[PC] Crysis

[Thanakil]

Intro
Made by Crytek (creator of Far Cry) Crysis is the game to truly show to everybody what the CryEngine2 is made of. One of the most awaited game of this year, it finally hit the shelves yesterday after a long and painful wait for FPS fanatics, it's now time to see how poorly our system perform!

System Tested On
Dual Core 2 Duo clocked at 2.80ghz
2gig Ram.
Nvidia 7950GT 520mb (and oc'ed just a little bit, otherwise the game lock up for 30 secondes, every 3 minutes or so)
****ty Sound Card.

Review will include spoilers, pictures too probably, YOU ARE WARNED

Gameplay (9 out of 10)
One of the biggest thing for me was the physics... Many games feel static : things don't move, interaction is limited, the action is limited to the characters, ect. In Crysis the physic definitly breaks that feeling, as everything (or almost) will react to the action. Sheds, houses, fences, cars, trees, most of what constitute the environnement in the game will take part of the action and either become a weapon (a big sheet of metal in your face = ouch) or become a surface that could be used as cover (a big sheet of metal in front of your face = safe).

And honestly, as far as gameplay goes, shooting a rocket to a incoming jeep, looking at it fly in fire over your head and crash behind you... That's awesome isnt it?

Throughout the game you will cross various vehicles, Jeeps, Tanks, Anti-Air Weapon, Aircraft (named VTOL), Boats... And your feets I guees.

And to differentiate itself from other FPS, Crysis puts you in control of a Nano-Suit, now they could have simply made it slow time (like most games... And I admit it could have been cool) but the suit actually got 5 uses : Armor, Speed, Power, and invisibility. Different situations will usually require different power... Being stalked by a copter? Cloak away! Being shooted at? Armor away! Want to test the cool physic? Strenght away! Want to jump into a copter while a explosion happens in the background and a black guy says ''ITS GONNA BLOW, GET IN DA CHOPPER''? Speed away!

And finally, you have the weapon customization, which becomes quite useful to be honest. You will easily be able to switch from a flashlight to a laser-pointer, from normal ammo to flammable ammo, to reflex sight to assault scope to iron sight to sniper scope, ect.

Sound (8 out of 10)
I'm using a 5.1 sound system but my sound card is totally lame. Doesnt make sense? I know.

But anyway, the game sounded great, everything felt in sync with the game, voice-over were very good, the actors did a good job overall.
Sound effects didnt sound half-assed, guns, explosions, everything felt just right!
And music, well, it fit the game just great, dunno what I could say more.

You won't be overwhelmed by the sound side of the game, but you won't feel let down either.

Graphics (From 8 to 10 (depending on your Hardware) out of 10)
The game can easily be scaled down for various systems, and I can say the latest Beta driver from Nvidia helped a lot to me... Even tho it made using shaders glitchy and required tweaking of my system to work perfectly.
I personally played at Shaders and Textures at High and everything else at Medium.
If theres anything I could recommend for lower PC, it's to use the lowest Shader, it will disable the shadows and make the game look kinda plain, but you will get a GREAT boost in FPS.

The game definitly does a great job of using Shaders, which quite explain why everything looks great, and why using the High shader will kill your PC... But damn, does it look good.

Like Far Cry, the game features a no-limit range of view, you will be able to see as far as you want, even tho things far away from you will be of lower quality (cause otherwise, you'd play at a FPS of 1, you sicko).

Textures are GORGEOUS, I mean seriously, both the textures and models make for some of the best characters you will ever see (well, for now, cause in 4 years we'll have better, but anyway).

And the effects well... You've seen that nuke? Nothing much to say, the effects are all of high qualities. Fire, rain, lightning, shadows, explosions, distortion, ect. Everything is there and you will be amazed.

Replay Value (8 of 10)
The game isnt the longest FPS ever made, but it's not the shortest either.
I played on the Hard difficulty, which probably made my play-through longer, but it felt like the game was of average lenght. I think some of the parts seen in the trailers/video didnt make it in the final game, but there was still enough content for me to be quite happy.

The multiplayer isnt AMAZINGLY COOLZOR, but it's still of good quality. If anything tho, I would recommend you what I do for any FPS multi : Either find yourself lots of friends to play with, OR, a very good server with not-jackass players, OR, a clan.

Cause the game won't feel fun if you play with people who have no idea what the hell to do, teamkill, run into walls, ask 45345 questions, ect.

If you don't like multi tho, you probably won't feel the game to be worth the price, there isn't MUCH replay value, but I know it will be one of the VERY FEW game where I will go back for at least a second play through.

Overall (9 out of 10)
If you don't have the perfect PC, you can still play, but probably at lower quality, which isnt all THAT bad.
The game is action-packed, and with the physics involved, everything becomes part of the game, nothing stand still, which adds a whole new side to the FPS world.

The story isnt amazing, but it's still good enough to take you from point A to Z while killing b,c,d, flying e to h, blowing up half of the alphabet and ect.

Overall, if you want a good action game and your PC can withstand the game, GO FOR IT. I hope you like multiplayer tho, otherwise you may not fully appreciate the game, cause it's only of average/medium lenght for a FPS, which isnt very long.

PS : Screens werent all taken at the same quality, and a few of them (like 2 I think) were taken with glitches from beta driver

PPS : If you want to see the true awesomness of the nuke and the TAR launched, play in multi... In Single Player you don't see all the awesome effects they got, seriously.
In multi you can actually see the nuke from up close and how AWESOME it is, same for the Tar, and in Multi the TAR is actually a very bigass explosive weapon, with its own mushroom cloud and ect.

In SP the tar is a little kick to the crotch of the bad guys...
In MP, if you shoot it from too close the TAR will kill every ennemies + everyone of your team + you + everybody in the next 3 servers beside yours.
And once everything is done, it comes back to kick everybody in the crotch, for a good measure.

[PCXL-Fan]

Damn it! I bought crysis yesterday and after installing it I get white cloudy artifacts everywhere. I went and played the demo again and the same thing. PCSX2 is fine though. I'm not sure if this is a grapics tweak issue or the fact that I overclocked the processor 200mz the night before.

[Thanakil]

Processor of the CPU or of the GPU? For the CPU that's like nothing, shouldnt do artifacts like this. For the GPU it could be a reason.

Try other drivers, the newest beta driver helped with the frame rate but introduced glitches.

[PCXL-Fan]

just the cpu. I was playing the demo for 2 weeks on the newest .09 beta driver without any artifacts. I did install the full game without disabling the virus scanner and firewall as the manual insisted but that doesn't expain why its affecting the demo now.

[Thanakil]

Well, there's a 2 days old beta driver, for Crysis mainly, was buggy for me but could work better on your card.

Otherwise, try to uninstall your driver, use driver cleaner pro and install the latest stable drivers.

[MrPink]

don't think that by using a beta driver you will get like an extra 20fps. just use the latest stable driver from nvidia, 163.75. i have an 8800gtx that i overclocked to get more performance for crysis, and i don't get any artifacts with the 163.75 driver.

[runawayprisoner]

Originally Posted by PCXL-Fan

just the cpu. I was playing the demo for 2 weeks on the newest .09 beta driver without any artifacts. I did install the full game without disabling the virus scanner and firewall as the manual insisted but that doesn't expain why its affecting the demo now.

Remove 169.09. or overwrite it with an older driver or something... then reinstall 169.09. 169.09 seems to stop saving your tweak settings after a while... and then it will stay at some settings for indefinitely... god knows how long. I tweaked the drivers with nHancer... only to find that I made all UE3 games unplayable. And then I tried to restore the settings to no avail.

[PCXL-Fan]

I wonder if this is an nHancer bug. Cuz actually it also happened around the time I started using nHancer as well. I was fiddling around with TSAA 4x4 and 8x8 and it would cause similar white artifacts everywhere. Then I stopped playing for a couple days, then installed the full game and set my AA levels back to application defined, and right from the get go I had white artifacts.

[runawayprisoner]

Then it's time for me to wipe my HDD clean of nHancer, and start accepting the fact that NFS ProStreet just can't look any less... pixelated. Hmm... I think that calls for a screenshot thread?

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by MrPink

don't think that by using a beta driver you will get like an extra 20fps. just use the latest stable driver from nvidia, 163.75. i have an 8800gtx that i overclocked to get more performance for crysis, and i don't get any artifacts with the 163.75 driver.

For me the beta drivers helped smoothen the game a lot, depends on the card.

[runawayprisoner]

The beta drivers will get you about 2 more FPS at least... and it helps fixing some other bugs. For me, I got a 6FPS boost.

[PCXL-Fan]

Man I'm lazy, I bought Crysis the day it came out and still haven't bothered to play it because I'm to lazy to try and fix the bug. Oh well at least it will make a nice mantle piece with all my other incompleted games. Oblivion.... Shivering Ilses... Company of Heroes... Bioshock.... Diablo II LOD.... Virtua Tennis 3.... Final Fanstay 12... Dragon Quest 8... Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater...

[Xtreme2damax]

It seems like a good game from what I tried playing. Extremely laggy on my Geforce 6150 (I know it's a crap card) and I can never achieve above 1 - 3 FPS even on low unless I'm looking straight down at the ground, making this game extremely unplayable.

Whatever happened to Crytek stating this game would be able to run halfway decent or decently on a Geforce 5xxx series and up? The game is hardly playable on the 6xxx series and not much better on the 7xxx or 8xxx series. Those with Geforce 6xxx or 7xxx series card are getting quite shoddy or unplayable speeds even on low.

This game scales very crappily with not much thought put in for lower spec PC's.

Anyone know of any Low-Spec tweaks or configurations for those with crappy systems that just meet the minimum specs but are unable to play at a playable speed?

[Thanakil]

The game is easily playable on a 7xxxx, maybe not a 7300GS, but 7600-7900 can easily play the game.

Same for some 6xxx cards, playable with lowest settings as long as you're happy playing with a low reso.

The biggest settings to lower are Shaders and shadows.

[Samor]

Originally Posted by PCXL-Fan

Man I'm lazy, I bought Crysis the day it came out and still haven't bothered to play it because I'm to lazy to try and fix the bug. Oh well at least it will make a nice mantle piece with all my other incompleted games. Oblivion.... Shivering Ilses... Company of Heroes... Bioshock.... Diablo II LOD.... Virtua Tennis 3.... Final Fanstay 12... Dragon Quest 8... Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater...

that's why I did not yet buy it.... there's enough nice new games to pick, but I'm way behind on giving a lot of games proper time.... dunno how long I'm gonna keep this up though

[Elite Knight]

So well made i enjoyed it please go and buy the game theres a few glitches tho with a tank i seen it on TV to and the bad guys when you shoot some timess they look thw wrong way mabey they need to do a few fixes.

[John Aiton]

this sums up crysis LOL: