E3 Previews — Haze and Crysis

First Person Shooters are getting ever more involved. It's no longer sufficient just to ape Doom or Half-Life, and FPS titles at this year's E3 bear that out. Kotaku has a look at the fascinating title Haze. It has a deep story for a shooter, with the main character forced to make a difficult moral choice in the course of his work. Haze also introduces a number of interesting game mechanics, such as the ability to feign death in an attempt to trick your enemies. Joystiq, meanwhile, spent time with the most gorgeous-looking PC game of the year: Crysis. "Crysis is a joy for its subtleties, and for its complexities. We watched as [executive producer for Crysis Rob] Letts haphazardly caused enough commotion for an enemy combatant to fire a flare out over the tree tops. A minute later, reinforcements arrived by boat and by jeep. Some time later, over the ridge, troops who had spotted the flare earlier where still on alert. Letts spoke of a basic set of variables (the whos, whats, and wheres), which when applied to a dynamic environment, provide the player with ever-unpredictable 'action bubbles.' While there is a narrative structure to Crysis and a series of well-documented twists (two major environmental upheavals that change the nature of gameplay), Letts seemed most proud of the 'sandbox' nature of Crytek's tactical shooter."

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[nightgeometry]

Not sure if that is funny, weird as fucking or just disturbing.

Not new! ;)

[sveard]

interesting game mechanics, such as the ability to feign death in an attempt to trick your enemies Unreal had this, so it's not new. :p Or at least Unreal Tournament had this, I'm not sure if Unreal really did.

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[YojimboJango]

RTFA: This is a new element in how the game implements it.
Feign death is old as the sticks, however in this game you play as a genetic super soldier being fed a stream of happy 'nectar'. This nectar hides gruesome realities from their soldiers minds, meaning that if you play dead the enemy won't be able to see you at all. This may seem like a cheap trick (especially in multiplayer), however it looks like there will be a system of timed button presses in order to play dead that should keep this from being

Crysis!

[Wilson_6500]

I'm really, really excited for this game to finally hit the stores, because then people can stop talking about it! I can't find a PC gamer these days with a graphics card made in the last year or so who ISN'T going on about this pretty face with who-knows-what behind it.

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[TacNuke]

Ditto. I have a feeling it will be just as craptastic as FarCry........

Surely the difficulty is in balance

[AaronLawrence]

Its not that hard to make a realistic group of guards, soldiers etc, have them spot you visually and attack you. (Sure, there are difficulties but the basics are well solved by now).

What's hard is making a fun game out of that, because you would most likely be killed immediately, without making it ridiculous (enemy weapons doing 1/10th damage of yours)