Rated: 56.89% (45 votes)
Loading ...Crysis in crisis
James Gorbold
Well, its official. After being shown off at various trade shows, and being the star of more dodgy videos than Paris Hilton, Crysis made its first public appearance at the i31 LAN party at Newbury this weekend.
Lucky punters had the opportunity to play through a level of the game, which was installed on half a dozen PCs on the joint Intel/Scan stand.
Although some aspects of the graphical engine were very impressive, such as the natural looking vegetation I came away very disappointed. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much, not being a big fan of the developer’s last game (Far Cry), but having played the game I really couldn’t shake off the feeling that Crysis is nothing more than Far Cry 1.5.
You’re still stuck wandering pointlessly around a tropical island, which you can’t fully explore because of stupid arbitrary invisible walls that block your progress. But while the first half of Far Cry was actually pretty fun, combat in Crysis is dominated by an over abundance of over the top 007 style gadgets.
Probably the biggest joke of all is that after all the hype that Crysis would be the first true DirectX 10 game and would make the eyes pop out of your skull with amazement the beta we got to play was written in DirectX 9 and running on PCs installed with Windows XP.
What’s more, the graphics are totally ruined by an irritating motion blur effect that blurs the entire screen when you pan around with the mouse. Now, I’m all in favour of motion blur per se, but when you move your head around normally in the real world it doesn’t go all blurry, it only goes blurry if you shake your head like a heavy metal mosher. Fingers crossed the developers will realise how freaking idiotic the motion blur effect is and either tone it down, or remove it all together.
Of course, the developers have a few more months to polish off the game before it is released in November, but at this stage its clear to me that the ‘ultimate 3D shooter’ it was touted to be is nothing more than Far Cry with the genetically engineered monsters replaced by aliens and more stupid gadgets than you’d find at Q’s retirement party.
First of all, James (we have the same name aha..), this is in alpha - in fact there was a large chunk cut off at the beginning and end of this level. Not to mention this is the first level of the game. Secondly, it may have only been running in DX9 there but, it’s been shown at countless other events in crisp DX10. Thirdly, motion blur can be adjusted via in-game options. You can turn it all the way off if you so desire.
You’re last paragraph reminds me of many typical uninformed people. Nothing more? Did FarCry have earthquakes? Destructible environments? Air combat? Naval combat (actual US navy)? How about emergent gameplay (where your actions can effect future missions)? I can go on and on.
About these “stupid” gadgets; they only add that much more to the replay value. They are not stupid. They are there to add more depth to the game.
“stupid arbitrary invisible walls that block your progress” You can run around the island in Crysis unobstructed. The walls were probably added to keep you from going to unfinished areas in a BETA..
“wandering pointlessly” If you didn’t realize, there are OBJECTIVES to follow..
Guys, I’m well aware that we were playing a beta version, not the full retail product. Nonetheless I still think all my criticisms were fair - they are observations made after playing the game, not having watched a few heavily edited videos.
Re your specific comments Doomguardian, my point was that Crysis appears to be nothing more than Far Cry with enhanced graphics and few tacked on frills.
Given the already huge number of unoriginal clone games on the market I’m disappointed that a developer is basically making the same game again with very few tangible improvements.
“Crysis appears to be nothing more than Far Cry…”
I don’t know if this is true. We all need to play it up to end to judge.
I only disappoint by how much Crysis graphics is changed from 2006 presentations;
Take a look at DX9 VS DX10 Jungle or TOMS Hardware 2006 hands on and many other 2006 videos.
I understand they need to scale the game to real world consumer rig, but i in love with 2006 intensive graphic experience, not this last.
I hope in the future they will release patch to achieve the precedent splendor.
P.S.
DON’T TOUCH MOTION BLUR!
Thank you, James, for proving to use just how ridiculous your uninformed and completely false statements can be.
The game is not like FarCry, and to even compare the two games in terms of the storyline or even gameplay department is just asinine.
Doomguardian pretty much nailed it with the first comment.
Please, don’t write any future articles about Crysis until you actually know something about the game.
Oooo, I see the Crysis fanboys are out in force tonight…
> your uninformed
My blog post was based on my own personal experience of playing the game so its hardly uninformed. How much have you played Crysis? If you have played it yourself, and formed your own opinion then all well and good, but if you’re simply defending Crysis because you’ve been told it will be good then you need to learn to make your own decisions.
> compare the two games in terms of the storyline or even gameplay department is just asinine
How so? Crytek/EA are asking us to spend money buying a product. Its therefore our right as consumers to question whether the product is good enough or not.
The sad thing is that Crytek obviously do have a lot of talent and can make great games (the first 1/3 of Far Cry for example). It just seems content now to produce slightly tarted up efforts of previous games (an EA speciality).
The first level is supposed to be FarCry-ish. Don’t forget about the frozen jungle where everything shatters like ice. The day and night cycles. Tornadoes.
The demo you got to play was FarCry-like. But come on it’s the first level. The entire game is going to be much more than FarCry. Just go look at a wiki of the game (incrysis has a pretty good one made up.)
“I only disappoint by how much Crysis graphics is changed from 2006 presentations”
When i saw their first gameplay i said: oh my god! This is awesome!
When i see their last gameplay i say: oh my god! They are cheating me!
Why nobody talks about this?!
Everyone knows this fact, but this apparently seems to be a taboo.
Not a majour fan of Crysis, but your comments are stupid. So narrow about a game that will be better than you said.
Its easy to see the way you explained to be half wrong by opinion.
dude, I know you have played this game, but no need to start passing comments. After all, its still in beta, and intensive testing is needed to make the game run properly. you were really harsh on a game, which is still yet to be completed IMO.
another thing, I forgot to address, I am sure you have played call of duty and medal of honor, now call of duty was made by the same programmers(not developing studio)(as in people) has medal of honor, and if you played them both, you will know how similar, if not the same they ‘look’ and ‘feel’.
I am not arguing that war games suck. But,
all war games look the ’same’ ‘feel’ the same. except they MIGHT, touch up on the graphics a bit. I have played cod2 and played medal of honor PA. They feel exactly the same.
If its made by the same developer/programmers you will feel some similarities within a game. cause they follow the same pattern cause its their ’style’ of developing the game.
Did you note how much the “graphic” is changed by firsts gameplay footage?
I ask you, because no one talk about this.
The graphic changes (in bad) are normally in the development process?
Thanks
“I only disappoint by how much Crysis graphics is changed from 2006 presentations”
When i saw their first gameplay i said: oh my god! This is awesome!
When i see their last gameplay i say: oh my god! They are cheating me!
Why nobody talks about this?!
Everyone knows this fact, but this apparently seems to be a taboo.
Sounds like you had this article written in your head before you even played it. You say you “weren’t expecting much”, and weren’t a fan of the last game”. This has extreme bias written all over it. Pointless wandering and invisible walls bother you, in a demo? Please explain these 007 gadgets. Do u mean gun attachments such as scopes, silencers, laser pointers, iron sights, ect? Perhaps your talking about the suits abilities? Then again you must be talking about the attachments because the suit powers aren’t gadgets. Would taking all the gun attachments out of the game improve your experience? You also seem mad that they were showing you the DX9 version. Is that the games fault? Should a game be criticized for that? Its the same as if a reviewer talked smack on a 360/PS3’s graphics because they didn’t like the graininess on their 10 year old TV. By the way, our vision does blur when you move your head around or focus on something. We don’t have compound eyes.
The suits powers are gadgets, and do detract from the gameplay as they make it far to easy to “super power” your way through enemies. Not to mention most of them are just plain bl***y silly - dialing up your strength at will. Crytek should just focus on making it a great first person shooter, requiring you to outwit your opponents, not just beat them through superior technology.
> By the way, our vision does blur when you move your head around or focus on something.
That’s true, if you shake your head around moshing or look out of the side window of a speeding car, but in Crysis the motion blur is completely over the top and not at all realistic.
you want to know why they installed it on machines which have xp. Cause they want to tell the entire f%cking world that crysis ‘CAN’ run on system with xp.
Great, in that case if the finished game is any better than the beta that we got to play at i31 (and so worth paying for) then that’s another nail in the coffin for Vista.
The A.I. was probaby set to easy so that it wouldn´t be to hard to finish the demo.
You know most people wants to explore the graphics and play with the Nano-suit abilities instead of using tactics and be stealth to finish, and I dont blame them, it´s a beta demo and many have probably seen forward to play this game (Certainly you have not).
The Super Powers (Nano suit abilities) doesn´t make the game to easy.
The difficult level must have been set to easy because I´ve seen a lot of gameplay movies with “god-mode” enabled, and running against enemies without using tactics, certainly got you killed fast (when “god-mode” is enabled you can see how many times you would have died if “god-mode” wasn´t enabled.
If you have read this you will pobably understand that many of your “points” are not valid any more.
You wrote:
“To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much, not being a big fan of the developer’s last game (Far Cry),”
Clearly you dont like the kind of gameplay when you have to sneak and use tactics to survive.
It´s like if I would have posted an interview of a F1 racing game (when I dont like F1-racing games) and telling everyone: I´m dissapointed with this game, I dont like that you have to drive around a map like 9 times, it gets so boring.
“You’re still stuck wandering pointlessly around a tropical island, which you can’t fully explore because of stupid arbitrary invisible walls that block your progress”
Invisible walls must be the demo because there was no invisible walls in FarCry.
“Stuck wandering poitlessly” there´s no doubt why people attacks your preview, you cant even play the game (this is no coridor shooter fps).
“Probably the biggest joke of all is that after all the hype that Crysis would be the first true DirectX 10 game and would make the eyes pop out of your skull with amazement the beta we got to play was written in DirectX 9 and running on PCs installed with Windows XP machines.”
That has nothing to do with the game.
It´s still one of the first Dx10 and it looks amazing.
“the graphics are totally ruined by an irritating motion blur effect ”
That´s a mather of taste, IMO it looks great with it.
“but at this stage its clear to me that the ‘ultimate 3D shooter’ it was touted to be is nothing more than Far Cry with the genetically engineered monsters replaced by aliens and more stupid gadgets than you’d find at Q’s retirement party.”
Was there any aliens in the demo?
Difficulty settings was probably set to easy.
I can´t understand why they would do worse AI than in FarCry when FarCry has some of the best AI ever, even today (And I mean the soldiers AI, the mosters was meant to be dumb).
Maybe you understand know that your preview is worth nothing because you have no valid points which makes this preview look biased.
And calling me a “Crysis-fanboy” will only prove my point.
Jeeez this is pure comedy gold. The fanboi’s are out in force today, you brothers of the Mac-boys?
No one has answered if they’d actually PLAYED the same beta (yes, it was a beta) yet? No? Well I made it down to multiplay as well and had the exact same impression as James but the difference is I loved Far Cry and played it through countless times.
There is currently NO vegetation movement: a feature hotly shown off previously and is obviously a fundamental part of the engine. DX10 feature? unlikely. Culled because EA are now making a console port of the engine? Most likely.
There is TOO MANY options at the moment, I ran around the entire game punching people to death and didn’t use the gun once. You can use the gun but there was no focus in the gameplay.
The AI needs work, motion blur is incredibly overdone: look at lost planet for how to do it properly. If your first instinct is to turn off a game feature then that game feature is not working properly.
Yes, it’s a first mission to get you into it and I hope the latter missions work far better but you CANNOT go off videos when making an opinion, you have to go off what an actual playable impression is like and currently its lacking in quite a few areas.
It felt like a technical demo rather than a game, even the STALKER demo was a proper game despite the fact it required a lot of tweaking as well before it went Gold.
Of course its better, lol they havent showed anything from 3/4 of the game ! >.
>> Clearly you dont like the kind of gameplay when you have to sneak and use tactics to survive.
Clearly you’re making assumptions about the sort of games I like, and like most assumptions it is incorrect. In actual fact I do really enjoy tactical games, such as Thief/Operation Flashpoint/Rainbow Six/Armed Assault.
>> “Stuck wandering poitlessly†there´s no doubt why people attacks your preview, you cant even play the game (this is no coridor shooter fps).
Actually if you read my blog properly you would have understood that I have played Crysis. Have you?
> “the graphics are totally ruined by an irritating motion blur effect â€
>> That´s a mather of taste, IMO it looks great with it.
Of course its a matter of taste, thats why in my personal blog I wrote that it doesn’t suit my tastes. If you like it great, that’s not a problem for me, although you seem to have a problem with me not liking it.
>> Maybe you understand know that your preview is worth nothing because you have no valid points which makes this preview look biased.
No valid points? You mean apart from the dull (been there done that) gadget overloaded gameplay and stupid motion blur?
>> And calling me a “Crysis-fanboy†will only prove my point.
If you’re defending Crysis simply because you’ve been brainwashed by the Crytek/EA marketing material (videos etc etc) then you are a Crysis fanboy. The only way somebody can have a valid opinion on a game is that they have played it for themselves - something that I have done, have you? From what you’ve written you have no hands on experience of Crysis.
“In actual fact I do really enjoy tactical games” The “gadgets” in Crysis are supposed to add more replay value and the need for the player to THINK THROUGH (tactical?)..
“Stuck wandering poitlessly†Maybe you should check your OBJECTIVES? The island is supposed to be completely open so you can do anything you want. If you choose to “wander pointlessly” and not go to objectives, then you’re stupid. If you’re complaining about the enemies and outposts in between objectives, then you’re stupid. The enemies in between are supposed to add gameplay, otherwise you would finish one objective and right in front of you is another objective, then you complete the game in 2> hours. Then you complain about that..?
“If you’re defending Crysis simply because you’ve been brainwashed by the Crytek/EA marketing material” The videos are for us to know what the game is like.. Why don’t you complain about other games because they release videos showing off their gameplay? We defend Crysis because we like it. If someone comes up and says a whole load of (uninformed) nonsense about your girlfriend/wife, would you defend her or let her just take the rap?
“There is currently NO vegetation movement: a feature hotly shown off previously and is obviously a fundamental part of the engine.” From this I can tell you don’t know the limitations of today’s CPUs. A COMPLETE FOREST with EVERY SINGLE LEAF COMPLETELY INTERACTIVE would kill any CPU.
“Culled because EA are now making a console port of the engine? Most likely.” There is NO CONSOLE VERSION OF CRYSIS. Get that in your brain(?). I repeat, THERE IS NO CONSOLE VERSION of CRYSIS. Consoles don’t have the necessary hardware to handle CRYSIS.
THERE IS NO CONSOLE VERSION of CRYSIS.
THERE IS NO CONSOLE VERSION of CRYSIS.
“over abundance of over the top 007 style gadgets”, “There is(are) TOO MANY options at the moment” These are for your ENJOYMENT. If you don’t like the gadgets, don’t customize ANY SINGLE one of them, and we’ll see who’s complaining about the “repetitive” experience then (excluding the dynamic open environment). Let’s see you snipe with iron sights.
“far to easy to “super power†your way through enemies” If you haven’t noticed, the player CAN DIE, and there are HARDER DIFFICULTIES, and you are playing an UNFINISHED VERSION of Crysis.
“requiring you to outwit your opponents” That’s what Crysis is about, and the “superior technology” is there to give you options to outwit your opponents.
James Gorbold, you are the STUPIDEST and most BIASED guy ever with a brain not competent enough to realize what you are experiencing. Hope you make it through kindergarten, maybe 7th time lucky?
I’m a Crysis fanboy. But, I think James isn’t wrong. He played Crysis, but we haven’t played Crysis yet. He spoke a personal impression. There is no meaning that we deny it.
Excellent, I see that Mr/Mrs Anonymous has descended into the level of name calling.
Congratulations, you have just demonstrated your inability to put forward a reasoned argument.
Lets just say this was James opinion and he is entitled to give his opinion. If YOU think he is right or wrong does not matter as that would be your opinion. Some people like Red, others like Blue. I personally think he started off on the wrong foot, but that is my opinion. Crytek is putting so much into Crysis that it is hard for older systems with XP and DX9 to keep up with it, so not all options will work on DX9 or will look as good as in DX10. I personally think it was wrong to only show you guys the game on XP and DX9, they maybe should have had at least one PC with Vista and DX10 to show off the real strength of Crysis and what they can do with CE2.
And the other companies who already bought a license would not have bought the license if CE2 can not bring what it showed it can do. So I personally think Crysis will be as amazing as we have seen sofar in the different DX9 and DX10 videos, but then again that is my opinion, and James can have his own opinion.
James, I must agree with a previous poster. If you’re not interested in this type of game, why play it?
That said, let me first state I’m not a fanboy of anything. I don’t care if this turns out to be a rubbish game, I’ve not vested 3 years of time pouring over screenshots and videos… I did that with DOOM³ and look where that got me.
The problem I have with your report is that it wasn’t meaty enough. For a journalist, this was minimal, and starved of information as to WHY the game played the way it did. That’s what we want to hear. Your opinions, whilst revered by some, really mean nothing to most people unless you back them up with evidence.
I don’t mean that to sound snotty, just that I’ve not taken anything away from this report because of it’s simplicity.
no need to comment on this issue, its one idiot who won’t get to enjoy crysis. Go and hug and kiss and f**k with bungie.net people, they will have s*x with you for sure lol. You must be a console fanboy, or a call of duty fan.
Beats, thanks for your constructive criticism. I think the previous poster you are referring to was under the impression I wasn’t interested in this type of game, which as I explained earlier is not the case.
Just because I wasn’t overly enamored with the second half of Far Cry doesn’t mean I don’t like first person shooters, I play multiple hours of such games every week.
Re the shallow angle, it was meant to be a quick blog post, not a full in depth preview covering the salient points. A full in-depth preview will be published soon by CPC however.
haha, that was your first mistake then.
If you write a review of a game, even if it’s quick, you better be prepared for the backlash when the fanboys appear!
Give them something meaty to chew on next time. Their mouths will be too full to bitch at you… at least for a little while.
In any case, I must be one of the few people around who enjoyed the second half of Far Cry… Trigens scared the heck out of me (easily scared).. I always made sure I had enough shotty rounds.
On an unlrelated note, I’ve not had my CPC mag in the mail for months! 
Sort it out James! 
Beats, as I already said it wasn’t a preview, let alone a review. Its an in brief blog post based on my experience of playing an early beta.
Who knows, my opinion of the full finished game may be very different, but until I’ve had hands on experience of a game its irresponsible to have a public opinion of it.
as you say that you “You’re still stuck wandering pointlessly around a tropical island”
NOW THE POINTLESS WANDERING IS DEPENDED ON THE USER, NOT THE GAME. It is up to the user how he can wander around the island. you must be the one who isn’t following the objective properly.
“Congratulations, you have just demonstrated your inability to put forward a reasoned argument.” You lack the ability to read? Or see? If not, check out my 3 posts at 11:52, 11:57 and 12:03..
I concur, he only reads comments that he likes and feels reassured, that he is right, oh baby, this guys blog is going to get nailed. so many people are going to posts comments come on people more comments lets shut this idiot up.
> You lack the ability to read? Or see? If not, check out my 3 posts at 11:52, 11:57 and 12:03..
Excellent, so now I’m supposed to be psychic and guess and know that it was the same person entering comments using the “Anonymous” tag.
Joebloe, how is posting lots of comments going to shut me up. In case you hadn’t noticed, its my blog, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
Fair dos James, I see your point of it just being a report on your experience with it.
But the point I’m trying to make is that other people won’t see it that way. Look at the responses here already. Teenagers the world over are up in arms over your post.
And in today’s climate, you don’t want to make teenagers angry, because they’ll kill you don’t ya know. You’re better off just writing “It was teh orsum” and leave it at that
well you are going to be the only sucker who isn’t going to enjoy crysis.
and you failed to read this moron
as you say that you “You’re still stuck wandering pointlessly around a tropical islandâ€
NOW THE POINTLESS WANDERING IS DEPENDED ON THE USER, NOT THE GAME. It is up to the user how he can wander around the island. you must be the one who isn’t following the objective properly.
I wonder if somebody read my comments on all of this. I like Crysis and have already started to work on a mod for it even before the game is out. The things you can do with CE2 is only limited by your imagination. And there is no easier to use game-editor or better game engine than SandBox and CE2. And you get it all when buying Crysis. That alone should already be a reason to buy Crysis when it comes out on the 15th and 16th of November.
owned can’t comment on that can yeah
Where are the invisible walls in Far Cry James? Played thru it 3 times and didn’t hit one. If your refferring to the helicopter attck when you try to go out too far in the sea, well thats not an invisible wall - its a clever (you get shot up instead of *bump* invisible wall) gameplay mechanic to stop you from spending 10 hours wandering out to infinite sea..
From a gaming journalist i would have expected better tbh, you seem to have many hidden agendas and/or chips on your shoulder looking thru some of your comments, certainly those making huge assumptions based on your bias - EAs “direction” of this game. And regarding DX9 shouldnt you be PLEASED that the game looks fantastic in DX9? Isnt that what we all want? If the game isnt shown in DX10 maybe its because they want to stamp all this nonsense about the game being overly demanding, something im sure you would have written had it been a DX10 only preview.
I reserve judgements on gameplay till ive played it, but i cant really take anything you have said seriously based on the overtly bias agenda you seem to have brought to the table before you even played it (”didnt like Far Cry, Wasnt expecting much”).
Anyways, just let me know where these invisible walls in Far Cry were so i can go take a look please James.
Can’t comment on what? The fact that you won’t login so people can see who you are, or the fact that the fanboys can’t present a reasoned argument so resort to immature name calling?
On a more serious note, Erik, what type of mod are you working on?
Hey James, if this is your blog then maybe you should change how people can post messages here. You ask for a name and email which are required fields and which I filled in. That you do not do anything with it when the message is added to your blog is not my fault. So if I were you I would first make sure the blog works as it should be before you start accusing people.
And on the more serious note, have a look at www.nuclearcrysis.com You will probably not like it, but that is to be expected from you. So just to beat you with your comments that will probably follow from you.
For those of you that are interested, Custom PC has now posted a more in-depth preview of Crysis on the front page: http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/601217/crysis–first-look.html
Opinion was divided on the game among the team, and the tone of the preview is generally positive. However, as James has regularly pointed out in the comments here, ‘Crysis in crisis’ is not supposed to be a full review, but a small blog post representing James’ opinion on the version of Crysis he played, which is why it’s in the blogs secion.
Nomadski: I can remember being frustrated in Far Cry in several areas where your progress appears to be blocked off, such as in the sea around some of the islands and almost any somewhat steep slope.
As for a hidden agenda, there is none. Just because I didn’t like the last half of Far Cry doesn’t mean I’m not open minded enough to enjoy future Crytek games. As just one example I didn’t really enjoy the early Need for Speed games but really enjoyed evading the police in NFS: Most Wanted.
Re not demoing the game on DX10, my comment was that “the beta we got to play was written in DirectX 9 and running on PCs installed with Windows XP”. This is an interesting point as many hardware manufacturers are using Crysis as a reason to encourage punters to buy DX10 hardware. Yes, that’s good news for punters, but not for the PR and sales staff who work at certain hardware manufacturers.
> And on the more serious note, have a look at www.nuclearcrysis.com You will probably not like it, but that is to be expected from you. So just to beat you with your comments that will probably follow from you.
Ah, another poster who assumes what the state of mind of another person must be. Ever heard of jumping to conclusions? As to your mod it looks a lot more interesting than Crysis, as those 3D model screenshots show quite a nice range of contemporary military hardware. Who knows, maybe Crysis will end up like Doom3 - a terrible game, but a great engine that is licensed all over the industry and is used to make lots of good games.
Re Far Cry I would suggest you go back and play it again, because ive been able to travel around whole islands in a boat with no blockages, there wasnt one single invisible wall hit experienced by me in 30 something hours of gameplay - steep slopes (ala mountains) cant exactly be described in the throwaway sense you used as an “invisible wall” can it? Does Halo, Cod, GoW, GTA or any other game ever developed suck in your eyes because they put walls, mountains or actual invisible walls at the gameplay boundary? Again, Far Cry does not have invisible walls i assure you.
Re DX demoing, there have been numerous demos events recently showcasing the game in DX10 and all this has done is fuel speculation that you need a £2000 monster rig to play the game. Now they demo it in the DX9 arena and STILL they get criticism. What you COULD have focussed on was how the game played (performance), and looked on the DX9 engine most of us are actually going to play on - instead you focussed solely on this being some kind of big joke? I understand what you are saying, but for me your argument is of minute importance against what WE would like to know - in DX9 did it look amazing? How did it perform? I dont give two ****s about the overall Microsoft strategy - ill upgrade when i want to, fortunately (i hope) this game delivers on BOTH DXs.
Im not trying to flame unnecessarily James but i Do think you had serious agendas here, or at the very least a heavily buried preconception of what you would think of this game….
“You’re still stuck wandering pointlessly around a tropical island, which you can’t fully explore because of stupid arbitrary invisible walls that block your progress.” Would you have preferred the locale to have been something more ‘original’ like a warehouse? Or a dockyard? And wandering pointlessly? As in, not being led by the hand thru corridors, blocked off houses with only one path thru them etc?
All ive got to go on is demos, and gameplay demos from shows, but i cant think of a better place to shoot things up than a gorgeous tropical island - so what if its been done before in ONE game, how many warehouses or offices will you play thru before you start applying the same rationale?
Take into account the massive changes in gameplay (and physics) that supposedly come when the aliens arrive, plus the third and final act where everything changes AGAIN in zero G and i would like to think you would have more to say than dismissing this off as being Far Cry with Aliens untill you see more than half an hours worth of pre release demo. Your comments are your own opinion, but with the CustomPC header on top makes your words read with more weight than some random forumite and this **** spreads fast.
Critiscism is fine with me, so long as it sounds fair and unbiased, complaining of an overly harsh graphical feature (blur) which you can turn down or off in an article pretty much devoid of all other graphical comments bar the (far more reasoned) criticsm of the none bending leaves, just makes me think you are looking for the bad things, not the good things from what you are playing. Name me your favourite game and i could write a similarly weighted article on that games bad points im sure.
Sorry for very lengthy post, am a Far Cry and (hopefully) Crysis fan, but not a fanboy but need to take issue with what you say in your article and to others in your replies, nowt personal ofc. 
Thanks for your constructive comments Nomadski, if you want more detail on the i31 demo of Crysis I’d suggest checking out our more in depth preview.
Re your comments on that lack of info about when the aliens arrive and the zero G sections, unfortunately that was not part of the i31 demo, so there’s no point in speculating on that in my blog without any hands on experience of either.
Re the criticism of the motion blur, I don’t think this was over critical, in my opinion it detracts enormously from the gaming experience. Yes, do you can turn it off, but then the devs have still wasted time, money and programing resources creating it which could have been better spent on other features.
And just to clarrify, I’m not totally set against Crysis. This after all is my opinion having briefly played an early beta. Who knows, perhaps the finished game will be a much more satisfying experience, something I did say in the original story, not just pan it like some overly emotional teenage fanboy.
I only got Far Cry this morning, I am lovin it, also to know that Crysis was at i31 only about 10 miles way and I didn’t go makes me wanna kick myself
Can i just say, this is a BETA release, its not meant to be making your eyes pop out is it now, its bound to have bugs and be unoptimized and i’m sure EA/Crytek will make some changes to it. James, about the motion blur, it might not be good but its a beta so obviously they’ll change it. Why not go out and buy the full game in November and put forward a valid argument, BETAs mean nothing because it’ll change!
Will certainly check out the full preview, am eager for all news, from every angle.
Seriously, I believe are you mentally challenged. I’d counter all of your “points”, but it would be like teaching physics to a preschooler.
To everyone else, just think of the opposite of everything this pinhead wrote, and there you go.
Tom Bamford - my blog post does state it was a beta, and suggests that it will almost certainly improve. Still, its always interesting to see how a game is shaping up, and provide constructive criticism so that it can be improved. That after all is the primary purpose of building and releasing a beta version - to get outside feedback.
“could have been better spent on other features” Remember, that’s your opinion. It might be better to others..
You’re probably just a console “gamer” projecting your subconscious jealousy in the form of a critical review, in a vein attempt to console yourself.
Or, you’re just trying to get attention. Any attention is good attention, right?
You’re blog post is laughable at best. This seems to be the consensus, at least.
Of course others may disagree, and are welcome to, but as this is my blog of course it is my personal opinion.
And it stinks.
> You’re probably just a console “gamer†projecting your subconscious jealousy in the form of a critical review, in a vein attempt to console yourself.
Ah another person incapable of putting forward a rational argument - welcome to the fold. Do you fancy jumping to any other conclusions while you’re at it, or are you happy calling me a console gamer as if somehow that is some kind of insult?
In point of fact I’ve been playing PC games since the early 1980s and the only console I have ever owned was a Sega Gamegear back in the early 1990s.
yup your right there james, i’ve always thought myself to be a fanboy but i mean some people on here want to defend the game to the death. i also forgot to mention the constructive criticism about betas is good, because it means developers can tweak out all the problems. if people just play the beta without giving feedback like 99% of the quake wars players the game will probably turn out crap.
Give James a break here, until we’ve played the game we can’t say anything.
I know what you mean about farcry, James. The wow factor tailed off and it got a bit silly, they ran out of ideas and overdid the mutants IMHO. I do love the game, but I see your point.
I’m honestly not expecting crysis to be the ‘ultimate’ FPS, but if it turns out to be farcry with better visuals and more weaponry then I’ll be satisfied. If it degenerates into silliness halfway through, a la farcry, it will be a disappointment.
My main concern is the comment about the vegetation not moving - it suggests to me that this has been hobbled to produce a playable framerate for the purposes of the demo. That does not bode well for playability. DX10 games developers need to be bl**dy careful. If the new crop of games truly cannot be played on current (albeit top end) gfx cards, they will send hordes of customers to the consoles and effectively hammer a nail in the coffin of PC based games.
Spreadie, I know what you mean about DirectX 10. If its any comfort we received the beta version of World in Conflict yesterday for testing this years Dream PCs and although it runs slower in DX10 than DX9, the difference is not nearly as pronounced as other games such as Company of Heroes.
That sounds encouraging. There may be a light at the end of the tunnel after all. Lets hope its not a train!
Man alive… bet you wish you had never even dared to besmirch the good name of crysis… seems like a lot of readers out there are pinning all their hopes and dreams on this FPS…. and they sure don’t like hearing that it may indeed be a bit of a let down.
I have played this game at i31 and this game just KICKS FU**ING MAJOR ARSE! It just absolutely fantastic and these comments made by James, and im not in anyway fighting with your comments as everyone is entiltled to their opinion, were a bit strange. In my opinion, as a lover of FarCry, this game just does it for me in everyway a FPS should do. The Graphics are absolutely stunning, sure they are in DX9 - so what? This game running in DX9 on Scan’s 7950GX2 system was nothing short of jaw-dropping. Just think of what this game would look like in DX10 if DX9 looked to me as the best GFX engine i have literally seen to date. Even on a 7950GX2 it ran REALLY well and thats a fantastic sign for fans. If you don’t have a DX10 card - DONT WORRY this game looks absolutely amazing in DX9!
Going onto the Motion Blur, it was NOT in anyway OTT at all. I thought it made a great addition, it was subtle at best and it made me go “wow thats pretty fricking cool”. The Vegetation destruction was also nothing short of amazing and when using Super Strength having the option of smacking walls down in a house, as well as trees, was great fun. All the gadgets were fantastic fun, and i thought the AI was pretty well smart for an Alpha version. They were a good challenge, calling in reinforcements when they spot you, running for the nearest cover when shot at and asking for backup from fellow teammates who are nearby. The Physics in the Alpha were very well done picking up barrels and tossing them, flattening a house with Super Strengh and the most fun was grabbing enemies by the throat and tossing them around.
The thing that really made me go “wow” was the little bits they added in the game. The Laser sight mod was nothing short of amazing, it actually adapts to where its being pointed at. Like on leaves, bumpy rocks and enemies, it also leaves a trail when you lean left and right or move when close to a wall like it should. Its not just a dot on the wall, which i really liked. The other thing i liked was when you had 2 Pistols, if you were in front of a wall and were near the edge one hand would come down. Like if you were on the left edge of the wall leaning out his left pistol would come down but the right stays up as its being obstructed by the wall. Same with all weapons, if your close to a wall the weapon immediately comes up to your face - which i thought was a great addition. Also the Vehicular damage was smashing, i really loved that one too. Taking out tyres and the driver before they could react was brilliant to watch. Vehicles in the Alpha worked well too, in fact the whole Alpha worked pretty damn good.
I cannot wait for this game, i literally wanted to sit down and play it all day. As a massive FPS fan this IS the FPS to play when it comes out. Sure its a lot like FarCry, to a degree, but man is it absolutely FANTASTIC and brilliant fun. The SFX, Music, Voice Acting, Physics, Graphics etc etc were all well done and is coming along brilliantly. IMO i think James over-reacted i just LOVE this game to bits and i want to play it right now. In fact i loved it that much i would gladly wait 6 months for it, but hopefully when November comes i can finally sit down with a nice can of coke and munchies and just play Crysis for hours on end. Im sersiously hyped up to the max now about this game!
ROLL ON NOVEMBER!!
Calm it Kermits….. It’s just an opinion. I’m sure it’s all going to turn out fine…. even if I do have to buy a second HD2900XT to run it. Hopefully ATI will have sorted their drivers out by then, then again maybe not James, it good to read an heart felt opinion by someone not swayed by the hype, or are you just playing devils advocate….. only time will tell…….
James, I managed to slip in and play Crysis too. The motion blur is certainly over-done. I loved FarCry (at least before the trigens came in). But Crysis is a lot of breaks higher. I know it looks like FarCry RELOADED, but the graphics are immense. I couldn’t stop playing it. Personally I loved the gameplay, movement, gadgets, all of it. I love a game with customizablity.
I also agree, you could just run around and smash the living crap into AI, they were so easy to beat. But I hope this is fixed.
If you don’t that’s just opinion, just like mine is. And 99% of the people who comment your blog haven’t played the game. So they don’t even have an opinion basically.
Thank you James for your opinion of the game! It gave me some information that you cannot find anywhere else. A personal opinion! Even though these “Fan Boys,” think Crysis will be the best thing, has no bearing on what the game will really be like. They are going by videos, for all they know are FAKE! Chances are not, but who knows. IMO, I don’t think Crysis will look ANYTHING like what you see in the videos. I don’t care if you have that $20,000 graphics workstation setup from Nvidia or a small 7600. It’s all going to look good, just not like the videos.
So thank you for your opinion on the game! Hopefully you will get to have another go at the game and you’ll be able to tell us more!
-LoganC-
just another game that my pc won’t play. Sick and Tired to ship money endlessly into a machine that will not offer any garantie to get a decent performance after two years.
just my $.02
/quote - They are going by videos, for all they know are FAKE! - /unquote
Hmmm when the game was ACTUALLY running at i31 and your thinking its fake. Idiot, why don’t you watch the DX9 to DX10 videos of the Jungle, play the Alpha/Beta and then say its fake. I’ve actually sat in a chair and played on a massive 40″+ screen at i31 @ Scan/Intel stand and it looks EXACTLY the same as in the DX9 vids. Im not a fanboy, im just giving Crytek some HUGE credit on the game as they deserve, it looks immense and by far the best looking game on the PC bar-none, and it was only running in DX9. We can wait till Nov till DX10 as Vista is an absolute crock of shite right now im not surprised Crytek opted against showing off DX10 when DX9 looks really good.
/quote - just another game that my pc won’t play - /unquote
Again, the game was running on “Very High” settings with a Quad Core (i think) 1x 7950GX2 and 2GB Ram which is’nt even a massively high-end system. Quad Cores now a well cheap topping in at £160 and you can get an 8800GTS that is performs better than a 7950GX2 for under £200. You could even opt to get less powerful componends like a E6×50 Dual Core with a 7950GX2 or 8800GTS and still be able to run the game. To be honest, the game ran frickin sweet for the components the machine had and i was literally VERY surprised. I think everyone will be surprised when they play it i think, i know i will be.
James, I was at i31, and I played crysis a few times. You are wrong, so very very wrong. After reading your babble I have lost any respect in your ability to assess and review games.
‘wandering pointlessly’… I was taken aback by how stupid this comment is.. I think I shall skip your articles from now on.
That’s better than my PC at home anyway!
I too played the Beta at i31, and I too share some of the orginal points made by James, and I do understand that it is not a finished product or anything, but performance wise aswell I thought the game could have done better (me and a few guys put everything to the highest it would go and the game crashed after struggling to get 10 fps) followed by 2 grenades intoa building crashing the game entierly. Yeh its a beta, and it was a buggy buggy one at that. The blur had to be my biggest wine, and if that is included on the multiplayer, it will really suck for gamers. Pretty though, and not finished. We will see upon release I guess… I wont be buying now after playing the beta.
btw screen size was not 40″ + They were 32″ NEC monitors…
Well,
I have just cancelled my pre-order of Crysis as I was led to believe this game was DX10 only, but now it clearly is showing support for DX9 as well, the code is probably full of bodges and DX10 performance reducing code to get both working, instead of a true DX10 application.
This is funny!
I didn’t say they ARE fake. I said “for all they know they are fake.” Which, I said, chances are not. And I know they are not fake. How could they be?? But I can bet that they are not all actual gameplay footage. I think that there is a lot of touch-up and editing to the videos. That’s what I think!
BTW, thanks for your comment. I had a prediction of what someone might say. I knew they would jump to “Flaming” is it called? just because everyone else was. This is part of my study that I am doing. And I was right about them posting as anonymous.
Thanks
-LoganC-
Christ! Looks like You’ve opened a can of worms here James my boy. I haven’t played Crysis, but I can see where you’re coming from. The trouble with us guys (by which I mean folks who’ve been playing pc games forever) is that we get hungrier and hungrier for novelty. So, naturally, any game hyped as much as Crysis was/is has got a long way to fall. We are starving and are in dire need of a feast, not just a few tasty scraps, or a big plate of left-overs.
You were disappointed and said so. Well good for you mate.
-LoganC-
Ah im not flaming you mate, not in anyway not really what i do. Maybe i did go a little OTT on my last comment i do apologise. I do understand what your saying, im sure there is touching up but i never really went into detail checking that far. The game looked as good as the vids, maybe apart from the AA or AF stuff they probably used to get maximum detail. It was a close representation, the video posted on IGN called “Island Walkthrough” is the level you play in this Beta version. It does look like that vid maybe a few things missing here or there. Maybe the vid was in DX10 but im not too sure. The one diff i do see is in the IGN video it seems to be sunset on the level, where as the Beta was at a much earlier time in the day. It was very close to the vids i have seen, pretty damn close. Besides, i have played the game briefly and love how it looks, i can’t get over how good it looks tbh. Deffo the game to buy this year, along with the ol’ Bioshock!
“/Quote - I have just cancelled my pre-order of Crysis as I was led to believe this game was DX10 only, but now it clearly is showing support for DX9 as well - /Unquote”
Ahh don’t do that, seriously! Check out the DX9 to DX10 videos over at gametrailers.com, you can see the difference with the graphics and effects compared to DX9. Also, if you do cancel and one of your friends gets the game go and check it out, you might be pleasantly surprised!
Thank you, and I am also sorry. I was harsh and also jumped to conclusions.
Either way, I think I’ll buy the game whether or not it has good gameplay! I’ll buy just because of the certain “value” of it. I think that it will be a game that will be remembered for a LONG time, kinda like pong, and Super Mario!
Now I’m jealous that you got to play the game!
Sorry again, and enjoy the game!
-LoganC-
You are a moron, seriously. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t a console gamer really. Your opinion is just garbage for so many reasons, and if I took the time to list them all out, I’d just be wasting my time. It’s like trying to explain to a mentally challenged person why 2+2×2 is not 8 but 6. And it seems the majority of the people here agree with me… and when the game comes out, I’m sure pretty much every real critic will to, along with the vast majority of the people buying it. You’ve written one of those “articles” that people just shake their head at. I hope you don’t spend a lot of time on blogging in the future, because it would be like Stephen Hawking making a habit out of participating in triathlons.
“/Quote - Either way, I think I’ll buy the game whether or not it has good gameplay! -Unquote”
Exactly the reason why im buying it to be honest. I mean the gameplay is what you would expect from a shooter but in a gorgeous environment. They added the Gadgets and on-the-fly Mods to weapons for the fun factor. Plus its something completely different, that no one has attempted to do. And the game does it very well. It’s not often you get choices on how to fight in a regular FPS, normally you just run and kill. With Crysis you can Cloak then Strengh, grab a dude and use him as a shield or to throw into enemies. Its also good fun running circles round an enemy and seeing him shoot frantically but to miss all shots heh.
The way the game looks, all the interviews and videos, i think Crytek/EA (EA for once! hurrah) definately earn my hard earned £26.99. They have put a lot of thought into it, bit like Valve did for Half-Life 2 and just for the sheer thought they put in im splashing the cash. Whether the story will be “good” remains to be seen, it sounds solid but can they pull it off? Either way, i just like the open space to explore and use different pathways to complete missions. Its great even walking around just looking at the Environment, it’s oh so pretty
“me and a few guys put everything to the highest it would go and the game crashed after struggling to get 10 fps”
Maybe its due to the fact that NO HARDWARE ON EARTH CAN COMPLETELY MAX CRYSIS OUT until around 18 MONTHS AFTER RELEASE..
“/Quote - “me and a few guys put everything to the highest it would go and the game crashed after struggling to get 10 fps†- /Unquote”
Was that on one of the Intel machines or one of the Scan machines? The one i played on was the Scan Panther system, the one with the leather all around it, big window and square case. This machine had 1x 7950GX2, a Quad Core CPU and maybe 4GB of Ram. Now i checked the options in Crysis and everything was on “Very High” apart from “Multiprocessing” which was on “Custom”. It was also running in a good resolution.
It NEVER went to 10FPS, it was well above 30 at all times, i have no idea where your getting this from. If it had dropped to 10FPS i would have noticed, infact all those people watching would have noticed and complained. None did, as it was SMOOTH as. The machine i played it on was handling it superbly, especially for a 7950GX2 GFX Card. The game will run smoothly on an XP System with a 7900+ Series GFX card and a cheap Q6600. 10FPS … that system must have been on a shite GFX card. All the 8800’s ran this game perfectly at the event so where are you getting the low FPS from?
Oh dear, these comments are hilarious. Tragically so.
JG gave his opinion on what he saw, and he is being slated for it by those who haven’t played that demo. I found it amusing that those who did play it, tended to agree with his initial opinions.
And yes it is an opinion folks. Everyone is allowed to hold one, whether you agree or not. An opinion, put in a brief blog entry about the demo level. Rather than claiming JG is the moron, I think you guys are. You are the ones extrapolating his views to the whole game, and treating it as a whole review.
Oh, and don’t think for one minute that spouting vitriol and waving your e-pen1s behind an “anonymous” title is in the least bit clever. It just shows you are a big coward, without the courage to put your name to your pre-pubescent fanboi rants.
Carry on though, it is very amusing if nothing else.
JG, kudos to you. I agree that so much is over-hyped these days that it can often be a big disappointment when the products arrives.
Wow, some people in this post are just plain rude. What’s the deal with that, I can see that it’s an opinion blog and having never played either Far Cry or an early demo of Crysis I value other peoples opinions, it’s all part of gathering enough information to justify wether to buy a game or not.
As with all games it’s a matter of personal taste in the end; you’ll either like a game, warts and all or you’ll not. It is still down to the individual.
I’m sure most people have made a purchase using ‘the fog of excited anticipation’ having been fooled by promotional footage only to find their purchase wasn’t the wisest one. (If you think this is a lie you should look through your cd/dvd cupboard/drawer and pick out the lemons - you know they’re in there!!)
Anyway, please calm down people, it’s only games we’re talking about here.
and James - if you ignore them they’ll move on to try to wind someone else up.
p.s. I’m not a James Gorbold fan boy, I don’t always agree with everything he says - he does write some valid points, he doesn’t seem to be muted by publishing companies and he does generally help me to form my OWN opinions.
Now count to ten 1. 2. 3………
Hi James -
I’m glad you got over your “refusal to play anything not militarily accurate” (cf Ben Hardwidge) and gave Crysis a blast.
I’d call myself a Far Cry fanboy, because I honestly appreciated the effort the good folks at Crytek went to in order to make a truly fantastic game. I appreciate that some people (and it sounds like you’d be one of them) didn’t like the direction the game went in with the mutants, but that’s purely a matter of taste. What I appreciated was the fact that the game looked so much more stunning than anything before or for quite a while afterward, and was playable on a wide range of hardware. I’d certainly say that it looked better than Quake 4, for example, while being less demanding on the hardware. I was able to play Far Cry on my laughably old Quadro2, and managed to tweak the graphics to look substantially better than the “before” screenshots you posted in your recent “Can Old PCs Run Vista?” article. This confused me slightly - it’s a very old card (SM1.1?), albeit an expensive high-end model at release and I wondered if it was simply the fact of the complex later SM code impacting performance on newer, consumer-grade cards?
I see the fact of the demonstration being run on DX9 as an encouraging indication that Crytek are continuing this trend of accessibility, and I have every faith that, with such a pedigree, they will make their DirectX10 code an enhancement of an already accomplished engine, since at release a large proportion of their customers will be lacking one of the three-fold requirements (Vista, a GOOD DX10 graphics card and approximately twice as much RAM as XP would need) to run in DX10. I appreciate that the troll-flames you’ve received will probably have put you off entering into a dialogue on this, but I’d like to hear your views.
> I’m glad you got over your “refusal to play anything not militarily accurate†(cf Ben Hardwidge) and gave Crysis a blast.
Well, those are still the sort of games I prefer as you’ll see in this months Virtual War feature when you get Issue 49.
Re your comments on shader model code effecting cards differently you’re definitely onto something there. As one of the first (if not the) Shader Model 3 games none of the graphics cards of the time could run it smoothly at a decent resolution so that’s why your on paper inferior card could run the game at a higher frame rate. The same could also be said for DX9 versus DX10 games. i.e. a 7950 GX2 will run DX9 games faster than a 8800GTX will run DX10 games at the same resolution.
I would like you to know the following, the recent drivers of NVIDIA have released, seem to cause crysis to crash. Thats the reason why crytek have only released crysis beta as dx9 not dx10. you want proof please copy the following link and past it in your address bar.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=81660
the following artilce addresses the reason for crytek , not willing to show dx10.
here is a quote.
“ow we’re just three months before release and you’d think he’d want to show the game off at its very best. Why not?
“For different reasons,” says Yerli, an instantly likeable chap who’d probably get as much attention as Jade Raymond if more women played games. “We’re still receiving drivers which are crashing. That’s the main reason. We don’t have a stable driver yet.
“Until we get it running on multi-threaded drivers on Vista we don’t want to show any more. We’re getting performance impact on Vista. We don’t want to make Vista look bad either, because it’s not Vista’s fault. It’s the driver right now.”
Yerli says he’s working closely with Nvidia to resolve the issues and is “absolutely” confident they’ll be fixed in time for launch - “We will resolve them in the next two weeks, actually.”
But for now, we’ll just have to settle - if that can even be considered the right word - for Crysis working on DirectX 9, beginning with the single-player game.”
That would also explain why the X800 series punched (and still punches according to your last Labs test) above its weight, whereas the 6800GT was crippled by support for SM3 without the horsepower to keep it up.
What bothers me most, though, is the fact that the unified architecture of the 8800-series (we’ll leave out the lower range models because of their awful implementation, number of stream processors and memory interface) lends itself to efficiency - utilizing 100% of the GPU all the time by refactoring the pipeline to cope with whatever pixel or vertex operations are required.
DX10’s geometry shader code is likewise supposed to improve the efficiency of generating vertices, stream out is supposed to improve on SM3’s instancing, and everything is supposed to deliver more performance for the same amount of horsepower. Yet everything released so far seems to indicate that the same card will run a game roughly 10x slower in DX10 than DX9. Are people simply not programming the shaders properly, or have we been sucked into a load of DX10 hype?
Its hard to say with any certainty right now, but I think a lot of the problems with DX9 versus DX10 comparisons is that in the current games DX10 was added as a patch as an afterthought, not written in from the ground up. DX10 is such a fundamental shift away from DX9 that I think its clear that programmers are really struggling to recode shaders from DX9 to DX10, especially when they are under so much pressure to multithread games too.
As a point of interest, the beta of World in Conflict we have shows far less of a performance difference between DX9 and DX10 versions on the same hardware than patched DX10 games (although there is still a big difference). Speaking to the head tech at the developer it seems this is the case because they wrote the game from the ground up in DX9 and DX10, so the code runs far more efficiently than patched DX10 games.
Aargh. Now I’m stuck wondering what to do. I was planning to avoid moving to DX10 just yet because it would involve splashing on Vista, a new motherboard, graphics card, RAM, CPU - in effect, rebuilding my machine. Whereas to stick with DX9 for another year or so all I’d have to do is fork out for a Gecube X1950XT AGP. Are all developers likely to work on both codebases, or will they switch over wholesale (like Bungie)?
I think it unlikely that many developers will only produce DX10 games, as it would simply reduce the potential number of sales for their game.
However, I think there is a real risk that developers will focus too much on DX9/DX10 code (take your pick which is worse depending on what GPU(s) you own now).
Will you just shutup! It’s a game, not your life.
Argue about how to cure cancer instead.
didn’t anyone read the article incase you missed it read it again. The dx10 API is not to blame its the shity drivers. I rest my case.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=81660
Jesus Christ. This is depressing. Someone can’t even voice their own singular opinion about one game. And yes, it does matter if Crysis is actually a good game. People are going to be spending hundreds and thousands of pounds upgrading their PC’s to play it so it should return them with a satisfactory entertainment experience. Crysis may well be amazing, full of high features and be the product of an immense amount of work and talent poured in by the Crysis team. But, they all get paid and they’ve probably had a massive budget to work from. If James doesn’t like Crysis, then fine. I don’t like the England football squad or overpaid footballers. Want to argue about that?
I agree with the reaction to the rude comments: please try to keep it under control. I, in fact, was very interested to read James’s reaction to the beta- how many of you have played it? I suspect very few.
I loved Farcry, and am one of those heretics who thinks it’s noticeably better than HL2. However, as I’m zapping my way through Bioshock, I can’t help hoping that Crytek are playing it and doing some serious thinking about how games have moved on. From the videos and briefings I’ve seen so far on Crysis, it *does* seem a little like Farcry 1.5- huge environments and doing cool things with cool weapons in them do no longer a classic make, because Farcry already did it. Despite being (rightly!) snooty about FPS on consoles, and thus making Crysis PC-only, I hope Crytek are not at risk of failing to exploit the real advantage of PCs, which is IMO the over ten-year higher average age of PC gamers than consolers (based on readership surveys of PCZone and the console CVG publications). This is a customer base that enjoys art, tactility, and story in their games, rather than just blowing shit up.
WOW, you guys are really at each others throats.
I’m not going to criticize anyone for fear of being chewed up and spat out!
It’s been great reading this thread.
Funniest blog responses ever. Play the crysis mp beta - now you will see that it is a buggy, laggy piece of shit. Still the single player will be where it is at!
Having played the crysis demo I fel much the same way as james gorbold. My feeling is that the demo has such big bugs and performance isues it’s likely the release will need a couple of patches before it’s kosher. As for the gameplay if the demo is supposed to impress me it didnt do so in those stakes, not up to the stadard of say stalker in my book. That said after the game has had a coupld of post release patches I’ll be buying it and hoping for more than the demo promised, which felt more alpha than the UT3 beta demo to me.
well Im sorry to say to stewart that he’s obviously been playing a different beta to me! I’ve had no problems (except for the occasional exploiters) and have had great fun in the MP beta! I have to say that as much as I am still looking forward to crysis, the demo did have some issues, namely, slightly worse performance then MP (odd that) and although the suit modes did add some fun to the game, its so far a pretty normal open FPS, a good one, but still not original enough…
Crysis is WAY overrated, wana play a good single player game? play half-life 2. Wana play a good multiplayer game? play Team fortress 2. Enough said, Crysis is Far cry 0.5, it aint even in the same league.
I agree with the reaction to the rude comments: please try to keep it under control. I, in fact, was very interested to read James’s reaction to the beta- how many of you have played it? I suspect very few.
Now that Crysis has been released, we can all see that this is no ordinary game, possibly one of the greatest shooters of all time. Gamespot called it revolutionary, Metacritic average rating of 91. You’re in the minority, James.
Furthemore, I agree entirely with the commenter who said that you had this article written in your head before you played the game. It’s rather obvious that you do not enjoy non-linear games like these and expected Crysis to be bad. You know how the saying goes: “If you think it will be bad, it will be.”
firstly id like to say that I played the crysis demo and af6ter ten seconds I decided that to bin it. because I knew that a game like this would be better in the final release NOT BETA. reading the comments made here I can see that some one is misinform FOR DAMN SURE.
ill begin with FAR CRY it begins with jack and Val the main characters on a bout which gets
blown, then jack(you) find your self on an island surrounded by mercenaries and monsters all because of DR Krieger how is carrying out genetic experiments.
as far as CRYSIS goes the story is very much different your part of a team sent to extract an archaeologist and in the process you come up against the Korean army and a little bit later aliens.
so already on this note you can see both games taking different paths.
One thing people have to realise is that far cry didn’t have any gadgets and there fore in some ways limited how you can kill your opponent.
but in other ways made you more aware about the enemy and the tactics they would employ to hunt you down.
were as CRYSIS has a host of gadget that not only allows you to play differently and employ different tactics it also gives you a different
game play experience. and as far as replay value goes this game is absolute genius
and as far as invisible walls all that is, is an incomplete section of the game or a linear way of guiding you to complete an objective
for example slopes in FAR CRY and CRYSIS or rocks in the way forcing you to go round.
any way I would continue this but I am just about to clock off
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