Conclusion

The level then entered a vast portion of the ship where we got to see a new alien creature we had not seen before in previous Crysis demos. Think of a blue mermaid (or meralien as the case may be) flying at great speed inside the large alien chamber. The creatures look about human sized but they are not friendly; they will swoop around in the zero-g enviroment to try and take you out. Inside the alien chamber is a structure where we saw some glowing yellow containers that are apparently some kind of energy source. We were directed to shoot at the containers to shut down the energy so we could then proceed deeper inside the ship. Battling the alien mercreatures and shooting at the energy structures got to be pretty tricky because of our zero-g situation but we managed to complete our mission and destroy the structure.

We then explored more inside the alien ship, encountering various alien mercreatures along the way. The level had us exploring a vast tunnel system. Normally we would be worried about which direction to go in, especially in a zero-g environment. However the Crytek level designers have done an excellent job in given subtle but noticeable clues in the level design that allowed us to figure how which way to proceed inside the level. All the while we were pretty much going "Ohhhh" and "Ahhhhh" while exploring the alien ship tunnels. Crysis blows us away with its graphics and art design every time we see it and the alien ship is by far the most impressive single player level we have checked out so far. Again the terrific graphics were all DirectX9 based so that Crytek could show that people with just Windows XP and a DirectX9 based graphics card will get one of the best looking first person shooters ever made (which will likely make the DirectX10/Vista version even more impressive to check out).

The CORE level actually ends with you exiting the ship which is where the ICE level (the portion of Crysis that we wrote about last Thursday) begins. Both these levels are in the middle section of the game which means that there could be even more surprises awaiting us when the full version of the game arrives in mid-November. Meanwhile you may have heard that Crytek and EA have started beta testing for the multiplayer portion of Crysis. We hope to have some hands-on impressions of that portion of the game in the very near future.