Crysis is here and We have a brief review.
Gameplay is important.....graphics should be good...story strong and inspiring.But all only if the game performs better on average pcs and by that i don't mean what nvidia says average but what a gamer thinks is average for him which should at least run the game at "High" if not "Very High" with at least 4xAA.
Crysis the most anticipated First Person Shooter of 2007 doesn't quiet fit into the category of games with good performance.That crowns taken by HL2 series,Bioshock and some others but not CRYSIS yes not CRYSIS.
I have two decent rigs.One which scores 9450 and the other which scores 9650 in 3DMark 06.Both can be said to be todays midrange.But talk about high end ones.Yes the ones with SLI and Quad Core and ubers of ram.This game has poor support for SLI(heard a patch will be soon ou to improve SLI performance) and I wonder what this game was made to run on.....wait i know....a TIME MACHINE through which a gamer could just jump into the future and play on a 0.55nm fabricated chip which would cost less and perform 100times faster than current processors.
Graphics[10/10] -
This game pushes it beyond the limits of current gen.The graphics show the next-gen consoles the flat floor.With intense use of post processing(sun shafts AKA god rays),shaders,shadow effects(ultra soft shadows),particles(soft particles),volumetric effects,high res textures and vast environments with excellent Draw distance.These screens will pretty much say it all.
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Gameplay[8/10] -
The game is pretty much a pi$$ off at normal and low difficulty.At normal difficulty I completed 4 levels just running and gunning ok not quiet gunning just running and some swimming.My brother completed the first two levels easily by just getting prone in clock an recharging when necessary.Gameplay physics have some major flaws.Dead bodies do not respond to gunfire.Birds are brave enough when u come up to them.Though they are so delicate that they die after u throw them when picked up.Just launch a grenade in before a cut scene and it messes up the whole display.Enemy and friendly AI is cr/\p at normal difficulty.Ur tactical ammo can take 10 seconds to reload but hey just change the fire mode in 3secs and switch back to tactical ammo and its reloaded in no time...magic.The Koreans in nano suit are total freaks jumping here and there so that you can spot'em easily.Hey but all that is what differentiates between a game and real life.Also its you who decides how he plays it...Run and Gun...Stealth...or combo art..Even in bioshock u could do stupid things if not using ur plasmid powers properly.
I would suggest that even casual gamers at least start with Hard difficulty.Probably crytek got a lot of complaints regarding the difficulty settings in Farcry.But ur facilitated with the real time dynamic option to change the difficulty which obviously indicates that there are no alternate endings.Top notch accessories provided like the nano-suit and customizable weapons.At least the gameplay is not that scripted which digs it out of its grave.
You can be a mass murderer at normal difficulty
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Sound[9/10] -
Voice acting has been nicely done.The game has good support for surround channel audio.Surround channel experience is important for this game as the environments u'll encounter will be both open and closed.Pin-pointing an enemy with nano-suit will be facilitated with surround audio when he's in cloak mode.
Story[10/10] -
Excellent and inspiring,which grips the player to playing this game.I don't want to give any spoilers out .
Performance[6/10] -
This game is a very poor performer.On my Geforce 8600GT Brutality SLI i can't even turn on true AA and have to use eDgeAA 2.The first level runs very smooth on my 8600GT Brutality SLI with true AA turned off.So does it on my brothers 8800GTS 640MB with 4x true AA turned on.It mostly runs smoothly on High settings only at a resolution of 1024*768 which is not even HD.Others levels performed poorly on my 8600GT SLI.Maybe due to some memory management issues(i was using XP 32-BIT).On the other hand Gears Of War ran perfectly smooth at more than 62FPS(locked).On 1280*800 with everything set to high in DirectX 9.The most important GFX settings in this game are post processing,shadows and shaders of which enabling shaders to high takes a major performance hit.
Overall[8.6/10]
Recommended if you have a decent enough rig to play this game.
I would like to inform users that this game will not run smooth on 8800GT whereas Cevat Yerli said that it would but he only does it for money(who does not).