Posted

Nov 2nd 2007

And Im both dissappointed, but not really surprised, and overjoyed.

Ill start out with the good.

The good:
- CRYEngine2 is like the fucking Willy Wonka of gaming engines. Unreal Engine 3 is going to have a real run for its money with CRYEngine2 because its actually superior in terms of visual awesomeness. I ran the game at Med/Low settings and got a display superior to that of Maxed Far Cry (FAR SUPERIOR) and Hitman Blood Money combined. Compared to Maxed UT3 Demo settings, Crysis's graphics blow UT3's Unreal Engine 3 game engine out of the water with its visual quality. Everything is extremely detailed and your environment feels very realistic. Little additions like a cone blur effect as you focus on your ironsights and the Metroid Prime-like visor effects are awesome little tidbits that just add to how amazing it looks. I played the game at 1024x768 and it still looked fairly crisp.
- Enemy AI is lifelike and realistic. Even taking out one AI opponent, other will become alerted if they dont see said AI for a while, they start investigating, and are quick to spot things like moving trees. And in during combat, you can expect flanking maneuvers and smart use of grenades and cover.
- Sound and immersion are impeccable. Once you get into the game, it sucks you in like no other, until you can literally hear the clink of those bullet casings and smell the burnt fumes from that flaming barrel you just threw at your enemies.

The bad:
- Loading. We all hate it, dont we? Thats why we have T3 connections, SATA2 hard drives, Quad-core CPUs and 2GB RAM sticks. However, even with these things, you're likely to spend alot of time loading. The initial loading time is deceptively short, taking maybe a minute to hop at around 4% per second. But even after the initial loading screen disappears, you're going to be in for a slideshow whilst the game engine tries to RENDER EVERYTHING AT ONCE. I fuck you not, Crysis's game engine may make everything look pretty but it tries to cram every visual detail on your screen at once or as fast as it can (my poor 2.1GHz Dual Core CPU must've been shitting brix trying to do so much work). It doesnt seem to occur to Crytek to make the game load stuff like textures, models, etc IN THE LOADING PHASE. Instead, you're stuck sitting there watching your textures clairify and shadows appear with agonizing slowness. And sometimes issues arise, like textures and texture maps failing to load or display properly, effectively turning on ghost mode for everything. Thus requiring going back and reloading your last save and going through the whole rendering loading agony over again. And this isnt a one time thing either. You can expect a (long) loading pause every 10-15 minutes as the game loads the next area. This means you could be stuck in a giant firefight, and suddenly BAM, freeze frame. That grenade you were going to throw, that would anihilate your opposition, forget about it. Your game is now frozen, and when it suddenly jerks back to life, any chance of throwing that nade properly is gone. And reloading is not an option, unless you want to go through this load again. And again. And again.............
- The framerate is painful to see. With Fraps running, I was getting 15-20 fps on a fairly medium complicated area. Firefights are slowed and painfully difficult when your fps drops to 10 whenever your opponent shoots you or throws a grenade at you. 1024x768 is generally considered low res nowadays, but playing the game with my rig should've eked me a decent 30fps atleast. I truly hope there will be performance tweaks made to fix the framerate issues in the final product.
- Gameplay is exactly what you got in FarCry. EXACTLY. If you blindfolded yourself playing it, you'd never know the difference. Gameplay-wise, Crysis is Far Cry with some useful abilities like jumping extra high, running faster and stealth. Armour mode is nothing because you had armour in Far Cry. Also, the constantly quickly recharging energy shields and health make the game far too easy. Unless you get stuck between a mounted turrent and a hard place, you can basically run and gun your way through the entire game without having to worry about health. This part didnt surprise me so much. I knew the biggest hype around Crysis was its game engine, so I didnt expect anything especially new about its gameplay.
- There is no stealth. If you think that fancy "stealth mode" is stealth, you're wrong. Stealth mode is useless as it drains your energy at such a rate that you'll be halfway sneaking up on your enemy when it will suddenly run out (Thank god for that voice that says "Energy low" like ONE FUCKING SECOND BEFORE IT RUNS OUT) and you're in the lions den bitch. Better just to toss a nade in the center and let my gun handle the rest. Even in areas where stealth is suggested, its always easier to just run up to the fucker and shoot them in the face.
- Customizable weapons are shit. From what ive seen, you get a silencer, acog reflex sight that is drastically inferior to good ol' ironsights and a flashlight. OH LAWD THE CUSTOMIZATIONS ARE NUMBERING IN THE 16s. Although, I do admit its a demo and likely does not have all the customizations. Still, these customizations are merely little crutches.
- The story. It sucks dick. Just like in Far Cry, you thought it was all good until you got to the MOTHERFUCKING ALIENS ON MY ISLAND. Seriously, Crytek, lose the monsters. We like fighting people, this game would do great as a tactical shooter, so stop throwing in fucking monsters. Trigens were the worst fucking enemies in Far Cry, and now
with your aliens you are going to totally fuck up Crysis. The story from what I've seen so far is going to be random predictable shit. Straight from hollywood.

If I had to mark Crysis out of 100, I'd give it a rounded 80. Its a good game that has been marred by performance issues and gameplay that is more graphics-centric than anything. You'd rather just shoot that barrel than get all the fun of killing them one by one because the explosion and physics effects just look so cool. So if you're in it for the eye candy and graphics, by all means get Crysis because its probably going to be the best looking game out there for a while. But if you really want some fun gameplay, you might be suited to something more tactically oriented. Unless of course, you like being a gun wielding superhero on an island. Its all about taste.

I still need to play moar UT3 and get COD4 demo. Expect moar soon.

-kthnxbai

EDIT: Also, ive become a minor wapanese with extreme doses of daily watching animu. I just finished Death Note. The ending was disappointing, the best part was the middle/core of the story when everything was fuckwin.

Im currently watching Gunslinger Girl, in queue is Code Geass and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I also hear Ergo Proxy is an awesome mindfuck, so I'll try that. And Im waiting for moar of Blue Drop, but its an ongoing show so the waiting is excrutiating D:

In b4 faggot, gb2gaia, etc.

EDIT 2: I also feel like animooting. Perhaps there shall be arts posted sometime.