics. We’ll the same crowd that fell in love with Far Cry for the same reason.

Even on medium or low graphics settings it was a stunner, and contrary to popular myth, could run well and look fantastic on medium range systems. PC enthusiasts and tweakers had a field day in paradise with the engine and game world. No game was better for the satisfaction of tweaking settings, than seeing the fabulous end result. Tweaking Crysis became a game in itself for a lot of the PC hardcore.

Since word got out that Crysis was “unplayable” on most PCs, One needs a killer PC to play this game with all settings to high, Crytek has been busting a gut to dispel that myth. It’s a shame that so many gamers who would have loved the original were put off by the viral forum disease that almost killed the franchise in its tracks.

Thank god, It’s saved. Warhead runs significantly faster – up to twice the frame rate on similar settings to the original. That comes at a cost – Warhead does not look as good as the original. Textures are less detailed, pop up detail seems closer in, and overall the colours seem to lack the vivid beauty that stunned us all first time around.

The designers make up for that with level designs and set piece props and events. Like the original, this is a game that really will drop your jaw. There is, simply, no better looking game, on any platform.

Given the reshaped emphasis on run and gun action gaming, you just won’t have time to wander around appreciating the game world. This is not a game that lets you marvel at the flickering shadows under a rainforest canopy, or be truly stunned by a sunset beach. The frames dividend has been spent in different ways – being epic explosive action. The emphasis on lengthy firefights is dressed up with a louder mess of pyrotechnics, which the game handles without too much slowdown. Frames are inconsistent, but rarely drop to unplayable levels. On a PC where the frames may peak at 50, they’ll drop to 25 or so in battle. Not ideal, but certainly not a game killer.

Warhead suffers from the same ‘gradual slowdown’ as Crysis. It’s worth saving, then quitting out of the game once an hour or so to clear it out. Presumably some sort of memory leak, it hits worst in the ice levels.

New Review

Ride To Hell

Take a moment to pity the well-spoken Austrian gentleman showing us Ride to Hell today. In the excitement of debuting his new videogame to the world’s press, he’s gone and hired out a deliciously scuzzy biker bar in Asscrack, California for the event and populated it with real (judging by their odor and keenness on punching game journalists in the arm) bikers. The forced smile on his lips leads us to believe he’s slightly regretting extending the invite to them.

Hooting and yowling, they get a little too excited by the combat demonstration. When a bike is wrecked to demonstrate the game’s Havok-enabled physics, one of the bikers yells out, “We’ve all been there buddy!” before receiving a hearty slap on the back from his fellows and downing his stein of whiskey. Meanwhile, the same greying biker who’s been staring at us from across the bar for the past half hour and stroking his knuckles is starting to worry us.

But let’s reverse a moment, shall we? We’ve come to the musty anus of California, USA, to view the forthcoming Ride to Hell, the debut title from Deep Silver, a development team once more famously known for their work as Rockstar Vienna. However, unlike Rockstar, Deep Silver are willing to show off their wares early. Meaning the gameplay demonstration we are treated to today is off a very early build of the game, which sadly lacked pedestrians, animals, advanced traffic systems and some overall graphical polish. But let’s push past that, shall we?

Ride to Hell is set in California during the 1960s, and puts you in the dusty boots of one Ray Kaminski, who’s just received an honorable discharge after spending the last year in a Vietnamese POW camp. He returns to his hometown, the decaying outpost of Dead End, to find he has few prospects and even less money. Thankfully, his old friend Oswald has kept his motorcycle mothballed, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s introduced to a motley band of bikers and given free reign to terrorize the locals.

Just how much free reign? Well, Deep Silver have licensed real-time satellite data for California, and compressed the landscape so you have just the interesting bits left. In total we’re told that there’s just over 95 square km of game world. If you’re into your statistics, that’s just over twice the size of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and three times the size of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Of course, we all remember GTA: San Andreas contained huge swathes of empty wilderness, so the question remains just how Deep Silver plan on filling their frankly gigantic game world.

But enough early doubt. The coolest feature shown off today is one that’s central to Ride to Hell’s biker conceit: modding your ride. Though you start off with Ray’s rickety cherry-red Triumph, it’s only a matter of time before you’re able to build new bikes entirely from scratch, provided you have the cash. Deep Silver even go so far to say that if you happen to be the proud owner of a motorcycle, or just want to recreate the legendary Captain America chopper from the classic ’60s road movie Easy Rider, you’ll be able to replicate your ride in-game using the toolset. From forks to frame, we’re told there are upwards of one trillion combinations, and that’s before you even consider things such as paint jobs and decaling.

Ride to Hell certainly has the atmosphere of the 1960s nailed. From the 300 era-perfect songs (including, yes, Born to be Wild) Deep Silver have licensed, to the mushroom-induced hallucinogenic trips you can send hapless Ray on, this is very much the decade your parents have a hard time remembering. But it’s Ride to Hell’s cast of loonies and sociopaths that stole the show for us today. First up, there’s Dr. Blotter, a ‘freelance chemist’ who makes Dennis Hopper’s photographer from Apocalypse Now look like the pinnacle of sanity. Then there’s Sergeant Hollis, who runs ‘luxury imports’ from a nearby military base, ordering Ray to take a stash of cocaine to a nearby hippy commune, run by a certain Dizzley the Grizzley.

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