Crysis Review

[Harvik780]

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.












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




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).

[Who]

i read the whole review i agree with everything except for 10/10 out in the story , i think it derserves 8/10 in story IMO, but anyways really a great review in the end , i hope you will be reviewing future games like gears of war, also why don't make a thread PC games review & if possible get that thread stickied, anyway excellent work.

[Harvik780]

Thanks,i think ur right.
BTW crysis was released to boost sales for 8800GT.Nvidia had already decided it long time ago.Crytek has been paid by nvidia.

[sam9s]

Good review Harvik.....very decent. I wonder how my rig would handle the game when coupled with an XFX 8800GT. I am soon gonna grab hold of it. Tom's Hardware shows the following performance........



Its almost the same in all other reviews......

Notice a mere 35.5 fps on 1600x1200, but I think on a 19" widescreen LCD's native resolution of 1440x900 it should be able to give an avg of 35-40 fps with 4XAA and all settings on high......will soon find out.....

[W i d e S c r e e N]

what about FPS in 1920x1200 with everything maxed?
Would it be playable?
8800GT. 3GHZ DC. 2GB .16MB cache HDD.

[Who]

No

[sam9s]

Originally Posted by W i d e S c r e e N

what about FPS in 1920x1200 with everything maxed?
Would it be playable?
8800GT. 3GHZ DC. 2GB .16MB cache HDD.

1920x1200!!! thats to much a high resolution man n that too all setting maxed.....nope it would be powerpoint slide show if it runs..........just look...... its just giving 35 fps on 1600x1200 without AA so u can judge. I feel the fps should not drop below 35-40 at all times for a perfect smooth gameplay..........following is the config which Tom's Hardware used....

CPU Intel Core 2 Quad QX6850
Motherboard Asus P5K3 Deluxe
Memory Kingston 2 x 1024 MB
setup in DDR-3 800 6-6-6-15-21
Hard Drive Hitachi T7K250 250 GB
DVD-ROM DVD Player Asus 12x
Power Supply Tagan U15 Easycon 530 W
Operating System Windows XP Pro
Nvidia ForceWare 167.37 (all GeForce all games except Crysis)
ForceWare 169.01 (all GeForce under Crysis)

so you can see....

[entrana]

harvick bhai apna man bana. tune to kaha tha game bakwaas hain

[Harvik780]

^^I got paid by crytek and that's damn true
I'll be posting the pics of aliens........just wait.

[entrana]

sure u got paid by crytek..

[Hitboxx]

Is it me or the graphics of CoD4 appear much more sweeter than these screenshots? [Oopsie the images turned up large, thought they were smaller ]



For more screenshots, go here

[nvidia]

@harvik780: Super Review. Thanks a lot.. Ill be getting the game tomorrow..

[xbonez]

started playing today. game is pretty gud. concept of the suit and its powers are really fun

[entrana]

the game gets lame man. u practically cant die

[dOm1naTOr]

@entrana
just try playing @ hard or delta. In delta, u probably won't get time to breath

[goobimama]

@widescreen: Kind of sucky eh! Get a nice huge monitor and you find out you have to play all your games on such a high resolution!

[W i d e S c r e e N]

a square of 1600x1200 cant beat what 1920x1200 offers specially for a scenic beauty of Crysis.

what 3d do u use?

[goobimama]

If you are asking about my graphics card, then it's a 7900GT 256MB. But I hear my CPU/RAM is the bottleneck (P4 3Ghz + 1GB RAM)

the game gets lame man. u practically cant die

The review mentioned that the difficulty settings are a bit too easy to begin with. Did you try the high difficulty setting?

[deathvirus_me]

Crysis is a graphical marvel with lame a** story , and though the game gives the player a lot of freedom during the initial levels , later its pretty much another run and gun .. and this game really boosts the texture vram overloading problem of the 8800's ... plus the final boss was like so daammm easy even in delta mode ... chalo .. anyway .. overall , not a 9 but something around 8/10 ..

Runs fine on my rig btw .. 1280*1024 , very high on XP , and loads of tweaks regarding visuals and performance ...

[goobimama]

As long as it looks mindblowing!

[W i d e S c r e e N]

@gobimamma when u planning to upgrade?

@deathvirus_me ---plz explain :texture vram overloading problem of the 8800.

[sam9s]

Originally Posted by deathvirus_me

Runs fine on my rig btw .. 1280*1024 , very high on XP , and loads of tweaks regarding visuals and performance ...

Is there a noticeable difference while playing the game on Vista with DX10 and XP with DX9

Originally Posted by W i d e S c r e e N

---plz explain :texture vram overloading problem of the 8800.

WS VRAM is used to store image data that the computer displays; it acts as a buffer between the CPU and the video card, VRAM is dual-ported. it has two access paths, i.e data can be written to and read from simultaneously.
I presume when the vmemory runs short its overloaded, which seems hard to believe with todays genreation GPUs.
VRAM is heavily dependent on what level of textures the game is using, or what level we have set the game to use in game settings. It seems hightly unlikely that high end cards could face the overload problem specially the 512MB cards, since not only the amount of memory has increated but the access rate has also improved drastically for these high end cards.

@Deathvirus_me do you literally get the message "Video RAM Overload" while playing the game on everything maxed out.??

[entrana]

hey how did u set it on very high

[deathvirus_me]

Originally Posted by W i d e S c r e e N

@deathvirus_me ---plz explain :texture vram overloading problem of the 8800.

Well , in certain games , it may happen that some unnecessary data is not unloaded from the vram , thus occupying unecessary space. . even with 512 MB cards , it might happen that the total vram usage actually reached over the limit of the physical vram , i.e. 512 MB .. in such a case , the data that was supposed to be stored on the vram is now shifted to the RAM , which is a hell lot slower than the vram .. so this results in stutterings and slowdowns quite often .. the only way out is the alt-tab out of the game , which flushes the vram , and then go back in the game ...

Though this may happen on any card , the effects are more noticeable on the 8 series ... with my 7950GT , while playing Stalker , vram usage often went upto ~550 MB , but i never noticed slowdowns .. stutterings/hitching yes , but not slowdowns .. but with the 8800GT , the fps actually dips ... infact in certain parts of Crysis , the fps went from ~32 to ~24 , and after alt-tab , back to ~32 ...

This problem is dependant on the game to quite an extent and is more noticeable in games which uses texture streaming , or any similar "streaming" techniques .. its like the engine totally forgets to unload the unnecessary things from the vram ...

And also , this is also a problem in the driver level ... and more dominant with 8800's .. this problem in more open terms is referred to as "memory leaks" ... only in this case its the vram and not the system ram .

But is still fail to understand why there is a performance slowdown instead of just stutterings ... never faced this problem with the 7950GT even when the vram usage went over the limit .. infact wit QTP3 , Oblivion avg. around 580 MB almost all the time ... no slowdowns .. just stutters .. something actually knew what to unload , when to unload ...

See : http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?threadid=240317

For me , the only solution i could find for Crysis was to lower texture size to 1024 , from 2048 .. then the mem. usage maxed around ~490 .. no slowdowns ...

Originally Posted by sam9s

@Deathvirus_me do you literally get the message "Video RAM Overload" while playing the game on everything maxed out.??

Naah .. but random slowdowns .. only solution is to alt-tab out , then reload the game ... irritating at certain times ... .. when will nvidia actually get a fix ..

[Harvik780]

I have XFX 8600 GT SLI and i also experienced very suspicious slowdowns.I'll check if ur solution works sam9s.I think the nvidia SLI memory leakage bug still persists.

[deathvirus_me]

^^ only solution can come from nvidia i guess ... the only other way is to somehow make sure that no matter how high u put the settings , the vram usage stays below ur cards vram limit ..

[W i d e S c r e e N]

I get a "lot" of stutters with 78GT/256/1GB/4200+. whilst Splinter Cell Double Agent.

It's similar to when you have a dual core AMD and you havent patched windows with apt drivers.

Can we use third party drivers/are there any?

neat trick -atl+tab!

[sam9s]

Originally Posted by deathvirus_me

And also , this is also a problem in the driver level ... and more dominant with 8800's .. this problem in more open terms is referred to as "memory leaks" ... only in this case its the vram and not the system ram .

But is still fail to understand why there is a performance slowdown instead of just stutterings ... never faced this problem with the 7950GT even when the vram usage went over the limit .. infact wit QTP3 , Oblivion avg. around 580 MB almost all the time ... no slowdowns .. just stutters .. something actually knew what to unload , when to unload ...



Naah .. but random slowdowns .. only solution is to alt-tab out , then reload the game ... irritating at certain times ... .. when will nvidia actually get a fix ..

Deathvirus you might like to try these hotfixes I posted, if you are using vista. This might solve few issues.....

MS Windows Vista Hotfixes for Geforce 6,7,8 Series cards

[xbonez]

@ all those who've played Crysis (entrana, harvik etc.):
Which gme did u prefer : Crysis or FEAR (at the time it had come out)

personally i prefered FEAR. not only is the story much more gripping, it is actually frightening too (unlike lots of others "horror" games). even the gfx and physics are awesome. in fact they're so aweosme that even today nearly an yr after its release, its gfx are comparable with the new games coming out

[Harvik780]

I have played and completed FEAR twice on normal and hard difficulty and i must say that fear was way better when it came out.The gameplay of FEAR was what I liked.Enemy AI top-notch by its standards.Its creepy cut-scenes where excellent.