Crysis: The most eagerly-awaited PC shooter of the year

[Werthead]

The demo of this eagerly-awaited shooter (from the makers of Far Cry but not a direct sequel to that game) was released today. A big download (1.8 GB) but easily worth it.

 

I love this game so much I want to have its babies. Best dual wielding pistols ever. Meaty shotgun of doom. Machine gun was a bit rubbish, but your customisable auto-rifle was nifty (possibly as a two-fingers up at Doom 3 you can whack a flashlight on the end, add a silencer or a special combat device which paints enemies red for you). If the full game is like the demo, then the PC has a new FPS champion rather effortlessly.

 

On the technical front, my PC is an Athlon 64 single-core 3700+ running an nVidia 7600 with 1GB RAM. Pretty good for a single-core and a solid machine when I got it 18 months ago, capable of running pretty much everything released up until this point but admittedly no longer cutting-edge.

 

I ran the game with everything advanced switched off (no anti-aliasing or HD effects) and all the texture and effects set to Medium. The settings suggested I run the game at 800 resolution but I ignored that and whacked it up to 1080. It looked good. Some textures were a bit sloppy close-up, particularly rocks and scenery, but only if you ran right up to it. Otherwise the graphical quality was comparable to Far Cry with everything whacked up to the max. I was getting good FPS up until enemies appeared, when there would be a brief pause then the game would run as before, which was a bit odd but better than slowdown during combat I suppose.

 

Graphical quality is amazing. Before BioShock went ballistic and crashed on me I was impressed very much by the design, but given this is much-vaunted Unreal III tech I was left a bit nonplussed by the actual graphical quality itself. It was better than Oblivion, for example, but not by much. Crysis takes things several notches higher. Facial animation and detail is incredible, even though I was running it a long way from maximum detail. I can't wait to see this in HD at 1600 resolution on a dual-core. However it's only really any good in cut scenes, as in combat you're not going to get this close to the enemy (at least to start off with).

 

The major innovation is your combat suit. I pondered if this was going to be unreasonably difficult to use and the radial menu is indeed tricky to use in combat (hold down middle mouse button and cycle through the suit settings and weapon customisation options), but the hotkeys are much easier. You can set your suit to Armour, Speed or Strength mode and the demo presents several situations where using each alone or rapidly switching between them is essential. I was gratified by the chicken-grabbing option, although sadly it was exaggerated that you could dual-wield a chicken and a shotgun simultaneously (the game insists it's more 'realistic' that you can't fire a shotgun in one hand and you must use a pistol instead). Amusingly you can use your second hand to grab enemies and throw them away from you with some velocity, or alternately hold them steady whilst you shoot them in the skull (I found this somewhat disturbing). Cautious players may never have to do this but bold players will find themselves using Speed to run rings around the confused enemies, switching to Strength to pick up an enemy and hurl him into his fellows and then Armour to stand there and take vast amounts of enemy punishment whilst cooly despatching everyone in sight.

 

As with Far Cry you can 'tag' enemies with your binoculars. This then registers enemy positions on your radar. However, this is more limited than Far Cry and has a much shorter range. Combined with chunkier weapons, more controllable vehicles and the introduction of overheating for mounted weapons (which in Far Cry were ridiculously lethal), this indicates that CryTek have listened to criticisms of the earlier game and dealt with them satisfactorily. The island setting means that the game 'feels' very much like Far Cry for the first few minutes (mainly as the default key setup is identical to Far Cry's) until you start using the suit properly, when the game gains much more of its own identity.

 

Bad points: although the vehicles in Far Cry were fun they were hard to control and not much fun in combat. Crysis' vehicles are much better and less prone to going ballistic and shooting off at 300mph from a standing start, but they're still clunky to use. For reasons best known to themselves, CryTek have insisted that you use a seperate control system to vehicles than you do for foot (I think this can be altered in the key bindings though), which is rather uninstinctive. The more frequent use of cut scenes is a minor concern, indicating that the game may be more linear. Although there are several side-missions in the demo which are optional, there is also the feeling of the game being less open than Far Cry, although this may just be down to the demo's setting. Later parts of the game may be far more open.

 

Overall Impression: Feckin' Triple A. Must save money for day of release!

[Haxorsist]

I might have to check this out if only for the graphics. I got a 2 GHz Dual-Core with 2 GB RAM and a GeForce 8600 running on Vista, so I'm looking forward to testing DirectX 10. My only problem with this game is the aliens. I just don't like how there always has to be monsters or aliens in shooters. I thought Far Cry was awesome untill the monsters appeared. I just lost interest after that.

[chillimous]

Nonacceptance. Tshh. My download for it just finished, going to install it now. I'm running an AMD Athlon Dual Core 4000+ 2.2Ghz, 1GB of RAM, and a GeForce 7900. I'll tell you how it looks for moi, and how it plays. I can't wait to get my new build.

 

AMD Athlon 6000+ Dual Core 3.0Ghz, GeForce 8800 GTS, 2-4GB of RAM, 1.7tb of storage space, 22" monitor. All figured out. It's gonna be a beast.

[SinisterDeath]

I beta'd this, only loaded it up once... My video card in my notebook is being a lil b****, so I had to send it in the other day... anyways, I'm running on a Intel duo Core 2.16ghz with 2gig ram, and a ATI X1600. I don't know if its 128,256, or 512. I pray its at least a 256.

 

When I tried playing that game, I got some wierd graphical errors, I couldn't figure out how to obtain different weapons, + and shot a guy in the head 200 times with 400ms lag... Wasn't to impressed with what I saw and had no reason to play it again...

[Werthead]

If that's the mobility ATI X1600 in your notebook, no dice. Only the most modern state-of-the-art laptops are going to play this at anything approaching a decent speed.

 

I was having some major problems until I realised that nVidia have updated their graphics drivers specifically for this game. Once I had the new drivers, it worked very well. Maybe you should check to see if ATI have done the same thing?

[SinisterDeath]

If that's the mobility ATI X1600 in your notebook, no dice. Only the most modern state-of-the-art laptops are going to play this at anything approaching a decent speed.

 

I was having some major problems until I realised that nVidia have updated their graphics drivers specifically for this game. Once I had the new drivers, it worked very well. Maybe you should check to see if ATI have done the same thing?

 

Drivers have little to do with it, my video card was having some major 'issues' but regardless of that, most games should be 'optimized' to work on not just the top of the line computers, but low end to.

The sad thing, I got this lap top a year ago! And its like a shut in the groin not being able to use it on new 'games' this year...

 

Yes its a mobility video card, thats sorta 'self explanitory'  being in a notebook. :P

I don't want to play the game on the highest of high graphic settings, I'd just like to play it with out fps lag. :P

 

Also, since my notebook is an HP, ATI doesn't support HP graphic drivers, specially 'mobility' ones... so new drivers are 'basically' out of the question with out some 'cough' 3rd party 'cough' tools 'cough'.

 

Cyrisis may look awesome with a Capital A, but its going to fail if they don't have better over-all optimization.

[Tenshin_Xo]

NO wonder the console market is so strong.  ;D ;)

[Werthead]

Indeed. But if you want a games-playing PC you do not get a laptop, or if you do you spend an absolute fortune and get something like an Alienware.

 

Drivers have little to do with it

 

Erm, they have a lot to do with it. If you don't update your drivers every few months, you may indeed find that you can't run the latest games or run them very well. Admittedly it is more annoying now when driver updates are often 50MB+ in size when they used to be a tenth of that.

 

Cyrisis may look awesome with a Capital A, but its going to fail if they don't have better over-all optimization.

 

The optmization is fine. It has lower minimum specs than BioShock (no shader 3.0/2.0 cock-up, for example), but looks much better.

 

NO wonder the console market is so strong.

 

Sadly true. Microsoft were supposed to be addressing all of these issues through Vista and convincing manufacturers to stop putting in on-board graphics in their PCs instead of proper video cards, but so far they haven't had much impact. The PC gaming renaissance they're supposed to be bringing about isn't really happening so far, although PC-exclusive games like The Witcher, Crysis and the forthcoming Dragon Age will help, as will the radically expanded PC version of Gears of War (7 levels longer than the 360 version). Of course they could help themselves by not making PC gamers wait 6-12 months longer for GTA4 as well, but that would probably make too much sense for them to do it ;)

[SinisterDeath]

Indeed. But if you want a games-playing PC you do not get a laptop, or if you do you spend an absolute fortune and get something like an Alienware.

 

I didn't buy this laptop for gaming, I bought it seeing how it was 'required' for most of my college classes.

That said, it IS a capable spec to run most games, The main issue with notebooks, is 'besides heat', is quite simply, your paying 2-4x the amount for the same power as going into a desktop.. I mean, I could get a 3ghz amd duo core processor, which alone is basically 2x better then my intel duo core thats at about 2.14ghz. 2gigs of ram in this, is about 50% cheaper then on a desktop. If I put 2.5k on a desktop, I'd have one sick ass desktop computer.

 

Amd 3.2ghz Duo core processor,

Geforce 2 sli geforce 8600

Physics card

4gs ram somewhere above 600mhz, though i'd love XDR (2 or 4ghz each stick :P)

250gb hard drive.

and a bunch of other goodies.

 

 

Erm, they have a lot to do with it. If you don't update your drivers every few months, you may indeed find that you can't run the latest games or run them very well. Admittedly it is more annoying now when driver updates are often 50MB+ in size when they used to be a tenth of that.

 

For the performance issues I was having, drivers, do have very little to do with it.

 

 

 

The optmization is fine. It has lower minimum specs than BioShock (no shader 3.0/2.0 cock-up, for example), but looks much better.

 

Things may have changed from beta to demo, but the optimization from what I saw was horrible... Though, for some reason when it comes to graphics settings, they really love to crank the shadows up on high for some dumb reason. :P

 

PS; shadows may look nice on the overall game, but it makes FPS horribly annoying on, online play...

 

 

Sadly true. Microsoft were supposed to be addressing all of these issues through Vista and convincing manufacturers to stop putting in on-board graphics in their PCs instead of proper video cards, but so far they haven't had much impact. The PC gaming renaissance they're supposed to be bringing about isn't really happening so far, although PC-exclusive games like The Witcher, Crysis and the forthcoming Dragon Age will help, as will the radically expanded PC version of Gears of War (7 levels longer than the 360 version). Of course they could help themselves by not making PC gamers wait 6-12 months longer for GTA4 as well, but that would probably make too much sense for them to do it ;)

 

Well, An obvious reason for the GTA4 ploy is...

A) they want more units of 360/ps3 to sell.

B) Its easier to optimize a game for a 360 or a ps3, a PC on the other hand, your optimizing for a whole spectrum of specs, manufacturers, and all that fun stuff.....

 

 

On a side note, are AMD and INTEL still on completely different pages when it comes to processor speeds? Or are they not 'standardized'?

[Werthead]

No, and with AMD losing market share in the last year there's very little reason for them to standardise anything with Intel.

 

The wind does look like it's blowing towards Intel winning the chip war (after a decade) and nVidia winning the graphics card war (after more than half-a-decade). Whilst it'll be good not to have to worry about who's got the best clock speed or who's got more graphics pipelines, the lack of competition in both cases cannot be healthy for the consumer.

[Segurant]

NO wonder the console market is so strong.  ;D ;)

 

Gaming companies have said that programming console games is much easier than the PC versions.  They don't have to worry about being compatible for all types of computers.

[SinisterDeath]

No, and with AMD losing market share in the last year there's very little reason for them to standardise anything with Intel.

 

The wind does look like it's blowing towards Intel winning the chip war (after a decade) and nVidia winning the graphics card war (after more than half-a-decade). Whilst it'll be good not to have to worry about who's got the best clock speed or who's got more graphics pipelines, the lack of competition in both cases cannot be healthy for the consumer.

 

I still perfer AMD over Intel, simply because AMD has been more reliable, and run far cooler then the Intel version.

"+ AMD was ussually about 2x as fast as intel for the speed they stated.. IE an intel that was 4ghz = a 2ghz AMD processor."

I'm not sure how this compares today... but If I were building a pc from scratch, I'd go AMD and Geforce...

 

btw, why did AMD buy Ati? I mean, I could see intel & ATi, but not AMD and ATI... If anything I'd like to have seen AMD and Nvidia pair up. :P