The combination of incredible graphics and low price (especially during the regular Steam sales) has created an active Crysis modding community. Crysis servers aren’t stuck with people playing Predator killing each other over a tropical island - and the fact we can write that as some sort of limited activity reminds us of why gaming is so awesome. Nomad’s Nano Suit (effectively “Lone Hero’s Sciencey Cool-Stuff-Excuse”) isn’t the only high-tech component of Crysis. In fact, it’s barely the beginning:

1. Back To The Crysis

In the single coolest and most pointless (two terms which often go together) modification ever made, CryModder Tirido has built a time machine out of a DeLorean out of a Crysis vehicle out of a physics simulation. And it is glorious.

Only and utterly YES

The mod shows off Crysis’ spectacular shading and light-level alterations, otherwise known as “different times of day.” Activating the time circuits throws your vehicle through the fourth dimension, and can be enjoyed from any viewpoint as many awesome times as you like. Particular attention has been paid to the interior of the car, complete with time circuits and the flux capacitor itself. This is the sort of thing only a love-based mod can achieve: Tirido probably spent longer on something you have to enter a vehicle and turn backwards to see than most web developers spend on their whole sub-standard flash game.

I don’t think Nomad’ll have as much trouble with Biff

2. Turbo Cars!

If the above got your engines started, install this mod to keep them running. And driving underwater. And exploding things with infinite ammo. At turbospeed. Climbing into a Crysis car is awesome fun, climbing out of it again a second later because it flipped on a pebble less so, which is why Duck delved into the code and removed everything that could reduce your speed or toughness.

Pick a car, any car. Also: UFO

The Turbo Cars mod turns your Crysis server into the ultimate demolition derby, with super-strong soldiers and vehicles racing around with unlimited explosives. Want a jeep that’ll actually survive? Feel like flying over roads apparently paved with C4 by other players? Turbo Cars is wish fulfillment and a fun night out for any clan.

3. Real-Lifesis

What Real-Lifesis loses in unwieldy appellation, it makes up for in style. Note: our website can’t actually show you how good it looks but we’re going to try:

No, you need to go see this full size.

Real-lifesis rebalances the manifold options in Crysis to more truly recreate real life (or rather, a real life where you’re the ultimate killer outnumbered but never outgunned for revenge to the death!) It doesn’t actually add any extra code, but like an artist working with well established paints, or more accurately an engineer tuning an incredibly powerful engine which happens to power pictures, Real-lifesis offers amazing visuals. Which Crysis players like, or they’d have installed something else.

4. Eyefinity Crysis

For the more traditional method of upgrading PC graphics (spending an atrocious amount of money) Maxishine Xtreme Gaming hooked a Radeon Infinity up to three 2560 x 1600 monitors, already more pixels than most people have ever seen, to top out at a truly staggering 7680 x 1600 monster. Then they loaded the graphikingiest game they could find. Crysis.

You bet we’ll include their links. They earned them.

This isn’t for everyone, or indeed anyone when you compare the total cost to almost everything else in the world, but it’s fun to know that this happened.

5. Gears Of Crysis with Bullet Time

It sounds like someone smashed a load of games together, but James-Ryan beat even the fictional US super-secret military by upgrading the Nano Suit. As well as the usual strength, speed, armor and cloak, you can convert its abilities into bullet time - to better appreciate the beautiful physics of blowing things up - or even Gears of Crysis mode, where you stand outside your armored self and admire a man wearing the national budget of most counties beating up foreigners. In high definition.

Dino D-Day hasn’t won the Lifetime “Gravity Gun Throwing BFGs” Award for Best Concept Ever, but only because that award doesn’t exist. And the award doesn’t exist only because we never knew that Dino D-Day would be invented, creating an impossible spiral of awesome which risks destroying the laws of logic by being a better concept than our universe was built to withstand.

This isn’t some trash flash web-garbage where the ‘funny’ title took three-quarters of the development time: this is a full Source engine game pitting a lone hero against the entirety of a Jurassic Reich. With a free demo already online you can go download it right now and be blasting dinosaurs within the hour, for free, effectively making the next sixty minutes an intelligence test. Because anyone who doesn’t do that is a fool.

All your old favorites from World at War, MoH, and Day of Defeat servers are present and correct: the Thompson, the stick grenade, and of course the Garand which - as always - musically ‘tings’ as it ejects a spent clip. What isn’t as always is that it tings because you’re desperately pumping those shots into a charging triceratops, which is exactly the sort of shakeup you need to make these weapons fresh after approximately one million World War II titles.

The only time it’s acceptable to NOT shoot a videogame Nazi.

Because this game doesn’t rely on its gimmick: it’s a real shooter, and if the demo level is anything to go by that’s short for “really fantastic shooter”. In a single level there are several modes of play: standard Nazi-plugging; a three-way armed misunderstanding between you, Nazis and a Triceratops; being stalked through a maze of ruins by a swarm of raptors; and a final battle against if-I-even-need-to-tell-you-what-you-won’t-get-it.

Now you tell me

Particularly pleasant is the tightness of the weapons: like Half Life 2 Deathmatch servers before it, the game really rewards accurate shooting instead of spraying. Yes, that does extend to dinosaur headshots. A phrase so incredible we’re going to say it again without even pretending to have an excuse: DINOSAUR HEADSHOTS.

You can also do this! (If you don’t want to do this please leave our site.)

There’s also real humor and skill in developing the brilliant concept. The website is stuffed with great propaganda material (including an announcement that Eisonhower is serious about sending only one man against the entire Dino horde). The full game will be released on Steam later this year, featuring a full multiplayer deathmatch (so you can see Source physics on something other than Counter-Strike servers for once) and all sorts of goodies. But don’t just take our word for it: watch this, and if you’re not excited by the end please check to make sure that you aren’t dead.

Let’s be honest:  first person shooters live on PC.  They might survive as crippled console versions, thumbsticks turning at the same speed and accuracy as the average wheelchair, hooked up to auto-aiming life support to stave off Terminal Lack Of Mouse, but it’s only on real computers that the ability to aim actually means something.

Second honesty: single player is practice.  That’s all.  It might be the most cinematic practice you’ve ever seen, with incredible set pieces and innovative action scenes allowing to you to indulge in every Hollywood fantasy, but as long as the enemies are AI it’s just a glorified Tutorial.  You played through Modern Warfare for the fun, World at War for access to the Zombie servers, but it’s all sort of pointless unless you’re plugging people so that victory means “You’re better than someone”, not “The computer was programmed to let you have that.”  That’s what game servers are for, and that’s why we’re looking at the most popular multiplayer FPSs:

1.  Counter-Strike

If this is news then please, stop wasting time here and get your ass onto a Counter-Strike server right now.  Right now there are more people playing CS than there are holding hands, which might sound like it says something scary about society until you realise romance never killed any terrorists.  Various versions take up the first, second and seventh positions on the most-played list - and that’s not just shooters, that’s in terms of every game Valve has (to say nothing of the thousands of pirate players out there).  Counter-Strike: Source is now outperforming 1.6 servers (despite the complaints of purists), and even the relatively unpopular Condition Zero servers are stuffed with several thousand players at all times.  Or to put it another way: statistically speaking, Counter Strike is more popular than Shakespeare.

2.  Call of Duty 4

Things can get a little hectic

Modern Warfare servers continue to crush even their own sequel, with World at War servers lagging behind because of “Less impressive weapons”, “Not being made by Infinity Ward” and the all-important “Being yet another World War II game even though the reason we were excited before was because Modern Warfare didn’t do that” factor.  Cod4 is the top FPS on X-fire’s total playtime charts ranking only behind World of Warcraft overall - and ranking below WoW in playtime is like ranking below the universe in size.

3.  Team Fortress 2

It’s all about class balance

Valve’s magnum opus of online play, and proof that a decade of development time pays off.  Team Fortress 2 servers rank second only to Counter-Strike on Valve’s charts, and even outperforms Football Manager 2009, the biggest non-shooting-people-in-the-face title on their service.  For some reason.  The constant addition of new maps, fixes and unlocks keeps the population pumped up, although it’s still a factor of four behind even the closest Counter-Strike game.  But then, many religions have less devout followings than CS.

4.  Left 4 Dead

This game is fun

Multiplying the number of players by the average game bodycount, L4D servers shoot through three million zombie corpses an hour.  It seems those protesting the sequel were an extremely vocal minority, with most players far too busy “actually playing the game” and “enjoying themselves” to waste much time on such silliness.  It also means that at this very second there are at least four kilo-Louii running around with machine guns.

5.  Day of Defeat

There’s a slight learning curve

Ruggedly hanging in at number five are the Day of Defeat servers (both Source and old-school) - guilty of being set in the same time period as 90% of all known games, but at least with the excuse of coming from a time before the problem wasn’t quite so bad.  It also shares the status of being a Half Life modification, meaning that the altered adventures of Gordon Freeman literally have the entire FPS table surrounded.

Another excellent example of modders making what the companies have failed to: Dystopia servers are  Neuromancer in source mod form, meaning you can not only live out all your online cyber-decking dreams - you can kill other players while you’re there.  That’s two layers of life-and-death interconnected networking, and it couldn’t be more Gibsonesque if everyone worked for drug-dealing corprorations.

Shooters and cyberterminals, this is Dystopia in one screenshot.

The first thing that hits you is the graphics, in a good way.  A great deal of work has gone into the dystopian feel of the game.  Grimy graffiti and shattered security doors under neon lighting contrast well with the psychedelic cyberspace, easily kicking the hell out of all attempts at cyberpunk cinema to date.  (Especially that awful Keanu Reeves “Johnny Mnemonic”.)

The game’s hook is the two levels of play, with some classes slipping into cyberspace at stations scattered around the level.  While they navigate the Tron-tastic computer space their bodies are defenseless, leaving team-mates have to defend them as they alter security systems, unlock doors, or other effects which alter the “real world” level.  And if computers affecting a real world inside your computer game in the real world isn’t enough for you - well, we can’t make it more meta than that without you turning out to be us all along.

This couldn’t be more cyberspacey if you were on a LightCycle

Unfortunately the idea isn’t realised as fully as they’d like: the designers obviously imagined an involved split-layer gameplay, with teams navigating both worlds to outfox each other, while most levels just end up with a series of linear objectives - each of which requires a hacker to complete.  It’s like an attack/defend map where every capture point requires a minigame.  On the upside those mini-levels are beatifully realised, probably the best rendering of Gibson’s cyberspace yet, and there are some tense moments as you hack through 3-D neon matrix listening to faint echoes of real-world gunfire getting closer to your defenseless body.

Another appeal is the customisable classes - as well as the standard light/medium/heavy divisions, you equip your character with various “Implants” (basically skills) to customize your role.  These implants compete for slots, so each subset means making a choice of how you’re going to play - hacking or scanning the real world, silenced weapons or sprinting ability, healing or agility etc.  On a populated Dystopia server this can lead to quite an assortment of abilities, though you need a good team to make the most use of them.  Don’t worry, thoughZ shooting the enemy until they’re dead is always a useful contribution.

It’s pretty easy to recognize Heavies

All told, it’s another free Source server mod with official Steam support - meaning you simply don’t have an excuse to be bored.  No muss, no fuss, either install the client (or ask your server provider to add it) and you get to try a whole new world for no cost at all.

Another game about killing things the second time, Killing Floor is the inspired independent movie to Left4Dead’s blockbusting hollywood.  Tripwire Interactive’s anti-undead adventure might lack the polish of Valve’s infected-a-thon but it shares the soul:  the importance of teamwork, multiplayer mayhem, and a deep love of blowing the heads off zombies.

Video games are all about living the dream, about doing the impossible and the awesome and everything you ever wanted to.  Never was that truer than with Eternal Silence: not only is it the absolute image of sci-fi space combat (intership dogfightining leading to boarding the enemy ship and sabotaging systems) but people wanted it so much they built it themselves.

Lock S-Foils in attack position! Go in for strafing run!  Shout “WOOOHOOO I’M FIGHTING IN SPACE!”

It’s a Source engine mod and they’re not messing around: the entire thing has been utterly reinvented and also shot into space.  You’ve never played anything like it: a unique multi-staged combat with everything from Interceptors to Bombers to running around with a flamethrower.  That sentence either convinced you to play it or made you realise you’re on the wrong site.  The two-level combat creates brand new tactical situations for even the most experienced FPSer.

Flame helps with ANY pest

Both red and blue have Capital Ships, protected by three Corvettes (unmanned, auto-firing heavy ships).  When one team loses those defenders the game switches to an Attack/Defend strategy: the corvetteless side must defend their capital ship against attack, either getting into space to intercept incoming ships or running around in first person defending critical systems.  The attacking enemy can either stay in space, hammering the ship, or board to try to turn off critical systems to make attacking easier.  Weapons, Shields and the Hangar are all capture points which affect the space battle.

This dual-level combat means that the game massively rewards teamwork, especially with ship classes like Bombers requiring fighter escorts to get into range.  The game can bewilder at first glance, but with plenty of loading instructions and a supportive forum, it’s easy to get up to speed.  A couple of points for the first-time player

1.  Use targeting

If you just charge out and start firing into space, well, space is pretty big.  You’re not going to hit anything.  Use the targeting controls to select who you’re shooting at - this will give you the “leading” indicator, telling you where to aim to hit a distant enemy, and allow you to lock-on with missiles by holding your cursor over the target.

2.  Don’t panic

Don’t panic, most of those Giant Death Beams will miss!

3-D combat confers control complexity but you don’t need to worry about yaw, pitch or roll at the beginning.  The mouse and forward/back will give you more than enough maneuverability until you get an idea of what’s going on.

3.  Defend the Hangar

Point capture is determined by numbers, and if you’re a Hacker or Combat class

If you’re boarded you should defend everything, of course, but when the enemy takes the hangar you lose the ability to launch ships at all.  Meaning the entire space aspect stops being “Exciting combat” and starts being “Their entire team just killing you.”  Don’t let that happen.

Eternal Silence, even more than any other mod yet, really rewards playing with a good team of friends on a solid server.  It’s truly a scifi fantasy come to videogame life, and a small amount of learning is well worth the fun rewards - and official Steam support means that you (or your Eternal Silence server) doesn’t have to worry about patches, files, or other awkward install issues which plague third-party programs.  Oh, and did we mention it’s free?  You’re either playing it, or you don’t like cool new things.

Synergy: once an awful managerial buzzword meaning “How about you guys work harder for less money”, but now it means getting together to shoot things.  Which it probably meant to the employees of the aforementioned managers, too, but now you can do it legally.

Synergy isn’t the only co-operative modification to the Source engine (there are also fun Follow Freeman servers), but it is the one that best lives up to its name.  The Synergy Team now co-operate with Valve (via Steam) to deliver official updates and easy installs, turning the mod from “good idea by well meaning people” into “basically a great new game that you don’t even have to pay for.”  Which is nice.

This official Source support means there are now far more Synergy servers running and you can be sure of finding fellow rebels at any time of the day or night.  But your first game can be a little confusing, so follow these rules to enhance your initial teamwork experience.

1.  Set your game list

This one’s so important they put it in a text box as soon as you start the game, but let’s be honest: you don’t read those, do you?  It’s all “Yes”, “I agree”, “Next” and “Just let me play the game!” until you get into the thick of the action.  Then wonder why the Synergy servers keep booting you off.  After setting your controls and video options, click on “Game List” and enable all the titles you own.  Now Synergy can access those files for use in different maps.

2.  Join a small server

Your FPS experience might tell you to join a 23/24 server, something almost full with one precious spot left to go (after all, a Team Fortress 2 server with only eight people on it significantly fails to rock).  But some synergy levels have a steep learning curve.  While there are adaptations from the official episodes, a lot of custom made maps lack the clear sense of direction of more polished works.

That’s where the small group comes in.  In a full server many of the other players are likely as confused as you, spreading all over the map and being picked off by armed and angry NPCs.  With a small running crew it’s easier to find each other and stick together (other player positions are displayed on your screen at all times).  Then you can get a real taste for the teamwork, decoying and flanking Combine troopers.

3.  Watch your ammo

In Team Fortress 2 only the Heavy ever runs out, while a Counter-Strike server veteran rarely lives long enough to run dry (one way or the other).  But on a Synergy server ammo is a precious resource.  Many maps were originally built with only one player in mind, while others consciously enforce a strict limit.  A team of human players charging pulse-rifle firing Combine troops with nothing but shock mauls is not uncommon.

You have to conserve your ammo, use the strange and confusing “drop” key to give up bullets for weapons you aren’t using, and most difficult of all you have to share what you find.  Sure, you can gobble it all up for yourself (or use the gravity gun to steal right out from other peoples noses, possibly while cackling villainously).  Just don’t be surprised when suddenly it’s you who has to lead the way.  It’s better to let other people have some weaponry - and let them “find” the enemy troopers for you.

The best thing about having your own server is that you can take some of the greatest games ever made, and play them exactly how you want. Some scum won’t stop using rifle grenades on CoD4? Kick him! Want to play Well despite nobody in the world liking that map? Go ahead! And thanks to the hard work of modding community FPSBanana, you can redecorate in ways you never thought possible:

1. The Glorious Francis Heavy Skin

In the best cross-over ever (until the Portal gun turns up in Half Life Episode 3), Left4Dead’s Francis can escape the infected - to a TF2 server. This skin retextures everyone’s favorite weapon-wielding Russian into Mr “I Hate Everything” himself. Install it client-side and only you’ll be able to see it, but if you host a TF2 server you can upload the upgrade for everyone to enjoy!

I hate RED!

Just imagine if Francis could take Natascha to fight the Horde - why, he’d be invincible! For about ten seconds. Then he’d run out of ammo and die, but man, it would be so sweet up till then!

2. That’s Not A Knife, THIS Is A Knife!

It’s a fact that Counter-Strike servers are still the most popular around. It’s also a fact that the most popular skins are all insanely detailed knives and weapons, which would be more worrying except the whole point of the game is “Use knives and weapons.” If you’re the kind of CS server master who can run around eliminating enemies with nothing but a knife, you should definitely make it a nice one. The terrifyingly specific “M9 Probis III” knife is the most popular.

I’m the one holding it and this thing terrifies ME.

3. Tuxedo Sleeves

Slick stunt-style shooter The Specialists may not have a Source upgrade, running off the original Half-Life engine, but it still has class. Modder “Jeffysan” certainly thinks so, tweaking the code for nothing more than giving you trendy tuxedo sleeves as you obliterate the opposition.

On one hand this is wasted effort - it doesn’t affect the game, and you barely see it. On the other hand, it makes you feel that tiny bit more like Bond and is therefore absolutely essential.

4. Band of Brothers on the Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat servers get some pop culture love with a TV-upgrade, swapping out one of the skins for Ronald Speirs. If you just asked “Ronald Who?”, you don’t watch Band of Brothers and can move on to the next item. Fans may wish to have a look at this fun skin:

5. Dead4Left

Technically the easiest mod on the list as it only copies the survivor skins over the infected, but come on, that’s pretty fun looking. It’s also a bit of a cheat on our part - the mod is single-player only, so you can’t run it on your L4D server, but we figured it was more than cool enough to let people know. And you just know that the community are working on a full multiplayer infected/survivor switch.

6. The Most Terrifying Mod Ever

Say goodbye to Silent Hill, because this is the most mentally scarring videogame you’ll ever see. That chick from the Ring could get on BitTorrent and come out of every computer in the country, and it’d only be a welcome break from the screaming. Of course it’s for L4D servers, and we warn you: don’t scroll down if you’re eating:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

How can the Boomer be made so much more terrifying by putting more clothes ON? What horrible inversion of fashion, flesh and mortal sanity makes a spraypainted thong worse than infected nakedness? We don’t know, but we salute Darksider1972 for advancing the frontiers of Lovecraftian insanity to find out.

The internet can complain about anything. At E3 Valve, makers of the greatest zombiecidal game in existence and all round Best Company Ever, announced that they were making an even better zombiecidal game WITH CHAINSAWS. While pretty much everyone ever was composing odes on the theme of “Awesome”, a small but extremely vocal minority starting whining like a man having his arms sawed off by a violin. Which just goes to show: some people could get into heaven and start a Homeowner’s Association to complain about the harp music.

In case you’re going for a Guinness record in “Not being aware of cool stuff”, Left 4 Dead servers are the best place to kill zombies until someone connects virtual reality to Army of Darkness. It sold over two and a half million units at retail and, in case you haven’t noticed, Valve don’t sell most of their stuff at retail. That means that even without counting digital downloads, which is kind of Valve’s entire deal, there’s an entire population of Jamaica-worth of people enjoying killing the dead on L4D servers.

Of those, a group of seventeen thousand have threatened to boycott Left 4 Dead 2 for a range of offenses ranging from “How dare you make another game” to, we kid you not, “We don’t like the use of fiddles.” It’s really hard to argue with people like that (but not for the reasons they think.) That’s about zero point zero zero seven per cent of the retail audience, or put another way: if you were in a room with a hundred people this group wouldn’t even count as the mass of dead skin.

Other problems with the protest, which we’re going to call the “We Hate Good Things” movement, include how Valve actually listen to online feedback. There’s the terrible risk they might in any way acknowledge these whiners - the worst thing you can do short of feeding a Gremlin after midnight. These people complain that constant perfecting of the balance, extra game modes, and entire extra levels don’t count as appreciable free content - they should spend some time as XBox users, then they’d really know what a monolithic corporation blocking downloadable content was like.

The best problem with the “boycott” is how it’s impotent as a nervous panda. These are people who spend time organizing online protests about games that haven’t even been released - they’re less likely to resist the actual product than a fat kid in Willy Wonka’s Emergency Donut warehouse. They simply won’t be able to live without the new game, if only so that they can play one of the best things ever and complain about it. (Again.) The only real risk is that they’ll use this perceived insult as hollow justification for piracy, as happened with Spore, but then they’ll only have themselves to blame for being unable to download extra content.

In fact, we kind of hope they’ll live up to their improbable promise of “finding something else to do.” It’ll let the rest of us play Left 4 Dead servers in peace.

Valve just announced the sequel to Left 4 Dead, the best zombie game ever made, and it looks like the new game will CHAINSAWS CHAINSAWS chainsaws CHAINSAWS!

CHAINSAWS!

CHAINSAAAAAAWS!

YES!

There’s a bunch of other stuff too, but honestly: who cares. All that matters is six cylinders of Evil-Dead-annihilating action hardware, and the inevitable awesome nod to Ash from the awesome Valve writers. Besides, you can tell an awful lot about the game from that one critical item.

1. Left 4 Dead is now essentially perfect

The only thing missing from any Left 4 Dead server, ever, was this ultimate in zombie-solving hardware. Any L4D server player will tell you that the claustrophobia, the insane hordes, the frantic escape and screamed commands are all there already. Left 4 Dead 2, or Left 2 Die as we’ll refer to it, is building on the same engine. With other companies that could mean a lazy sequel, with Valve it means that the best game ever just got improved for a solid year by the best multiplayer game designers in the business.

The new charger will punch your camping ass right out of those defensible little rooms.

Expect even more intense action sequences with a more exciting Director, less scummy places for exploiters to hide, and special infected specifically designed to pull the four of you out of that corner where you’re standing in a stack.

2. Actual melee weaponry

L4D server veterans have seen the melee attack evolve in their never-ending battle against the undead. It’s always been an emergency measure, a desperate “Get away from me!” flailing using whatever you happen to have in your hands (and the irony of beating something to second-death with a medkit was always enjoyable). The ability was “upgraded” with the tiring, making it more like the zombie movies you can’t just stand in a corner slapping and screaming “Keep away!” That is, in fact, exactly how you know someone’s going to die.

Now there are dedicated melee weapons, and early reports indicate that players will have to choose between long range firepower and close range domination - or more accurately, communicate to find a good mix between the two. Those on Left 4 Dead servers live or die by their co-operation, and you can bet Left 4 Dead 2 will feature infected springing out from the most unlikely places. Expect instant close range attacks to stress the importance of close range weapons like the CHAINSAW, chainsaw, and of course CHAINSAW! (We’re told there are weapons like axe, baseball bat and slapstick frying pan, but honestly, everything else might as well be nerf bats.)

3. Melee tiers

If the chainsaw proves anything, other than how Valve love us and want us to be happy, it’s that the melee weapons will be tiered like the firearms. It’s just not possible to have baseball bat and rotating-blades-motor-death-machines in the same set of options. There’s bound to some balance issues to prevent a close-cutting-quartet - most likely the chainsaw will be the slow and heavy anti-special infected weapon, possibly with brief warm up and cooldown times, while (as any TF2 server player will tell you) the baseball bat is a rapid attack weapon for clubbing down crowds of corpses.

It all comes down on November 17th.