Let me get something out of the way: You do not need to drop five grand to play Crysis Warhead. EA recently announced that it’s working with UltraPC to produce a system that will play Warhead at an average of 30 frames-per-second for about $700. While that’s still more expensive than a console, it’s a far cry from the "I have to drop a down a payment to play this game" mentality. Since the development target was this system and its midrange components, the optimizations that Crytek’s Budapest studio applied to Warhead translate into a smooth framerate for such a midrange system and a general performance increase over the original Crysis.

But performance optimizations aren’t the only things improved in Warhead, a sort of standalone episode/expansion to Crysis. Before demonstrating a couple of missions to us, producer Bernd Diemer quipped, "There are no mandatory vehicle sequences in Warhead" -- a reference to a Crysis segment involving a VTOL aircraft that drew plenty of gripes from gamers. So naturally, in the areas he showed off -- one was a mission where you and a pilot both drive APCs to a rendezvous point, and the other was a sequence where you zip a hovercraft across the flash-frozen island -- the vehicles were just a convenience, not a necessity. "If you wanted to, you could traverse this whole trail on foot. It’s harder but doable. We never lock you into anything," Diemer says.

Diemer gives a little more context to the first mission, the aforementioned APC drive, by explaining that Warhead covers Sergeant Michael "Psycho" Sykes’ mission to pursue a Korean general who supposedly possesses a warhead of sorts (it’s part of Psycho’s mission to confirm if he does). Through the game, moments from Nomad’s (the operative in the original Crysis) story intersect with Psycho’s, such as an early mission in Warhead that takes place after Nomad calls down an airstrike in Crysis. In Warhead, Diemer showed an operation to extract a pilot who will lend air support for the remainder of Psycho’s mission. With that in mind, he demonstrated one major obstacle to Psycho’s and his pilot’s APC cruising: Korean soldiers in nanosuits.

Nanosuit-clad Koreans show up much more frequently in Warhead than in Crysis, and Crytek has made one significant gameplay tweak: taking the minigun away from the Korean nanosuit soldiers. In the original Crysis, your first encounter with nanosuit-enhanced Koreans was a vicious and memorable firefight in a graveyard -- the fact that their soldier A.I. was paired with nanosuit powers made them feel like actual supersoldiers. Late in the game, every nanosuited Korean had a minigun, turning genuinely interesting enemies into simple bullet sponges that just unloaded their miniguns in a boring manner. For Warhead, the developers took the minigun away and made the nanosuit Koreans behave like they should: as soldiers who can jump, punch, run, and cloak as well as you.

Adding to the deadlier and tweaked Koreans are the aliens, which leads to one of Diemer’s favorite aspects of Warhead: three-way skirmishes between you, the Koreans, and the aliens. One mission he showed takes place after aliens flash-freeze the island. Diemer points out that while the original Crysis kept you inside a flash-frozen wasteland before leaving it and never stepping foot in it again, Warhead has you navigating between both the frozen and unfrozen parts of the area, which allows for areas where both Koreans and aliens are duking it out. Diemer claims that the game doesn’t cheat by making everyone target you the moment you show your face; he says that each A.I. prioritizes the current threats and acts appropriately. If you blast a Korean soldier with a shotgun, he will likely focus on you. Leave him alone and he’ll probably focus on the big scary alien. In theory, if you shoot an alien with an assault rifle but a Korean hits that same alien with a rocket, the alien will be more pissed off at the Korean. Since Diemer had a bit of a hard time showing off the game, talking, and playing well at the same time, he opted to avoid most of the firefights and sneak past the foes.

Finally, Diemer showed off something that’s been hinted at in the original Crysis but is now more explicit in Warhead: a full squad of American soldiers in nanosuits. In Crysis, you occasionally had one nanosuit buddy, but for the most part you were by yourself. While a fair share of Warhead is solitary as well, it has sequences where a full complement of nanosuit soldiers accompanies Psycho. While there are no actual squad commands or tactical mechanics, it’s still pretty cool to see nanosuited badasses who are helping you take down enemies instead of trying to take you down. A particularly cool sequence is when Psycho and his nanosuited comrades encounter a gigantic alien Hunter (i.e., the giant alien mechano-spider-tank thing). In Crysis, even with tanks and artillery and lots and lots of soldiers pounding on it, the Hunter never let down. Yet in Warhead, since Psycho is backed up by even more weapons and nanosuit-equipped soldiers, what was previously a one-sided massacre now becomes a dramatic firefight with a boss.

At this point, after seeing the numerous improvements that Warhead has made, the biggest "if" factor is whether or not Warhead maintains them throughout the game. Crysis, to both its critics and fans, was a game with an incredible first two-thirds that dovetail into scripted mediocrity after a distinct point. So far, Warhead looks like it has improved on much of Crysis’ shortcomings. But is this improvement consistent throughout the game? We’ll find out in our review next week.