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Crysis is back
Crysis is backCrysis is back

If Crysis is your high maintenance, ridiculously demanding wife, then Crysis Warhead, the upcoming non-sequel, standalone PC-only parallel story is your easy to please, no strings attached one night stand.

What we mean by that is that Crysis, the original Crysis that is, was virtually unplayable on max settings when it was released in November last year. The game demanded a lavish rig just to play on high settings. Crysis Warhead, however, will demand much less from you, the PC gamer, when it's released later this year.

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"The fact is Crysis looked great on medium spec, high spec whatever. But any PC gamer wants to run it on super high spec," says Ben O'Donnell, the associate producer on the game from EA's side, as we sit down for some post-E3 hands-on time with Crytek's follow up to the critically acclaimed but mega-pirated FPS. "Really super high spec you could only run if you were running it on Vista and had a DX10 card. That annoyed some people, that they might have had some great PC and just because they weren't running Vista meant they couldn't run it on the highest setting. But really it looks great on any setting. It doesn't mean you're getting any less of an experience."

It's a debate we don't want to get in to. Whether Crysis ran or, for many of you, runs well on your PC or not is now history. This is the here and now, and what we know for sure is that Crysis Warhead won't require a rig from the future to play on maximum settings. And it still looks absolutely gorgeous.


Warhead's story runs parallel to Crysis' - from the point where Sykes left you in the harbour...

"Crysis didn't do badly by any means," Ben insists. "I don't think that was ever a worry for EA, that it wouldn't sell. But obviously trying to dispel the myth that you do need a super PC to run it has been important for us because we want more people to play it."

And more people, we're sure, will play Warhead, because every change and every tweak has been implemented with accessibility in mind. Driving the ASV, one of the new vehicles, halfway through the game's second level, we get a sense of this new approach like a punch in the face.

We're tasked with escorting a pilot called O'Neil to a safe landing zone after he was shot down. He's driving ahead of us as we deal with enemy armour with the ASV's mini-gun. Up to this point in the game players will already have experienced plenty of on foot jungle combat, so now is the time to get hands-on with the mega-destructive vehicles.

Expect more of the same, with a few tweaks.Expect more of the same, with a few tweaks.

We speed the hulking armoured car along winding jungle roads and shoot enemy vehicles, planes, helicopters and anything else that gets in our way with the hugely satisfying 50 calibre mini-gun. It's almost one shot kills - with beautiful explosions, screams and flying shrapnel a pleasing reward for our prowess. This is Crysis, yes, but Crysis with an arcade fuel injection.

"We tried to really focus on big bang moments," explains Ben. "Where Crysis let you create your own moments of action this game is actually much more to do with providing a lot more set pieces around the open world environment. You can play the game how you like but there's a lot of stuff going on, there's a lot of eye candy. It's a lot more exciting and in keeping with the character. He's this big vocal high impact guy."

The 'high impact guy' Ben's talking about is Sergeant Michael 'Psycho' Sykes, who fans of Crysis will remember as the nut job cockney rebel squad member who popped up at various points in the first game. Warhead's story runs parallel to Crysis' - from the point where Sykes left you in the harbour (about halfway through the game) to where you met up with him near the end of the game. Warhead fills in the blanks.

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