Crysis is finally released, well, almost, but the demo is. Originally the demo was suppose to be out on September 25th, but it was pushed back to October 26th to avoid being out shadowed by Halo 3 mania. After playing through the demo, I can confirm the reports: Crysis is a massive system hog, and brought my computer to its knees. Okay, that is not a big surprise. I played the demo on high settings, which is what the game thought was “optimal” for my computer, with x2 anti-aliasing at 1600×1200 resolution in Vista. According to Fraps, my frame rates hovered firmly at 15FPS. This was playable, but choppy. Overclocking my 8800 GTS 640Mb video card to 594Mhz core, 930Mhz memory only added one or two extra frames per second. Unfortunately, that modest video overclock was not even stable, and the game crashed within minutes of play. So combined with the minuscule gains, I went back to stock video speeds. Setting the graphic settings all to medium greatly improved performance, boosting the frame rates to 25-40FPS. But there was a huge difference in visual quality between medium and high settings. In medium settings the colors were saturated and artificial, and the textures much too blurry. After first seeing the game in high quality, environments in medium settings were too noticeably inferior. So for the purpose of capturing pretty screenshots, I endured the choppiness and played the demo through on high settings. The very high setting is beyond the capability of my computer. I have yet to spend time to adjust individual video effect options to find the balance between performance and quality.
In the demo, the game appears to suggest the player to play with light of foot. At least, that is what your superior prefers you to do. But runnin’ and gunnin’ is always a viable option to accomplish the objectives. The suit powers caters to one’s method of play. Those who likes to imitate Rambo will likely to set the suit to maximum defense. And for those to prefer the more covert route, they will be using invisibility. A lot. Which is what I did. I chose to play clandestinely not because I prefer the playing style, but because at 15FPS, surviving heated combat is difficult. So I spent a lot of time crawling invisible in the bushes, sneaking up on Korean soldiers and gleefully unloading my clip into their backs. Rinse, repeat. I hope aliens or other enemies in the full game present more of a challenge.
