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Crytek Buys TimeSplitters Dev. Free Radical
by Chris Faylor, Feb 04, 2009 9:58am PSTUpdate: Crytek today confirmed last night's news, announcing it indeed purchasing the assets and business of Free Radical Design. The forty-some people still left at the company following December's layoffs and bankruptcy will be retained. The studio will now be known as Crytek UK.
Original: Though an official announcement on the fate of TimeSplitters developer Free Radical isn't due until tomorrow, staffer Rob Yescombe has already spilled the beans.
Crysis developer Crytek is now the proud owner of the bankrupt development studio, Yescombe, a script writer, told 1UP. "It's the smoothest deal we've ever done. It all went through quickly, efficiently, fantastically," he said.
At present, it's unclear if Crytek will enable Free Radical to regain some of the 140 employees it lost last December, or if work will continue on TimeSplitters 4.
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Sorry, I really couldn't resist. =\
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Storyline-wise, no, Crysis is not on par with Half-Life 2 or even Call of Duty 4. But gameplay-wise, it surpasses both (matter of opinion but the line of opinion rests with your preference for either linear or open experiences- if you prefer open, player-driven experiences then the aforementioned statement is true; however, if you prefer more linear experiences, then CoD 4 is probably one of your favorite SP games ever and you really didn't even have much of a reason to pick-up Crysis much less criticize it). The caveat is that you need to crank the difficulty up to Delta (on Easy, yeah the game is a tech demo... but if you recognize and don't like that, you can amp the difficulty to Delta) because that is where Crysis really scales down the hand-holding UI and cranks-up the AI. In Delta mode, the suit's powers are balanced perfectly so that your usage of them needs to be tactical and precise and so that there is always a trade-off and the AI is smart enough to put up an excellent, believable fight. Through this, the game does an excellent job- like Deus Ex before it- of allowing the player to tactically evaluate situations and to then formulate his/her plan of attack. Like Deus Ex, this makes for some very pleasingly cerebral gameplay. However, imo, it exceeds Deus Ex here (I'm not saying that Crysis is better than Deus Ex- the sum of Deus Ex's parts, its gameplay and storyline combined, trump Crysis b/c of the poor execution of Crysis's second half and yes, its poor storyline) because of the technological advances since Deus Ex and the greater immersion those provide and also the greater fluidity of combat that Crysis possesses (cloaking, getting behind cover, decloaking and taking out 2-3 enemies and recloaking to get to another spot of cover before your energy depletes and... is quite exhilarating).
Crysis's major failing, of course, is its second half. But considering how open the first half is, the first half of the game is truly infinitely replayable. Currently, I have played through the first half of Crysis more times than I have No Mercy and Blood Harvest in Left 4 Dead combined (including Co-op and Vs.- and I've had L4D since Day 1 and ofc Crysis since Day 1 as well but consider the expected playing habits of MP games vs. SP games and you will still find my aforementioned statement to be surprising). Imo, the second half is regrettable but entirely forgettable and because it can simply be ignored (and the same cannot be said for the flaws of Far Cry 2) it doesn't even matter.
Crysis: Warhead I liked about as much as Crysis. While I wasn't very happy about Warhead's more linear approach, I still found that I was able to adapt to it while maintaining the kind of tactical depth that Crysis had- Warhead just added in additional set pieces and some more annoying parts because they were meant primarily to be traversed with a vehicle but I didn't much care for that. However, what gained Warhead major points from me were its indoor sections which I expected to be absolutely terrible because they should have flown directly in the face of Crysis's design much like the second half of Crysis did... yet they did not and proved me completely wrong as the level design of those sections was more than good enough to continue to allow for the kind of open, tactical combat that makes Crysis great. Also, the final mission scored major points with me because it FINALLY nailed the use of the aliens to the point where they continued to be distinctly different enemies than North Korean troops but still had decipherable AI (and yes, many people have scoffed at Crysis's AI as "not being all that great" and while it isn't necessarily the toughest AI around, I find it to be the most believable hostile AI around and it is that believability and partial predictability that opens so many of Crysis's tactical doorways- the lack of such AI in FC2 hurts it greatly and was also supremely disappointing because the propagatable fire, among other features and weapons, seemed like perfect complements to such AI) that allowed for excellent combat interaction. Up until that point, while the aliens had still been improved, I had not found them to be on equal footing with the North Korean enemies yet.
Nevertheless, calling Crysis and/or Crysis Warhead "tech demos" is a supremely counter-productive insult and indicates either utter ignorance (if you don't like truly open experiences then don't trash them for not being linear...) or an only surface-level play-through of a deep game. For example, don't expect to get a ton out of Deus Ex by just running and gunning through it and only paying attention to the main objectives. Much the same can be said about Crysis in a slightly altered manner.
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