CORE Introduction

Last week we wrote up a article with some hands-on impressions of ICE, one of the many levels in Crysis, the upcoming and highly anticipated first person shooter from developer Crytek and publisher Electronic Arts. We played through the level at a recent EA press event; however that's not the only level we got to see and play at the gathering. Tonight we can finally talk about the other single player Crysis level we got our hands on a few weeks ago. Titled CORE, it actually takes place before the ICE level in the game and is very different than any other Crysis level we have played and indeed is one of the more unique settings we have ever seen in a first person shooter.
The level has your character approaching the alien vessel that has crash landed on the tropical island that we have seen in many other Crysis demos. The level starts out normally as we reached the massive door of the ship and see it open up. From then on, however, things get a little odd. First is the fact that as we walked inside the alien ship it was clear that visually this would be one of the big highlights in the game. The alien vessel definitely has a techno-organic look to it with structures that seem to be based on underwater coral than the typical hard metal look of a imagined ship. Blue, yellow, red and purple light effects seem to be glowing out of the walls in our demo and blue force field like energy sheild were seen as well. It reminded us of flying through the V'Ger ship in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

That's not all, however. Once you get inside the alien ship the typical laws of physics are not around anymore. As you proceed inside you stop walking and start floating inside the ship. Yep, that means that at least for this level Crysis takes place in a zero gravity enviroment. Your normal movement keys on the keypad still work; you are just flying around the level rather than just walking. It's not just you who floats around, either. The ship has what looks like crystal shards coming out of sections of the level. You can actually shoot these shards and see them break up and float away rather than fall down.