Can It Run Crysis? An Analysis of Why a 13-Year-Old Game Is Still Talked About

[Julio Franco]

Every once in a while, a video game is made that becomes part of the industry's history. For PC gamers, there's one title that's almost legendary thanks to its incredible, ahead-of-its-time graphics and ability to grind PCs into single digit frame rates. Join us as we take a look back at Crysis and see what made it so special.

Permalink to review.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2053-can-it-run-crysis-history/

 

[R00sT3R]

Fantastic article!

But lets face it, strip away the technical aspects of Crysis and it's just a very mediocre FPS.

We're only talking about it 13yrs later for all the wrong reasons.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

During vacation last year, I sat and played through Crysis, and Crysis 2. I only ever had Crysis 3 on Xbox. Did it on a 15" laptop with a GTX 1060, Core i7 and 16GB DDR4 with SSD.

All settings were turned to Max (on both games) and the resolution was 1080p.

It looked absolutely fabulous with water effects and jungle foilage that easily put just about every game made today to shame. Shoot through trees and they break- and can kill people they fall on. Demolishable buildings. Just about everything is interactive.

It's astonishing that game could even be made back in 2007.

Thing is, you literally saw the Crysis franchise wither on the vine from one main problem: exclusivity.
The market punishes exclusion.

Games like Fortnite and PUBG made themselves as inclusive as possible and are worth so much more.
The same can be said about Far Cry 3, 4 and 5.

Building a game that many people can't run, feel they can't run (despite scalability) or are poorly marketed too is a death sentence for a game.

Personally, I love Crysis, but I think most gamers pretty much got bored with it when the battles shifted from wide open sand box battles against specifically NORTH KOREANS to boring aliens.

I appreciate being able to kill enemies that look and act like "people". I never appreciated them shifting to "helmeted stormtroopers" in Crysis 2 and 3. A game so technologically sophisticated shouldn't have to take away unique enemies.

They could have sealed the deal with realistic blood, gore and death animations which games like Soldier of Fortune had way back in 1998.

Better AI like FEAR or Half Life would have worked as well. The enemies aren't very smart, but like Rainbow 6 Vegas, they are deadly because of pinpoint aiming.

 

[Nobina]

Can we blame Crysis for starting the whole "graphics are the most important thing in the game" thing?

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Can we blame Crysis for starting the whole "graphics are the most important thing in the game" thing?

That argument has been going on since the NES vs. SEGA wars.

 

[fps4ever]

All that writing and yet no graph of it running on today's hardware at the end to sum it all up...

 

[dirtyferret]

Can we blame Crysis for starting the whole "graphics are the most important thing in the game" thing?

I think it really brought to the forefront the whole PC master race ideology of the only way to play PC games are at their highest graphic settings. I remember playing games like Fate of Atlantis, Monkey Island, Lands of Lore, and even Baldurs Gate and Half Life. Your main objective was always just getting the game to work. Patches were not downloaded but mailed to you. Even Half Life 2 was well optimized. Crysis came along and now it wasn't enough to play the game but to play it at the highest graphic level (I played it on medium setting on a 8600GT and it ran fine). People would comment a gaming PC that couldn't handle Crysis was a complete "waste of money" and you still see it today in comments when people post their potential game builds for feedback.

 

[dirtyferret]

All that writing and yet no graph of it running on today's hardware at the end to sum it all up...

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...l-melts-the-fastest-gaming-pcs-10-years-later

 

[Eldritch]

That argument has been going on since the NES vs. SEGA wars.

True enough today but to be fair at NES time graphics generally did indicate better games as most games were beyond redemption. Good graphics normally implied that development is not done by a guy without the first clue about graphics and game design. For every Contra/Mario there were dozens Bokosuka Wars/Jackyl and Hyde etc.
*AVGN intensifies*

 

[fps4ever]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...l-melts-the-fastest-gaming-pcs-10-years-later

Titan XP...its Pascal, blah.

Thanks for the link BTW!

 

[Badelhas]

Fantastic article!

But lets face it, strip away the technical aspects of Crysis and it's just a very mediocre FPS.

We're only talking about it 13yrs later for all the wrong reasons.

I dont agree with you one bit. Crysis was, in my opinion, the last true groundbreaking games in terms of graphics, till this day. Everything was destructible, dinamic, and with some mods apllied it was photo realistic. This happened because they made it with the a high-end PC capabilities in mind, which are vastly superior than any console out there. Every other game is made with consoles in mind, since money talks.

 

[Jon Tseng]

I dont agree with you one bit. Crysis was, in my opinion, the last true groundbreaking games in terms of graphics, till this day. Everything was destructible, dinamic, and with some mods apllied it was photo realistic. This happened because they made it with the a high-end PC capabilities in mind, which are vastly superior than any console out there. Every other game is made with consoles in mind, since money talks.

Agreed. I thought the FPS gameplay with the suit offering different abilities was excellent - it gave you superpowers to give you cool stuff but the energy system also balanced this out and put limitations on what you could do.

 

[krizby]

Man that takes me back when ATI was still worth their weight. The 299usd HD 4870 ran circle around the once king-of-the-hill 650usd 8800 GTX which released only 1.5 years prior. Now we have the 1080 Ti that has no competition for 3.5 years ~_~

 

[EClyde]

If it is still talked about it is because those talking have a small frame of reference for discussion on any topic

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Agreed. I thought the FPS gameplay with the suit offering different abilities was excellent - it gave you superpowers to give you cool stuff but the energy system also balanced this out and put limitations on what you could do.

But it makes no sense.

You mean to tell me the suit is "bulletproof" till it runs out of energy and just one shot kills you?

That's what always annoyed me about the HALO series as well.

And what bothers me more is they reduced the Health + Energy bar (in both games) to just a single bar in the sequels Halo 2 and Crysis 2.

I HATE copycats.

 

[Arbie]

But lets face it, strip away the technical aspects of Crysis and it's just a very mediocre FPS.

I don't think you could be more wrong. Crysis and its successors are the best FPS games ever released. I'll explain why in another comment; your remark just caught my eye.

 

[Arbie]

I absolutely loved - and still do love - playing the original Crysis and its successors. With isolated exceptions (!) the game engine is superb, the AI excellent, the level design outstanding, and the production values top-notch. Crysis 2 and 3 made some concessions as console games - primarily in less-fluid combat - but still provide jaw-dropping graphics, meticulous design, good scripts, perfect voice acting, great music, and terrific gameplay. The boss battles in 3, especially, are just magnificent.

VERY IMPORTANTLY: Crysis 1 / Warhead also had "quicksave" so you could try and retry endless variations on tactics over the wide range of levels and combat situations, and take on even the toughest situations without frustration. This extended the replay value to nearly infinite and was, incredibly, dropped in the Crysis 2 & 3 as some kind of bow to console praxis. What a loss!

In Crysis 1 I disliked only the post-mine sequence, travelling through the cave; and I found the ice levels less intuitive and more linear than the first half. But, so much else was and is just wonderful.

Crysis was so hyped before release that massive numbers of gamers were poised to hate it. They found an excuse in the graphics settings, where Crytek had unwisely attempted some future-proofing. Despite it obviously being beyond the capabilities of 2007-08 GPUs, users insisted on turning the graphics "up to 11" - and then bitching about performance! One gaming website called it the worst game of 2007. Go figure.

In fact the game was incredibly scalable. I first played it on a GeForce 4 card with 256MB, on a circa 2000 Pentium. This was at minimum resolution, but it ran and was a blast. Today it runs on my Dell tablet. To ever question its playability was either specious trolling or truly ignorant. Sadly, all the fake-news bad press really hurt Crytek.

I constantly look for another FPS with anything like the gameplay and polish of the Crysis quad. But we get endless stupid melee concoctions. Instead of enemies intelligently taking cover, standing off, or flanking, they just mindlessly run at you. That's because melee requires only a fraction of the programming smarts as do Crysis-level ranged tactics. So - none of the elegant and addictive cat & mouse of Crysis.

When we do get something with a few brains, the combat mechanics (movement, weapon aiming etc) are wretchedly clunky compared to all the Crysis games. And of course without an OPTIONAL quicksave you have to repeat huge sections to make any progress; can't experiment; can't save interesting start points etc. You get sick of the levels and there is almost zero replay value.

We can only hope for another game series even approaching this quality. Sniper Elite (which does have a quicksave option) might, if only they will ditch the clumsy 3rd-person figurines and go all-FPS.

 

[loki1944]

"and Intel did release some quad core CPUs in early 2008".

You do realize that intel quad cores had been around since 2006 right? Like the QX6700. Followed by the popular Q6600 in 2007.

 

[godrilla]

When you look at the PC version of Crysis remastered and the Development priorities, and then you look at the Unreal engine 5 demo and the software advances as well visual fidelity coming out there one may ask what were they thinking? Was it all to promote the Switch version???

 

[neeyik]

"and Intel did release some quad core CPUs in early 2008".

You do realize that intel quad cores had been around since 2006 right? Like the QX6700. Followed by the popular Q6600 in 2007.

Yeah, my bad! Thanks for the feedback - I'll fix that asap.

 

[OortCloud]

I loved FarCry - my graphics card was less keen.

 

[loki1944]

Yeah, my bad! Thanks for the feedback - I'll fix that asap.

But as far as intel 4c8t the i7 920 wasn't until fall of 2008 I think.

 

[neeyik]

But as far as intel 4c8t the i7 920 wasn't until fall of 2008 I think.

I clearly had brain failure when writing that bit, because I totally forgot about the Q6600 - despite owning one when they first came out and also noting that when Crytek were demoing Crysis to the press (and I was at such an event), it was Q6600 powered machines. Doh!

Anyway, the point I was trying to get across was that while there wasn't much in the way of desktop multicore processors during development, both Intel and AMD had plenty on offer at launch or soon after.

 

[candle_86]

I remember the smell of new plastic as I opened the case and put the DVD in, I remember juggling settings to get it playable, and I remember how astonishing it was in the first level jumping out in your wing suit and seeing it, and then that first village where I went to strength mode and knocked over every building. You didn't need a super computer to run it either. I played Crysis my first time on this

AMD Sempron 3600
ECS Geforce6100
2gb DDR2 667
GeForce 8600GT

Crysis made me upgrade, I beat it with that system but I wanted to see it better, so I saved my money working fast food and upgraded to an x2 3800 - 4gb ddr2 667 - Asus m2n-e - xfx 8800gs alpha dog. I could suddenly use a mix of medium high at 10x7 and it blew me away

The first time I played it at 1080p at Ultra High was years later. Core i5 2500k and GTX560 Ti 448 SLI.

 

[godrilla]

The memories my 1st build was a core 2 duo overclocked 3.3 ghz with 1st gen antec all in one cooling and dual gts 8800s in sli the 320 megabyte oc versions by XFX when it was still making GeForce graphics cards. The graphics cards was soon upgraded to a EVGA 8800 ultra that made Crysis 1 enjoyable at 1050p 60 hz at 1ms tn gaming monitor by Samsung.

But to really play the game as intended as the developer advertised that Crysis 1 will scale better with hardware 3 years from launch. That brings us to Westmere succeeded by Sandybridge for the CPUs and Fermi for the graphics cards. My official Crysis build was a build that last almost 10 years until last black Friday i7 980xe at 4.3 ghz all core oc cooled with aio h50 12 gigs triple channel dominators @ 2ghz with ultra low lantency. This included 1st Sata 6 ssd real C300 by crucial 256 gigs ( Final build has 500 gig M100 as boot drive). Ah the graphics ranged from originally dual evga 480s sc in sli to final version 1080ti FTW 3.

Crysis 1 made me into a PC enthusiast I was hoping that we would get that pop factor with remastered PC version now I really doubt it. I hope I'm wrong.