Crysis Warhead

Crysis Warhead
Developer(s)	Crytek Budapest
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Distributor(s)	Electronic Arts Valve Corporation
Composer(s)	Peter Antovski
Series	Crysis
Engine	CryEngine 2
Version	Crysis Warhead 1.1.1.711 Crysis Wars 1.5
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	EU September 12, 2008[1] NA September 16, 2008[1] Digital download September 18, 2008[2]
Genre(s)	Open world first-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: M[1] PEGI: 16[1]
Media/distribution	Optical disc, download
System requirements See Development

Crysis Warhead is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game developed by the studio Crytek Budapest, Hungary, and published by Electronic Arts. Crysis Warhead is a stand-alone expansion game and does not require Crysis installed to play. It was released on PC only on September 12, 2008^[1] in Europe and September 16, 2008^[1] in North America.

Overview

Crysis Warhead, like the original Crysis, is set in 2020, when an ancient alien spacecraft is uncovered on the fictional Lingshan Islands, east of the Philippines. The single player campaign has the player assume the role of a member of Raptor Team, a squad of mostly American soldiers outfitted with cutting-edge technology. Specifically, they play the role of former British SAS operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, "Psycho". Psycho was a supporting character in Crysis, in which players played one of his Raptor Team squad mates, Jake "Nomad" Dunn. Psycho's arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit, which confers various superhuman abilities upon its wearer, returns. In Crysis Warhead, the player follows a "secret mission" Psycho was sent on roughly halfway through the original game, to retrieve a mysterious cargo container held by the North Koreans, believed to contain a nuclear warhead. During this mission, Psycho fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an "Ice Sphere", an underground mining complex, and finally, to an airfield. Like Crysis, Warhead uses Microsoft Direct3D for graphics rendering. Crytek have also recently added a Crysis Wars mod for the Sandbox 2 editor, the same tool that Crytek used to create Crysis and Crysis Warhead.

Gameplay

Main article: Crysis#Gameplay

Crysis Warhead updates and refines the gameplay of the original game through a side-plot involving Psycho, one of previous protagonist Nomad's allies. The game is a parallel story that follows Sergeant Michael "Psycho" Sykes,^[3] a character from the original Crysis, as he faces his own trials and challenges on the other side of the island during the time period of the first game. It features new fully customizable weapons, vehicles and enemies, along with new multiplayer content. It also showcases a new, enhanced and optimized version of CryEngine 2 and is the first game developed by Crytek's Budapest studio.^[4]

Crysis Wars

Main article: Crysis#Multiplayer

In addition to the single-player campaign, Crytek has also emphasized the multiplayer modes, titled Crysis Wars. In addition to the Instant Action and Power Struggle modes of the original Crysis, Crysis Warhead also features Team Instant Action mode, as well as 21 playable maps upon release. Crytek has made numerous changes to the multiplayer gameplay including tighter vehicle controls, weapon rebalancing, and Nanosuit alterations.^[5] Crysis Wars is included on its own disc, has a separate installer and logo, and is considered a separate game by Crytek; regardless, it comes bundled with Warhead at no additional charge. From 10–12 October 2008, Crytek held a free trial weekend during which people could download and play Crysis Wars for free.

Plot

Crysis Warhead takes place during the events of the original Crysis, on the other side of the island in which the game is set, after Psycho splits up with Nomad following their raid on the North Korean harbour. In the introductory film, British SAS Sergeant Michael "Psycho" Sykes witnesses a North Korean warship being bombarded by U.S. Navy fighter jets. Leaving the shore, he joins a vehicle convoy driving through the jungle, and defends it as it is attacked by North Korean soldiers. The convoy is destroyed and the Marines fight into the night. The intro ends as the VTOL that tries to evacuate the destroyed convoy's Marines is hit by a missile and crash-lands. Psycho awakes and goes to find a better position for the surviving Marines, but gets attacked by an EMP blast from a container being lifted away by a North Korean helicopter. Sykes is later assigned a mission to pursue another North Korean container that JSOC believes contains a nuclear warhead. As the mission progresses, Psycho is reunited with old friend Sean O'Neill who was originally going to have Nomad's spot on Raptor Team. He was replaced by Nomad after failing an evaluation test. Psycho helps O'Neill after his F-35C jet is shot down and takes him to a VTOL to escape.

Psycho fights through the jungle and coastlines against the North Korean military to track down the container and stop them from taking it. After he reaches a cargo submarine, he sees what's inside. Rather than a nuclear warhead, the container houses an alien war machine, which knocks Psycho out with an EMP blast. After he wakes up again, he is captured and tortured by the North Koreans. As the submarine submerges, the island is suddenly flash-frozen while mechanical alien "Exosuits" attack. Psycho pursues Colonel Lee Kim Sun through the frozen waters and valleys, eventually meeting up with another nanosuit team on the island, Eagle Team. Psycho and Eagle Team continue the pursuit, fighting off an enormous walking Exosuit. Eagle Team is separated from Psycho in a mine, while Psycho continues searching for the container. After reaching an underground train station, Psycho is ordered to get on the train the container is loaded on. Emerging above ground, Psycho fights off both North Korean soldiers and aliens trying to reclaim the container, while O'Neill assists him.

Psycho is ordered to destroy the container if he cannot capture it, and the train is stopped on a bridge which is rigged with explosives in case he needs to do so. Before the container can be extracted by friendly forces, Colonel Lee arrives and uses a captured U.S. Marine as a hostage to bait Psycho off the train, and Psycho loses the detonator while saving him. The Marine begs Psycho to drop him so Psycho can retrieve the detonator and destroy the container. Colonel Lee manages to escape with the container before the explosives can be detonated. Although Psycho survives the fall, the marine, who was not wearing an armoured nanosuit, is not so lucky. He takes out his rage on an injured North Korean nanosuit soldier he pulled off the bridge with him, and drowns him in the river. Struck with grief for not saving the life of the Marine, Psycho has an emotional breakdown, but regains his composure in order to finish his mission.

Psycho assaults the North Korean-occupied airfield where the container is waiting to be taken off the island, taking out numerous ground forces and North Korean tanks. O'Neill returns in a VTOL, and assists Psycho in destroying an upgraded Exosuit walker by guiding him to a crashed U.S. Air Force cargo plane, which transported a powerful experimental weapon, the PAX (Plasma Accumulator Cannon), which allows him to fight off the initial wave of attackers. As the two are about to start extracting the container, Colonel Lee shows up again to reclaim the container, holding O'Neill at gunpoint. Lee tries to shoot O'Neill, but O'Neill is shielded by a cloaked Psycho, who begins fighting with Lee as O'Neill retakes control of the VTOL and takes the container. Psycho and Lee begin fighting inside of the VTOL, and Psycho gains the upper hand, knocking Lee out of the back onto the tarmac, leaving him to the mercy of a massive alien warship. O'Neill takes off with the container, as Psycho relaxes in the back.

Throughout the game, audio clips from four years before the game takes place are heard. These clips show brief glimpses into how O'Neill failed his evaluation test probably causing the death of some other squad mate as can be guessed by the fact that Psycho says "Man Down". The dead squad mate might be the nephew of Dominic H. Lockhart, commander of the Crynet Enforcement Local Logistics (C.E.L.L). If so, this episode is probably is the cause of Lockhart's grief for the nanosuits as seen in Crysis 2. The final clip reveals a brief conversation between Psycho and Nomad at the end of Nomad's own, successful evaluation. Psycho asks Nomad if he's okay, to which Nomad replies "Did you disarm the warhead?" Psycho does not reply to the question, instead saying "That's my Nomad - always putting the mission first."

Development

Official system requirements

Minimum Recommended Microsoft Windows Operating system Windows XP SP2 Windows Vista CPU 2.8 GHz or faster for XP, 3.2 GHz or faster for Vista Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.2 GHz, or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Memory 1 GB RAM for XP, 1.5 GB RAM for Vista 2 GB RAM Hard drive space 15 GB of free space Graphics hardware 256 MB video memory, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or greater NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT or ATI HD3850 512 MB Sound hardware DirectX 9.0c compliant card (DirectX 10.1 compliant if applicable)

Crysis Warhead was announced on June 5th, 2008.^[6][7] While Crysis was previously announced to be a trilogy, Crysis Warhead is not the second chapter in that trilogy; it is instead a stand-alone expansion pack. The second chapter of the Crysis series was eventually revealed to be Crysis 2, which was released on March 22nd, 2011.

The developers have also claimed that due to further optimizations of CryEngine2, Crysis Warhead performs better than the original Crysis.^[5][8] In their review, IGN confirmed that Crysis Warhead looks graphically better and runs better than the original Crysis.^[9]

Crysis Warhead retails at less than normal games' RRP though the game's feature set is close to those featured in full-priced games.^[10]

EA announced that the game's minimum requirements are nearly identical to the minimum requirements of the original Crysis (except for the HDD capacity, which is now 15 GB). However, the "Gamer" and "Enthusiast" ("High" and "Very High", respectively, in the original Crysis) configurations require less powerful machines than before (as IGN confirmed in their review), allowing a user to run the "Enthusiast" settings in DirectX 9 mode (and on Windows XP).^[11]

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	84.99% (44 reviews)[12]
Metacritic	84/100 (56 reviews)[13]
Review scores
Publication	Score
Computer and Video Games	9.2/10[14]
Eurogamer	9/10[15]
Game Informer	8.75/10
GamePro	[16]
GameSpot	9/10[17]
GameSpy	[18]
IGN	9.4/10[19]
PC Power Play	10/10

Crysis Warhead has received largely positive reviews. Most reviewers praised the improvements over the original Crysis in areas like AI and gameplay pacing, citing the original game's criticism that battles were few and far between. The new protagonist, Psycho, was also received better than the original's less developed Nomad. The revamped multiplayer mode, Crysis Wars, was also praised for adding a team deathmatch mode, the lack of which most reviewers criticised in the original game.

Criticism of the game by reviewers includes the short story mode and a lack of new features over the original game. Some continue to cite the game's high system requirements as unacceptable even a year after the original game, which has the same requirements. Indeed, some reviewers did not see any significant performance improvement with Warhead compared with Crysis, stating that only high-end GPUs could handle the game comfortably at decent frame rates.^[20]

Crysis Warhead was featured among Electronic Arts's line-up at E3 2008, where it gained two "Best of E3" awards: one for "Best First Person Shooter" and another for "Best Graphics Technology".

In GameSpot's "Best of 2008", the game was nominated in some categories ("Best Graphic, Technical", "Best Shooter" and "Best PC game") but it did not win any of these awards.

Digital rights management

Crysis Warhead uses a modified version of the digital rights management software SecuROM as copy prevention, which requires authentication on installation and when online access is used. It can be installed up to five times on a limited number of machines and hardware configurations before the user must contact EA to reset their install count.^[21][22] EA has released an installation revoke tool which allows users to de-authorize their Crysis Warhead installations.^[23]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "Deployment Date Set for Crysis Warhead". Crytek. 2008-08-01. http://www.crytek.com/news/news/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=126&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=1&cHash=0cbb148a6b. Retrieved 2008-08-14. 
2. ^ "EA and Crytek launches Crysis Warhead". Crytek. 2008-09-16. http://www.crytek.com/news/news/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=129&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=9&cHash=384267c174. Retrieved 2008-09-16. ^{[dead link]}
3. ^ Bertz, "Crysis Warhead: Meanwhile Across the Island," Game Informer 188 (December 2008): 126.
4. ^ "EA and Crytek announce Crysis Warhead". Crytek. 2008-06-05. Archived from the original on June 25, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080625021906/http://www.crytek.com/news/news/?tx_ttnews%5btt_news%5d=116&tx_ttnews%5bbackPid%5d=1&cHash=7733199cd1. Retrieved 2008-07-09. 
5. ^ ^{a b} Faylor, Chris (August 13, 2008). "Crysis Warhead Ships Sept. 16, Crysis Wars Revealed". ShackNews. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54158. Retrieved 2008-08-17. 
6. ^ "Crysis Warhead sequel". Kotaku. http://kotaku.com/5013404/crysis-warhead-revealed. Retrieved 2008-06-05. 
7. ^ Cry-Alex (2008-06-05). "Crysis Warhead Announced". CryMod. http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=29356. Retrieved 2008-06-05. 
8. ^ Faylor, Chris (June 19, 2008). "Crysis Warhead Runs Smoothly at High on a $620 PC, Claims Crytek; Tweaks Could Hit First Crysis". ShackNews. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53217. Retrieved 2008-08-17. 
9. ^ Ocampo, Jason (September 12, 2008). "Crysis Warhead Review - IGN UK". IGN - UK. http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/909/909584p1.html. Retrieved 2008-09-20. 
10. ^ Jason Ocampo (2008-07-08). "IGN: Pre-E3 2008: Crysis Warhead Hands-on". IGN. http://pc.ign.com/articles/887/887185p1.html. Retrieved 2008-07-13. 
11. ^ Faylor, Chris (August 14, 2008). "Crysis Warhead System Requirements Unveiled, Nearly Identical to Original Crysis". ShackNews. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54175. Retrieved 2008-09-16. 
12. ^ "Crysis Warhead reviews". Game Rankings. http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/946793.asp. Retrieved 2009-10-08. 
13. ^ "Metacritic: Crysis Warhead". Metacritic. http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/crysiswarhead. Retrieved 2009-10-08. 
14. ^ Porter, Will (September 15, 2008). "Review: Crysis Warhead". CVG. pp. 1. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=197118. Retrieved 2008-09-16. 
15. ^ Donlan, Christian (September 12, 2008). "Crysis Warhead Review". EuroGamer. pp. 2. http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=235563. Retrieved 2008-09-12. 
16. ^ Herring, Will (September 16, 2008). "Review: Crysis Warhead". GamePro. pp. 1. http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/207130/crysis-warhead/. Retrieved 2008-09-16. 
17. ^ VanOrd, Kevin (September 17, 2008). "Crysis Warhead Review". GSpot. pp. 1. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/crysiswarhead/review.html. Retrieved 2008-09-18. 
18. ^ Kosak, Dave (September 16, 2008). "Crysis Warhead Review - GameSpy". GameSpy. http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/crysis-warhead/910630p1.html. Retrieved 2008-09-19. 
19. ^ Ocampo, Jason (September 12, 2008). "Crysis Warhead Review". IGN. pp. 2. http://pc.ign.com/articles/909/909584p1.html. Retrieved 2008-09-12. 
20. ^ "Crysis Warhead performance in-depth". techspot.com. 2008-09-23. http://www.techspot.com/article/118-crysis-warhead-performance/page6.html. Retrieved 2008-11-23. "Realistically we do not believe the performance of Crysis Warhead is any better than the original, and we failed to see any substantial optimizations. Ideally gamers are going to require a current generation high-end graphics card to play this game in all its glory" 
21. ^ "Crysis Warhead Copy Protection F.A.Q.". MyCrysis. 2008-09-18. http://www.mycrysis.com/newsdetails.php?news=29380. Retrieved 2008-09-19. 
22. ^ Thang, Jimmy (2008-09-18). "Crysis Warhead Allows Five Activations". IGN. http://pc.ign.com/articles/911/911519p1.html. Retrieved 2008-09-19. 
23. ^ Crysis Warhead

External links

• Official website