Crysis Review for the PC

When I was in high school, I had to read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a great horror book about the story of one person that has two distinct personalities depending on the time of the day. With Crysis, you get the same feeling, as the game starts as a design piece on how to make an open world feel real and believable, only meet its other personality, which plays out as a standard first person shooter experience. It is an enjoyable experience, but you know that with some touch up work, it could have been so much more.

Read the rest of this entry »

Crysis Editor at Work: 1000 Nuke Explosion

Nuclear explosions, who doesn’t love seeing them when you are playing a game. I think back to the first nuke I dropped in Command and Conquer on a friend of mine (over dial-up!). It was a sweet thing to see his base fall. Lately, I was wowed with the nukes that you can drop in World in Conflict. They are things of beauty and a joy to unleash upon your enemy. But somone has upped the ante in the nuclear explosion department. In the above video, someone decided to take the Crysis world editor and pile up 1000 nuclear canisters and blow them up. The ensuing explosion is massive and shows how the Crysis engine renders individual physics particles.

The person that created this ran the demo on a Q6600 Quad Core processor with a couple of gigs of RAM and an 8600GT. You can see the video card start to generate artifacts towards the end of the video due to the high processor demands of the engine. If only I could do this in the game or in multiplayer. Definitely would equal a lot of kills, probably including myself.

EA Says “Maximum Platinum” for Crysis

When the NPD numbers came in last month for the PC, the numbers showed a decent showing for Crysis, but far less than what most people seemed to think in regards of sales for the highly touted PC exclusive shooter. Immediately people sprung to life proclaiming PC gaming dead and that Crysis was soon to be headed to the PS3.

Well, today, EA sang a different tune at their year end fianacial meeting for shareholders. At that meeting, it was announced that Crysis recently went platinum, meaning that one million units of the game have been sold at either retail or via digital download channels. This is a marked improvement from the 88,000 that were sold in the first week, when failure was all but annoucned for the game. The strong showing for the game most likely comes from the European market where PC gaming is still the strongest platform for game sales.

via Joystiq

See Also:

Unreal Tournament III for the PC Sinks, While Crysis Aims High

Let’s Extinguish the Never-ending Funeral Pyre for PC Gaming

Aeropodcast #19: The “Back From the Ether” Edition

Hello everyone, and welcome back to a long delayed podcast. As mentioned in the show, we had several issues with scheduling over the holdiays and some emergencies that had to be taken care of, but we are back and we have come out of the gate with solid show packed full of goodness. As always, we want to ask all the listeners to Digg the podcast and to review us on iTunes. It boosts the podcast in searches when you do this.

Length: 1:25:26, 118MB Direct Link Here

Download the Podcast on iTunes | RSS | Odeo | Digg | Zune

Click the jump for a summary of the show

Read the rest of this entry »

Unreal Tournament III for the PC Sinks, While Crysis Aims High

Looking over the NPD data this week, there were two PC games of note that were on the charts. They did not rank up at the top as I doubt the PC will ever see million copy sales again, unless all console manufacturers quit the business. But it was interesting to see the respectable numbers of one of the titles and the dismal numbers from the other title.

Read the rest of this entry »

Vista Service Pack 1 Test Drive

Being the risk taker that I am, I downloaded and installed the RC1 candidate for Windows Vista, and I have put together some thoughts on it. Overall, the Service Pack seems to make things a little quicker, but I have yet to find a truly compelling feature that is selling me on the upgrade. Keep reading to see some of the issues I have had with Vista, and whether this patch has fixed them, left them alone or made them worse.

Read the rest of this entry »

Aeropodcast #17: The Jeff Gerstmann Incident

Tonight, it is just Joe in sunny California and George in the near arctic cold in South Dakota heading up this podcast and it was a strange affair indeed as George had to redirect his SkypeID to a landline to participate due to his less than adequate Internet access. Technical difficulties aside, it turned out to be a great show that covered a lot of topics including the biggest story of the week, the whole Jeff Gerstmann/Gamespot debacle. Remember to Digg the podcast and to review us on iTunes. It boosts the podcast in searches when you do this.

Length: 1:06:51, 89.7MB Direct Link Here

Download the Podcast on iTunes | RSS | Odeo | Digg | Zune

Read the rest of this entry »

Aeropodcast #16 - Killing Me Softly With Live for Windows

Tonight, we have a great show for all the listeners out there in podcast land. We jammed a lot of discussion into one hour of show. Stephen is the host for the evening, while Paul, James and Joe fall in to bring a rousing slate of topics and discussion. Just remember that if you have any tips, suggestion, trivia, questions, or just want to stump the hosts with some trivia, send it to tips@aeropause.com. Also, make sure to review us on iTunes, and Digg the podcast to move us up the ladder. It helps the show garners us more listeners. Hit the jump for the show notes.

Length: 1:01:31, 102MB Direct Link Here

Download the Podcast on iTunes | RSS | Odeo | Digg | Zune

Read the rest of this entry »

Aeropodcast #15: The TurkeyDay Edition

Hello everyone, we are back with the latest edition of the podcast. This week, we were running light with just myself and Stephen to try and cover all the news and topics for the week. We even made sure to have some positive news for the PS3 for a change. We also want to remind everyone that we are always looking for tips, requests, trivia and news for the podcast, so if you have any, send it to tips@aeropause.com. Also, make sure to review us on iTunes, and Digg the podcast to move us up the ladder.

Length: 35:10, 46.6MB Direct Link Here

Download the Podcast on iTunes | RSS | Odeo | Digg

Read the rest of this entry »

New Nvidia 8800GT Cards Have Power and Performace For Great Price

So I have been sitting on the fence in regards to a video card upgrade. I have been waiting for the next Nvidia cards that would come out after the 8800GTX and 8800GTS cards. As has been proven in the past, Nvidia always seems to release a couple of hastily developed cards in the first batch and then puts out a new set a few months later that are nearly as powerful, while being much more efficient and cheaper. That has finally become a reality with the 8800GT cards.

Read the rest of this entry »