Many gamers know that Free Radical Design, developer of the TimeSplitters series and the critically panned Haze was having financial trouble. However, it was recently announced that Crytek, the developer of the Crysis series, is purchasing the troubled developer.
Don't Be That Guy, Featured Column, PC
For my first non-introductory rant, I really wanted to write an obsolete review. You see, for Christmas this year I received a laptop that has some pretty solid horsepower (compared to my old college desktop that could hardly run Age of Empires II) and in my haste to celebrate my brand new PC I decided to pick up Crysis.
And what is the first thing that all game journalists do after they get a new game? They review it; even if it’s too old to be news but too new to be retro.
Anyway, I kind of figured that there might be other people in similar boats who are finally upgrading their computers who might want to know if this ocular feast is actually worth playing. To those of you out there, I just want to say that the on board Vista game Chess Titans is entertaining me better than Crysis is right now.
Far Cry and Crysis, both developed by Crytek, are growing up and parting ways. Far Cry 2 is now being developed by Ubisoft Montreal, while Crysis Warhead is remaining with Crytek and will be the first game released from Crytek’s Budapest studio. Each game will run on different engines: Far Cry 2 will run on a Ubisoft-developed engine called Dunia, which means “earth” in many languages. Crysis Warhead, on the other hand, will run on a revised CryEngine 2, and will be much more lenient on system requirements. The graphics for both games are stunning, but graphics aren’t everything these days.
I’ve often heard the argument that people pirate games not for the game itself, but as a demo, to help determine if they want to shell out their hard-earned cash or hard-begged allowance on a new title. PC developer Crytek doesn’t care why people do it, they’re just not going to put up with it anymore. Though in Crysis’ case, this pirate reasoning makes perfect sense: who would want to purchase a game that they will likely not be able to run on their system, even if it has mostly top-of-the-line components?
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Second Life, World of Warcraft, and EverQuest II. These three games have proven that providing a place for people to live out their fantasy lives can be a lucrative business model. While many other developers have tried the MMO business model, few have succeeded.
Avatar Reality, a startup from Hawaii, is looking to change that. Their late 2008 release Blue Mars will provide players with a graphically rich MMO experience. Blue Mars is set over a hundred years in the future on a terraformed Mars where players will live and work to buy virtual land and objects to populate it with.
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