 |
|
|
|
|
 |
Crysis CORE Level Impressions
September 20, 2007 |
|
 |
|
|
Summary: JCal got his hands on another level for Crysis, the CORE level. See some screenshots and read our impressions here!
 CORE Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 2 )
|
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.
[image]| <% print_image("01"); %> | <% print_image("02"); %> |
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.
| Conclusion | Page:: ( 2 / 2 )
|
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).
[image]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.
|
