Retro Game Friday: Crysis

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m covering a game that was the benchmark for graphics in gaming for a while. It’s Crysis!

Plot Synopsis: The game begins on August 7, 2020 when North Korean forces led by General Ri-Chan Kyong take control of the Lingshan Islands. A team of American civilian archaeologists, led by Dr. Rosenthal, send out a distress call indicating that they have discovered something that could change the world. A week later, Raptor Team is dispatched to the islands, with the core mission of evacuating them and securing any valuable information that they have. The team consists of Nomad, Psycho, Aztec, Jester and team leader Prophet (all under code names); they are outfitted with Nanosuits, which help protect them from gunfire and explosions, as well as giving them superhuman strength and abilities. As they perform a high-altitude jump onto one of the islands, an unknown flying entity disrupts the jump by smashing into Nomad, and the team is separated.

Plot: The plot is okay, but it’s not super amazing either. That being said it wasn’t terrible either. It just was, and while Mediocre isn’t quite the right word I want to use, it’s the best I can come up with at the moment with a splitting headache.

Gameplay: This plays like a lot like other FPS, the big “gimmick” for Crysis though was the ability to switch between various power armor modes. There was Speed, Armor, Strength and Cloak. Frankly I preferred Speed as I enjoyed getting reloading faster, but that might just be my personal preference for speed archetypes in almost every game.

Graphics: This game’s max settings were incredibly expensive to be usable at the time of release because of how much strain they caused. You might remember hearing the question “Can it run Crysis?” as a way of determining how much of a powerhouse your PC was. So yes, the game looked pretty damn amazing. That being said it still aged not particularly well, but a hell of a lot better than Halo CE did, although that is a game from the previous generation of gaming.

Music: Honestly don’t remember it, and frankly I might not have ever listened to it as I was using a roommates computer to play it during college.

Overall: A good game, but mostly famous for being a graphical nightmare for PCs if you didn’t have a powerful enough computer.

For those who like: FPS Games, Sci-Fi, Military Fiction, Drama, Action, Awesome Artwork (especially in the day).

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.

Video Game Tuesday: Amazon Lumberyard

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a tool that was announced recently and should be awesome for indies in the future! It’s Amazon Lumberyard!

What?: Amazon Lumberyard is a currently in Beta and it’s a AAA game engine heavily based off CryEngine that is free except if the person chooses to use Amazon Web Services for multiplayer purposes. However since that’s an option not a requirement that means it’s essentially a free AAA game engine, that is comparable to getting to use CryEngine or Unreal Engine for free. That’s huge for the game industry as it means small companies can make games that have quality along the lines of heavyweights like Ubisoft or Square Enix. It’ll also be able to make games for PC and consoles, which again is huge. Now if they can update it to include Mac and Linux that will really shake up the industry quite a bit.

Really?! Where can I get this?: Well you can get it here, but it’s only for PC users, at the moment at least.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!

Video Game Tuesday: Licensing

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering an important part of making a game! It’s all about Licensing!

What do you mean a License?: Well it’s allowing someone to use someone else’s software for your own use. For example if you own Photoshop you have a license to use it for your own purposes whatever they may be.

What does that mean in a game?: Game companies often license out their own software that they use to make games, often called a game engine. Some prominently and well known ones are Cryengine, Unreal Engine and Unity. This isn’t the only thing though that is licensed for use in games.

What else?: Here is the real big issue that’s affecting lots of people these days. It’s the music that the game has, it has a different set of copyright laws and while they are fine for personal use (read: for you to play the game); it often isn’t okay for it to be used for other than that. So if you stream or make Let’s Plays of games you need to be really careful of what you use the background music for. Grand Theft Auto V for example has a bunch of actual music in the radio stations, along with some “in-game” music as well. If you aren’t careful and you violate the license you will probably get your videos taken down. It’s frustrating for localization as well, but that’s a topic for another week.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!