If I was to sum up the entire Crysis experience in three words, the title of this post is what I would say. I know I will anger many by saying this, but Crysis is pretty much Call of Duty 4 on steroids. With hyper-interactive environments and almost real-world physics, Crysis provides an experience that is even more immersive than Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, or any other shooter you can name. With fairly good gameplay and massive multi-player battles, Crytek has managed to raise the bar of computer gaming to a whole new level. Even counting the aforementioned merits, Crysis would be a great first-person shooter. But then you realize that this game has something no other game has, the best video-game graphics in the history of man. Environments come to life, explosions rip through the interactive landscape like never before, trees fall over sending clouds of dust across the screen. But then a truck drives through and the dust is blown away. As you land from a 40-foot jump, the roof under you sags and collapses, individual pieces of metal rendered independently with full dynamic shadows and high-quality texturing. When you look up you are greeted by an amazing view of scenic North Korean mountains rendered with full HDR lighting effects and texturing. The mountains are no-longer just a single big model, they are covered by thousands of individual trees, bushes, and rocks.

Simply put, Crysis is amazing.

Last night I bought a EVGA 8800GTS (G92) off of Newegg. Mainly I bought it to play Crysis, and possibly Call of Duty 4. (Thankfully Crysis is included for free.) I hope it'll arrive around Monday or Tuesday so that I can post a report on the G92 series awesomeness.

After having played Call of Duty 4 multiplayer for over 20 hours I have come to the conclusion that it is a masterpiece of graphics and gameplay. As a forewarning, do not expect me to say it is better than Halo 3; it may be equal to Halo 3, but no matter how much Call of Duty fanatics whine and scream they cannot cover up the fact that Call of Duty 4 has just as many, if not more, faults as Halo 3. Off of that topic, I'm going to go back to salivating over the game.

Graphics

No matter how much those deluded Wii fans whine, graphics are still really important. Thankfully, Call of Duty 4 doesn't have to worry about bad ratings in the graphics category. With HDR, advanced night-vision, dynamic shadows, and great high-def explosions there is no lack of enticing graphics in this game. (The blood-splatters are really well done too; the guns really feel like they have some whump when the terrorists are thrown back a few feet if you unload a 10-round burst on them from an AK-47.)

Gameplay

Unlike previous Call of Duty games, it really seems like the developers actually exploited the convenient right and left bumpers on the controllers. (And didn't overuse them like the Bungie guys did in Halo 3.) The two bumpers contol the throwing of grenades, both your specialty grenades (Flash, stun, or smoke.) and the standard frag grenade. The developers also included lots of interesting equipment such as C4, claymores, and rocket propelled grenades. You can also use different "perks" that help to mix up the play a bit more, leading to the ability to make truly different and customized classes depending on your play style. You will love the claymores if your good at camping with a light machine gun or sniper rifle; though don't get too comfy, you'll still get taken out by counter-snipers or people with the Bomb-squad perk that allows them to spot your claymores more easily.

"Something truly amazing"

would be the correct description of Call of Duty 4. Combining a excellent degree of graphics, gameplay, and a degree of realism, Call of Duty 4 easily ranks in the top notch of games. It, combined with Halo 3, will definitely provide me with thousands of hours worth of entertainment for the next year.

Although the title may be misleading, the post itself is not. (Ok... That made absolutely no sense.) To get used to the new Forge editing system in Halo 3, I decided to make some changes to one of my favorite maps, Guardian. Unlike those poorly made maps that some of my friends do; where half the map is blocked off or vehicles and weapons are placed at random places. Small Town is a much more thought-out map, with a balanced layout that puts emphasis on a rapid play-style. Giving you a few seconds at the respawn to stock up on weapons before you're forced to get into battle. I focused on a "rotationary" design, placing a bunch of grenades and "power-weapons" in a pattern that emphasised movement around the map. By the time you have to reload or restock on nades; there's either going to be another weapon or pile of grenades in front of you. Overall there's probably at least one hundred grenades spaced throughout the map. I also added as many firebombs as possible, along with a couple brute shots and a flamethrower, around the map. This, couple with a copious quantity of grenades, makes for a map where a pair of people working together with grenades and weapons can take out a group twice their size. Although the exact opposite of that can also happen; 2 lonely guys getting completely devastated by four guys on the other team. If you're really that interested, download it here. (Or at least set it to download.)

Pretty self explanatory, Infection on Sandtrap is awesome. Especially when you get 10 or 12 people playing with super-speed for zombies; this makes the zombies run as fast as warthogs so that by the end of the game there's one or two hogs being chased around the map by zombies, with the zombies trying to take out the hog.