Ahhhh, football and video games, these, are some of my favorite things. And when I can do a Throwback Thursday where both are involved...it's a good week.
Remember when Crysis was cool? Sure you don't. I'll bring you up to speed, since I'm the video game guy. Crysis was a popular gem from 2007 developed by Crytek Frankfurt and published by Electronic Arts. It had a few decent quarks for its time, but overall was just another first person shooter that looked pretty. Real pretty. So pretty that a PC capable of running it at its highest graphical settings was deemed impossible when the game was first launched. When you bought a PC in 2007, the first question was how Crysis would look on it. And typically, you'd be taking out a second mortgage on the house if you wanted it looking good at max settings.
From there, Crysis had a couple more sequels that while not bad, were not near as popular as the original. Crysis 3 in particular had a strong reception from critics, but the terrible sales numbers deemed it a flop.
But that doesn't mean E.A. didn't try.
If you can't get your blockbuster to sell, get a celebrity. And what better celebrity for the Australian gaming public than Jarryd Hayne? This video comes from Hayne getting transformed into Prophet, the main character from the game in a lavish media frenzy. How is this supposed to get you jazzed for the game? I don't know. Typically in America, all you do is show graphics, a catch phrase and we fork over the cash. Or perhaps marketing strategies like this are why Crysis 3's sales didn't live up to expectations. All I know is, while this doesn't make me want to hunt down a copy of Crysis 3 anytime soon, if I ever decide to go back to play the original for longer than 5 minutes, I won't have a hard time envisioning that I'm actually controlling Jarryd Hayne. And that's almost as awesome as being able to envision Chuck Norris in a Conker game.
On the plus side, it doesn't really hurt Crysis' cause. I mean, it doesn't make me not want to play it, like that God awful NFL QB Club commercial with Brett Favre. If only they could have made that QB Club commercial like the Joe Montana one. But we got a long ways to go before we talk about Joe Montana's football video game commercial for NFL '95. I mean, I haven't gotten to the Jerry Rice dog football game either.
I could talk about this for hours. I just love this stuff.