The first online preview of Crysis: Warhead has been published and it comes from IGN. The IGN staff travelled to Crytek Budapest studios in Hungary where they got to see the game being played and chat about it with Senior Game Designer Bernd Diemer and Cevat Yerli. The preview also comes with two new screen shots. Thanks to Nightmare225 for the find.

► Download 133MB 720p WMV EA version here (ZIP).

"In many ways Warhead is a different game than Crysis. The easiest way to think of Warhead is that it is Crysis with the action ramped up to 11."

"In Warhead, the designers can shift to more standard third-person cutscenes that have Psyches [Psycho] in them."

"The designers gave us a view of one of early levels in the game, Ambush. Right off the bat it's intense. VTOL transports are coming in to drop off Marines, the radio is full of chatter, and jet fighters are dropping bombs left and right. Think of the opening of the Crysis level Assault, but with that amount of energy sustained throughout."

"The battlefields are still large and open, and this gives you an incredible number of options when in a fight."

"Crytek's programmers have spent the last year optimizing and tuning the engine to improve both performance and visuals. For example, Warhead will introduce a new particle system as well as a new global ambient lighting system that boosts the image quality "at almost no performance cost" according to Yerli. Some before-and-after shots show off the new level of detail now achievable, right down to being able to see the grain in a wood plank or pores in human skin. "This is being done in DirectX 9," Yerli noted, which is good news for those who haven't or are unwilling to upgrade to Windows Vista and DirectX 10."

Crysis: Warhead First Look at IGN

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