A short history of Karl Hilton Earlier on in the month as part of the Game City Nights event in Nottingham SFL caught up with Mr Karl Hilton, Managing Director of Crytek UK (developers of the forthcoming multiplayer mode of the game Crysis 2) who gave us an insight into him and the team.

Karl's background and journey included doing an MA at Bournemouth University and then diving straight into being the lead artist on Goldeneye (only 9 people worked on this title in total) and Perfect Dark with Rare before getting “bored”. So he waltzed up to Eidos with a brazen pitch that they should let him do another first person multiplayer shooter because he was the lead artist on Goldeneye, and to his credit they did! This pitch went onto become Time Splitters on the PS2 which was a console launch title.

His stock was super high after creating Time Splitters 2 and was in talks with the mighty Lucas Arts to develop a new game but after they spent 2 years developing it the title was pulled over intellectual property wranglings. Now Karl didn’t mention any of this, due to contractual reasons, but SFL have done a little bit of digging for you to find out the juicy details and we reckon the title in question might have been Star Wars Battlefront 3.

After the relative failure of their title Haze on the PS3, there was some power politics going on behind the scenes with the publisher Ubisoft, Karl was very adamant that independent studios must retain the ownership of any IP they create. His company Free Radical was then purchased by German games developer Crytek and from that point on in February 2009 they’ve been working towards the multiplayer game of Crysis 2.

Parkour with Guns Next we met the very charming Steven Lewis, lead designer of Crysis 2 multiplayer, who again gave us a little background into his world (joined Free Radical 6 years ago and worked on Time Splitters 3 and there were several references to Time Splitters 4 – could it eventually see the light of day?). Steven gave us glorious insights with some world exclusive concept art shots which have never been seen outside the studio before, as well as thoughts behind the multiplayer map designs and a chance to see the incredible sandbox editor, Cryengine 3, in use.

Crysis 2 is based in the aftershock of an earthquake/tsunami in New York (a huge departure from the jungle setting of the original) and Mr Lewis revealed that the urban NY has a “different kind of beauty”, one which has a “catastrophic beauty” in comparison to Crysis. The key concept in Crysis 2 is the “vertical play space”, where you can jump from and onto multiple levels rather than the entire action taking place on one level, nothing new here if you’re a fan of Assassins Creed Brotherhood, but it will be revolutionary for Call of Duty multiplayers. The maps he showed us ranged from Pier 17 to Skyline and Impact and they’re a mixture of long range combat, tight interior spaces and non planar spaces, “it’s parkour with guns”.

The demo has landed Finally the wait of PS3 owners is over, the multiplayer demo for Crysis 2 is now available for download to all PSN user. The size of the demo is 1.4GB and it features two multiplayer modes "Team Instant Action" and "Crash Site". It also supports up to 12 online multiplayer players.
SFL are looking forward to testing out the brand new nano suit and will be indulging in many stealth attacks with its invisibility mode in the forthcoming weeks.

Crysis 2 is released in the UK on PS3, XBOX360 and PC on March 25th 2011