The glint of sunlight almost blinds us as it shimmers off the water. The mammoth battleship sitting in plain view hasn't fired a shot as was predicted, and we listen to Robert - the Electronic Arts representative - explain some of the cool features of Crytek's newest baby, Crysis.
Then, a crunch - the field of view shakes, and a satisfied great white swims off as the screen blurs. Robert done got eated by a shark.
"I just swam out to these islands I never knew existed," he exclaimed giddily to his Microsoft boothmate, "and I was just chilling by this battleship that I had seen far off in the distance. Then I got devoured by a freaking shark!"
No, death by shark probably isn't a reason to run out wearing only your underwear and play Crysis. But it sure was a funny capper to end the reel of physics highlights that Robert was showing to the small crowd at Microsoft's DigitalLife booth. Before Jaws had his lunch, we had just seen Robert send a barrage of gunfire into tree until the entire top quarter - palm leaves included - came tumbling to the ground. Not yet small enough to pick up, he then fired at the piece of wood again until it was a manageable size. He turned on his nanosuit's strength modifier, picked up the hunk of wood, found a hapless mercenary and nailed the sucker dead in the chest with the freshly cut plank.
It seems you can pick up pretty much anything of reasonable size in Crysis. We stuck around for more tomfoolery to see what else Robert could show us, and much of it involved finding fun things to toss around. "Banana rain," he yelped as he picked up a box of bananas. He turned on Strength and tossed it straight up in the air, chasing it with ammunition and showering the screen with fragments of banana. He then picked a loose banana off of a cabin floor and hurled it towards a mercenary, and it probably would have knocked the guy off his feet had it not smashed against the door frame.
The trick that had us giggling the most was reminiscent of Capcom's "Devil May Cry" juggle - grabbing a soldier by the throat with the strength modifier, Robert hurled the poor fellow directly up in the air and fired rounds into him as he fell towards the earth. (Of course, there was no actual juggling.)
There were other goofy moments involving vehicular tomfoolery - shooting out every tire off of a jeep, Robert decided to test whether or not a you could drive a car on rims only. In Crysis' world, apparently you can - but at speeds that seem to top out at eight miles an hour, and providing a nauseating and rickety ride at best. Another reload had him trying to drive that same jeep with the front-left tire shot out. Turning left, it seemed, became... incredibly difficult to say the least. It was a funny sight to see.
The nutty fun to be had just jerking around with the physics in Crysis, however, didn't make us forget about the rest of the astounding technology behind the game. Mountains we saw more than ten miles away from where we stood weren't just setpieces - in the final game, you'll be able to set foot on them. Robert fired a rocket at it and we watched and waited as the projectile disappeared into the distance, finally making its explosive mark almost ten seconds later in what we saw as a tiny puff of smoke.
Read here for more about the droolworthy lush greens and the undulating water...
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