“Crysis was a pretty game” is, amazingly, still an understatement well over a year after the game was released. Sure there are the Gears and the Killzones, but those games don’t give you the chance to mow down a small cluster of trees and watch them tumble down a hill, or smash down huts once inhabited by modest villagers. Basically, the folks at Crytek did some damned impressive work, and today they announced their latest and most creatively titled graphics engine yet: CryENGINE 3.

The announcement doesn’t give a lot of details, just a lot of adjectives like next-gen, AAA, and other top-tier descriptors. What it does share, though, is that this engine will be cross-platform, serving up the goods for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. They’re also pimping versatility, saying it will be great for action games, MMO’s and more. And to make it really marketable to developers, the engine is touted to have amazingly powerful and easy to use tools maximizing output and lowering budget costs. Hopefully this means it will be easier than ever to create videos of thousands of collapsing and exploding barrels.

The new engine will be unveiled in San Francisco at this year’s GDC. Lucky for us and you, we have a little time booked to check it out for ourselves. Excited? We are.