Don't hate me because I'm beautiful: My thoughts on Crysis

[Trx Stamp]

So, Crysis is out, and the gaming community is once again filled with ignorant people complaining about how the latest and greatest in graphics technology (Crysis) won't run at max settings on their 486. And, about how they need a $6000 PC to play it. I'm sure people have seen the story about the tri 8800 ultra rig that still had trouble running it at not even max settings.

http://www.tech.co.uk/performance-pc/general/blogs/2007/12/13/must-tri-harder

There is an alternative to a five or six grand upgrade, something people seem to have forgotten about with Crysis (and sometimes PC games in general). Which is that you can just turn some settings down. Spend five grand or flick a couple of switches, it doesn't seem like a hard choice to me. Everyone talks about how high the setting in Crysis go, but no one says how low they'll go. It's almost as scalable as any other game out there. If you played any PC game to come out recently (Orange Box, Bioshock, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Call of Duty 4) then you should be able to play Crysis, provided you weren't just barely scraping by on them. My own gaming PC, while granted is no slouch, is not bleeding edge by any means, and it didn't have any trouble running Crysis. Once I found adequate settings of course.

I realize all this may seem painfully obvious to many PC gamers, but I'm sure there are a lot of "would be" PC gamers that all they're going to see is Crysis and $5000 PC and get scared off. I could easily build a rig for less that $1000 that would play it just fine, and still make it one of (if not the) best looking games in the world.

I realize none of this is new, but this is the kind of crap that gives PC gaming a bad name.

Crysis brings about another argument from gamers, which is that to many resources are spent on eye candy and not enough on actual gameplay. I would have to say that I understand this and agree with it to an extent, but to fault Crysis without having played it seems unfair. I heard Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli say in an interview that the graphics in Crysis are suppose to add to the overall immersion and experience, and I would have to agree with the idea. Better, more realistic graphics can and (if done correctly) do add to the overall experience. Now that said I think it obviously depends on the game. Let me bring up a game that is the polar opposite in graphics. Psychonauts never was very technically impressive, but had a fantastic art style that I loved and was about as far from realistic as you can get. It matched the game, but somehow I don't think it would work with Crysis. I don't want my hardcore, sci-fi, military, FPS to look like Psychonauts. At the same time I don't want my quirky, funny, 3D platformer, action, adventure, thing to look like Crysis. I guess what I'm saying is there's room for both.

While I agree there are people out there that put way to much stock in graphics. There are people that take it to the other extreme and think that just because a game looks good it can't actually be good. To me these people seem just as ridiculous as their graphics whore counterparts. There is nothing wrong with a game looking good as long as thats not the only thing it's good at. I feel that Crysis gets unfairly dismissed as "the good looking game" thats not good for anything else, but there is more to it than that. Which brings me to my thoughts about the game specifically.

Crysis is a good game. It's not a great game, and its not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination. Some people have called it a tech demo, and thats actually pretty accurate. It does feel a bit like a tech demo they tried to shoehorn a story in to at the last minute (a feeling I never got with FarCry), but its a fun tech demo. The sandbox levels are great, and even though the objectives are always the same I appreciate being able to chose how to approach them. It also helps to add some replayability.

The weapons are so-so, none of them really stand out, but they get the job done. The nanosuit on the other hand, is the star of the show. Yes, even over the graphics. It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you learn how to use it, it makes you feel like a superhero. There's nothing like ambushing a patrol by decloaking right in front of one of them to watch the shocked look on his face. Then switch on your strength, grab him by throught, punch him in the face, and through him in two of the others with such force that kills them. Then recloak and slink off to watch the last guy freak out, scream, and fire randomly in to the forest. Then finally switching to speed and running right up in the guys face while he's trying to reload and punching him in the face with your strength on to send him flying in to a tree.

The gameplay in the first three quarters or four fifths is a blast, but then you get to the end. I'm not going to spoil anything, but this is were the aforementioned shoehorning the story in comes in to play. It's like they realized they didn't have a game but a loose collection of levels and said "oh crap". So, at that point you have a very confining linear path full of the obligatory escort, defend, and vehicle missions. Then it all culminates in the most cliched boss battle I've seen since Bioshock.

Now this is Crysis, so I guess I have to mention the graphics. They're incredible and do add to the overall experience. I'm sure everyone has seen screen shots and gameplay footage, so I don't feel the need to go in to it any further. The sound on the other hand doesn't seem on the same level. The effects seem to lack punch, and the voice acting is decent at best.

I understand that Crysis is suppose to be a trilogy, and I'm really hoping now that they have the graphics engine that they can flesh out the story, bring the sound up to par, and work on the level design.

In the case of Crysis I'd say they did spend a bid to much time on the graphics and not enough on everything else, but the game is fun even with its flaws. And, I would recommend it.

 

[MrKeroChan]

please learn the difference between "there, they're, and their"

 

[GloatingSwine]

This is rather the problem though.

Crysis is an "alright" game, and if you buy it on an alright PC and turn all the shiny off until you can run it, you're rather wasting your time. Time you could be spending playing games which are actually better. It's not like we're in a game drought or anything, this is one of the strongest quarters for game releases in living memory, and just being "alright" doesn't cut it.

(Which, of course, explains the complete commercial non-reaction to the release of Crysis.)

 

[the_carrot]

I think you would have been better served by not having mentioned the graphics at all in your review, but I suppose that's so intrinsic to the game it's hard not to. I think a really compelling positive review of the game that did not even mention graphics would be interesting to hear...I'd like to hear their reasons.

You say this game is "very" scalable. I take issue with this comment. I have an SLI motherboard with 2 fairly high end directx9 video cards running on it. The system I'm running it on was of a moderate budget, built a year ago. When I run Crysis, I have to run it on medium settings, and really, on medium, the graphics are nothing special. Well, that's not entirely true, I can tell, if I had the hardware to run it well, it would look beautiful, but as it stands the avatars and objects are heavily pixellated. Were it very scalable, the art would allow for a fair rendering at any setting, and my framerates wouldn't suffer so heavily.

I do want, for FPS to go the route of the sandbox. This I was excited about, and I'm glad a developer has done this. However, this is not a profound leap. Some people have been asking for this for a while, post on enough of the right message boards and you'll find people who've been asking for a while now. Also the suit, well, it's an interesting gameplay idea. For my part is seems partially borrowed from games like MGS and Halo. It does add a dynamic to the gameplay, and one that should have been been in place for a couple of years now, once again I'm glad someone finally did it.

This brings me to my point. A tech demo, for ideas that have been floating around the internet for years, does not constitute the revolution that was advertised. Advertising be advertising, it should be taken for what it is and people should know that it may not be the case. But going to take a look shouldn't be a kick in the pants. Yeah, it's probably an okay game (I've pretty much stopped playing). But at this point the graphics actually detract from the game. Crytek made some moderate game design elements that could be very enjoyable into the most irritating and unpleasant experience. I'm sick of dropping below 30 fps to play a game with some moderately good ideas implemented in it. It's fucking idiotic. and PC games need to dump the image of the 1000 dollar tech demo game. It's still a meme, and developers doing such a thing again is just going to bury their industry, and it's an industry I don't want to see die.

In sum, I hate you because you're beautiful.

Sorry this is badly writ. I feel like I'm in a journalism classroom on this board.

 

[BonsaiK]

People get suckered in by pretty pretties all the time. Shallow gaming magazines wet themselves over mutton dressed up as lamb like Crysis just because it shows off all the tech hardware that they get to play with for free. In the meantime the regular punter just doesn't care because half of them can't run it and the other half can run it but are smart enough to see it for what it is - a graphics demo with a generic game thrown on top as an afterthought. Far Cry didn't impress me either, take away the pretties and it's just another average corridoor shooter like every other. If someting is hyped as the next generation/revolution/whatever it better have the GAMEPLAY pedigree to match. If it's got the goods where it matters, I don't care if it looks like fucking Dwarf Fortress.

I only hate beautiful things if they're shallow.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

I was previously hard on Crysis because there were a lot of nitpicky things about it which bothered me, however, it was fun while I was playing it. Even if the "sandbox" is a bit more directed than I would like, the guns are a bit annoying (especially the sniper scope because you shouldn't wobble at all when sniping with strength mode on), and the NPC's get stuck in pathing loops far too often for my taste, certain portions of the game really are enormously entertaining. I loved sneaking into bases with cloak, popping bad guys with my silenced pistols before they could raise the alarm, punching down buildings with strength mode and zipping around at high speed because it all gave me a rush I haven't felt while playing a game in a long time.

Wandering around the forest keeps you on edge, sneaking around while two feet away from an enemy is nerve wracking, and being jumped by patrols who proceed to fan out and pelt the forest with grenades really got my heart racing. Sure, the thrill wore off after a while and I had to turn the graphics and resolution way down to play but for a while I kept thinking to myself "This is how it should feel to play a game".

 

[p1ne]

please learn the difference between "there, they're, and their"

To original poster: Don't pay attention to this schmuck. Your post had some very minor grammatical errors but it was still far more lucid and better-written than 95% of the material you see on the internet.

If you're going to go to the trouble to criticize somebody's post, do it for being unintelligent or misinformed or whatever, not for this kind of extremely minor niggles in an honestly well-done piece of writing.

 

[The Irrelevant Gamer]

I played Crysis in its entirety so I have every right to complain.

The first half of the game was a blast, and the nanosuit is a lot of fun. The graphics were a non issue for me. I couldn't run them on high, but I knew that going in, and don't feel the need to run all of my games on max resolution with anti-aliasing.

I thought the gameplay took a dive when the aliens were unveiled, and the ending (or lack thereof) was craptacular.

The forced vehicle sections removed the nanosuit from gameplay, and made the player a big, slow target, which wasn't fun at all.

Those are my complaints with Crysis. I'd say it is an okay FPS with some design flaws, and very pretty graphics.

 

[wilsonscrazybed]

please learn the difference between "there, they're, and their"

and capitalization at the beginning of a sentence!


EDIT: oh nice review by the way. i wrote one a while back that pretty much said the same things. albeit less succinctly.

 

[Do4600]

I just don't get it when people whine about not being able to run games on very high that are built using the best technology money can buy. If good looking is what you want in games, you'll spend $11,000 to play Crysis, the most advanced visual game on the planet; you're not going to get something to look that good without that kind of money. So Crytek released a game ahead of it's time and they should be scolded for that because you can't afford a beast of a machine to run it on "Maximum" graphic settings?

I have basically a high-end computer I built myself from 2005 and it runs on DX9 medium with physics and a couple other things on high very well; and it still is one of the best looking games I've ever played.

As for the rest of the game, the first 3/4 were really good, once you get thrown into zero-g it gets worse. The nanosuit isn't at all as useful against giant monsters. It turns into just "make sure the cross hair stays on the flying thing" for a while. Once it gets to the aircraft carrier the game has transformed into a bad knock-off of it-self. It should have stayed a human story in my opinion with elements of scifi.

 

[BonsaiK]

So Crytek released a game ahead of it's time and they should be scolded for that because you can't afford a beast of a machine to run it on "Maximum" graphic settings?

No. They should be scolded because the game itself was an afterthought. If the game concept matched the graphics, THEN I'd be impressed.

Crysis isn't ahead of its time. It just LOOKS ahead of its time. Big difference.

 

[BonsaiK]

(triple post, even more oops - we need a delete button on this here forum)

 

[Chis]

People seem to forget that this is typical for uber-important "engine" releases in PC history. Doom 3 needed a monster machine (for the time) to run well. Same with Quake as it happens (bet it helped Intel sell a LOT of Pentiums). And the original Doom. And Ultima Underworld. And Wing Commander 2. Which, I hasten to add, took over an hour to install on a 286. Christy! You kids have it easy these days with yer newfangled quad-core processor thingies.

Uh, anyway, Crysis - like all those games - will be responsible for pushing PC hardware to do more and perform faster, for less expense. In a year or so, most games should have Crysis or near-Crysis-quality graphics and our PC's will handle it in their sleep. And we'll be complaining to for making the NEXT big game which bring our by-that-time even faster PCs to their knees.

 

[shadow skill]

Perhaps because the game is really meant to be seen on the highest settings? If you don't run the game at the highest settings you really are not seeing the game as it was meant to be seen in the first place.

So, Crysis is out, and the gaming community is once again filled with ignorant people complaining about how the latest and greatest in graphics technology (Crysis) won't run at max settings on their 486. And, about how they need a $6000 PC to play it. I'm sure people have seen the story about the tri 8800 ultra rig that still had trouble running it at not even max settings.

I find it interesting that the pc gamer lives in a world where he or she thinks its ok to have to tuen down settings on a game when almost no computer setup currently available to the public can run the game as it was meant to be run without bringing the machine to its knees. In no other part of the computer field is this accepted, I could just imagine what the state of ecommerce would be if instead of creating things like ASP, and Ruby on Rails, and PHP we instead expected people to just add more bandwith to handle increased site hits! Yet you have the nerve to call people ignorant with respect to this game and how much it would cost to get a machine capable of running Crysis properly.

Yes I know you can get the parts for a system that would run Crysis well for maybe 600USD if you look hard and know how to build a computer, but isn't there something to the underlying point when computers that are just barely a year old are being brought to their knees screaming in agony trying to run this game?

I tried to run the demo on my laptop (amd 2.2ghz 4200+ x2, 1gb pc3200 ram and a 7800gtx 256mb graphics ccard.) which while certaintly not the absolute top of the line when I bought it around June of last year was definetly in the higher mid range as far as laptops go. (I got it just as sli laptops started to come out.)I couldn't run the demo at all even at the lowest setings, it was complete crap. Yet even my desktop which is maybe five or six years old can run Doom 3, Quake 4, and Half Life 2 decently and two or three years ago those games we the absolute top of the line and even then my desktop was not well above the minimum requirements for those games. Hell even Bioshock ran decently on my laptop and that game came out this year! (granted its a console port.)

Crysis is going to have to wait six months to a year to pick up any steam, and by that time it will probably end up being forgotten because another better game will probably have come out. Overall it showcases the idiocy of the Crytek team, in that they clearly did not know when to stop so that the game would run in such a way that the specs were not only attainable by two or three year old tech, but getting the parts to play the game as it was meant to be played would still be considered affordable by the general public after factoring in the cost of Vista if you were going for DX10. (Ignore the DX9 hack.)

The worst part of it is the game probably is quite good.

 

[PurpleRain]

I've never seen any 'WOW I just craped myself moments" in Crysis aside from the nuke going off. That looked cool. Other then that, did they really need the aliens. It looked ok when he was just beating up peons.

 

[Axulciex]

I disagree. I think we've passed a very important point when it comes to computers. Upgrading for a game doesn't give the average user any ancillary benefits.

In short: when I bought that new rig to play _Doom_ or _Quake_, not only did I get to play those games at their highest setting, but I also got to run all my utilities faster--I could zip files, rip cd's, launch word processors quicker and more reliably. Now, though, games have *so* far outpaced the needs of everything else we do with computers that most people look and go 'eh--I'd rather buy a console and a really good HDTV and a hi-def disc player and...' so on and so forth.

Maybe the issue is that when average gaming people were upgrading their computer rigs there really wasn't much money you could pour into your TV setup beyond buying a big screen TV that sacrificed size for picture quality anyways. Now, though, our computers are all good enough to basically do everything *but* play _Crysis_, and on the other hand, there's plenty of equipment for the TV room that we can spend money on.

So while I agree with you that "this is typical for uber-important "engine" releases in PC history" and I'm quite sympathetic--I've put my own bare bones systems together for the past couple of years--I disagree that _Crysis_ is business as usual based on the idea that we've passed a turning point in PC history.

If your using your computer for anything from video editing to 3d animation, upgrades help more in some cases than they do games. Multi-threading is utilized much better in such applications, same with large amounts memory. A good cpu is essential for any encoding as the standards rise.

Of course if your only playing crysis and microsoft word; then the gap is there. A console would be a better choice.

 

[Lightbulb]

PHYSICS!

I don't give a damn how pretty a game is but my pc can't handle anything above 'low' physics.

(A64 3700+, 2 gig ram, 8800GTS)

This DOES affect the game play because it disables features.

Game player >>>>> All

 

[Chis]

PHYSICS!

I don't give a damn how pretty a game is but my pc can't handle anything above 'low' physics.

(A64 3700+, 2 gig ram, 8800GTS)

This DOES affect the game play because it disables features.

Game player >>>>> All

Your RAM and graphics card are fine, but your CPU is single core. Crysis doesn't gobble CPU time nearly as much as it does GPU power, but it benefits hugely from even a low-end X2 or E2xx0 C2D. The extra core really helps to be honest.