EA recently invited the gaming press to a hands-on preview of the most anticipated—and most hyped—game of the year: Crysis. The company pulled out all the stops, hosting the event onboard the USS Hornet, the retired aircraft carrier depicted in one of the game’s early levels.

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli was there to thank each of the companies that have had a hand in funding and/or helping to develop Crysis. EA’s Global Manager, EA Partners David DeMartini; Intel’s Senior Director Software & Solutions Bill Kirby; and Microsoft’s Global Product Manager for Games for Windows Heidi Rademacher stood up in succession to make brief speeches praising Crytek and sharing their excitement about how close the game was to shipping.

NVIDIA'S NEXT SHOT IN THE GPU WAR

During his speech, Nvidia’s senior vice president Dan Vivoli let slip that Nvidia intended to “launch new hardware to coincide with Crysis’ launch.” Vivoli didn’t elaborate, but the rumor mill has been predicting that Nvidia would ship a new top-end GPU right before the holiday shopping season, just as they did with the GeForce 8800 last year.

Nvidia has been working closely with Crytek throughout the life of this project, according to Vivoli, who told the press that Crysis is “the most advanced game ever developed.” Comparing Crysis to Dinosaur Island, the tech demo that Crytek eventually turned into Far Cry, Vivoli claimed that the new game performs “3,000 operations per pixel, compared to 30 operations per pixel in Dinosaur Island.” He said Crytek had created “85,000 shaders for the game, about the same shader complexity as today’s animated films.”

Each weapon can be customized with scopes and other accessories.

But after having the opportunity to play one level of the single-player game for an hour, “power struggle” (a variation on capture-the-flag) for about 90 minutes, and “instant action” (a variation on deathmatch) for another hour, I came away from the event wondering if the Crytek team can deliver on its lofty promises when it finally ships the game on November 16. (Note: we were allowed to play the DirectX 9 version of the level titled “Assault” on Windows XP machines; both multiplayer sessions were played on Vista machines using DirectX 10.)

ALL'S FAIR IN WAR AND PREVIEWS

Now it wouldn’t be fair of me to judge the game before it’s shipped, but I can tell you what I saw and heard during the event. In an all-too-brief one-on-one discussion with Cevat before the hands-on sessions, Crytek’s CEO told me he thought they’d “shown too much of the game too early,” and that they had “built up people’s expectations.” But Yerli quickly returned to form and began boasting of the game’s visual flair. The game will exhibit a high degree of visual fidelity, he said, with extensive use of high dynamic-range lighting and HDR applied to depth of field. There will be 3D color correction and parallel occlusion mapping.

When I asked Yerli what differences gamers with DX10 hardware would see compared to and those with DX9 hardware, he reiterated that the two experiences wouldn’t be much different, but that there would be a “clear visual difference” in the multiplayer game. “The DX10 multiplayer experience will be completely different from the DX9 multiplayer experience,” Yerli said. “DirectX 10 servers will have day/night cycles, for instance” he continued, “so players will have to change their tactics as the sun sets because their characters will cast longer shadows.”

Yerli told me that players with DirectX 10 videocards will be able to join either DX9 or DX10 servers, but those with DX9 hardware will only be able to play on DX9 servers. “DX9 servers will not have day/night cycles,” he said, “but those DX10 players who do play on DX9 servers will still have better visual quality than players with DX9 cards.”

In Crysis' "power struggle" multiplayer game, teams represent U.S. and North Korean forces.

The single-player level we were allowed to play pitted the player against the North Koreans in an effort to secure the site where an alien craft has crashed. The aliens are not encountered in this level, and I didn’t see anything of the crash site. The first thing I attempted to do, of course, was shoot down a few palm trees because there’s been so much discussion of the game’s fully destructible environment. I managed to blow up a few trees, but many more refused to succumb to my efforts.

[More analysis--and more screenshots--after the jump.]

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