Crysis Demo

[Chenghiz]

You can definitely bind the suit modes to hotkeys, although in the demo you might have to use console commands to bind the keys, and I don't know what they are.

[Sky]

Down a couple days with a stomach bug, I downloaded this and a few other things to pass the time. I'm sold, this game rocks. I agree activating suit powers is kind of a pain (I used the hotkey, better than M3 button imo) and the powers are brief but functional.

At one point I ran out of ammo, so I crept up on a small guard station with two guards. Ran up stealthed, punched out the first guard and used his gun to kill the second. Then there was a larger outpost accessed by road. I grabbed a civilian truck, drove it close and went to scout. Hummer sitting in the middle of the outpost, and lots of guards, me with scant ammo. So I jump back up in ye olde pickup truck and whup it up to ridiculous speed....and jump out just before slamming into the Hummer, blowing up both vehicles, sending bodies flying and smashing parts of a building. Jumping into said building...grenades! I lob a couple out into a knot of enemies and decimate two other huts. More enemies approach from the other side, supported by another Hummer. Grenade the foot troops and shoot out the truck's gunner, take the truck to the next objective.

I found myself retrying areas in different ways, taking me right back to Far Cry. Good deal. Better, I'd say. My only knock would be telepathic enemies. There was one point where I was prone in the grass, crept a hair forward and a whole camp went up in alarm. Amazing vision, these guys. Even worse was crouching in the deep bush, pretty far inland, and a boat I could barely see that wasn't even in the lagoon I was near, begins firing at me, barely hitting me but alerting everyone in the area to me. Crazy. Still fun, but a bit silly.

[Azazel]

Far Cry had a bit of that as well. Not always, but those boats could snipe you from three kilometers away with a rocket launcher through 2 meters of foliage before you knew what was going on...

[TripleDES]

AI-see-through foliage is a problem in virtually every game that has outdoor areas.

[Big Gulp]

Yeah, I need to echo what other people have already said.  The game feels like Far Cry 2, only with unarmored enemies that can take 15 point blank rifle rounds to the chest.

I think the game could actually be fun with a "always full energy" cheat activated, though.  I can see running around like the predator snatching people left and right, but that's really all that would be fun, because the gunplay sucks.

[stray]

Gunplay sucks in FPS single player anyways. IMHO, of course. It's always been about game maps to me, which is why FarCry kept my interest longer than other games.

[geldonyetich2]

98% in this month's PC Gamer.

Either the demo is not representative of the final game, or PC gamer is so bought.

[schild]

98% in this month's PC Gamer.

Either the demo is not representative of the final game, or PC gamer is so bought.

Did Call of Duty 4 get a 136%?

[geldonyetich2]

<checks> CoD 4 is not in this issue.  They must still be working on the 40 page review/cell phone ad.

[Nija]

I finally tried this demo this morning, right before I tried the COD4 single player demo.

I think Crysis is the better game between the two. COD4 feels dated and the amazingly rigid structure that I'm sure all the missions have is very annoying. It also suffers from "infinite bad guys spawning behind yonder crate, so long as you neglect to move 5 ft forward" problem that all other COD* games have had.

[geldonyetich2]

This PC Gamer Review is the stuff that dreams are made of.

Crysis has ruined me.  Let's call it the "Crysis effect" -- how am I supposed to go back to playing excruciatingly linear, stupid-AI-having, plastic-looking, videogame-y shooters, now that I've experienced the next evolution in PC gaming?  In a perfect world, game stores everywhere will open at midnight to host Halo 3-style launch parties celebrating the release of Crysis on November 16th.  Government will crawl to a stop; companies will report an unprecedented number of sick workers; exams will go untaken, fathers will ignore their daughters; and the nation's pizza delivery industry will experience the best day since the Super Bowl.  Seriously, the game is that good.

I doubt it.

But saying that Crysis is like other alien shooters is like saying that Citizen Kane is the same as Weekend at Bernie's because they're both about dead rich guys.

Sacrilege makes any review better.

Crysis provides you with a smorgasbord of options.  It's a genuine "water cooler" game, and I predict groups of friends will play the game at night and then compare notes the next morning about how they beat certain parts... and their solutions may be completely different.

Gee, no other game has done that before.

In fact, Crysis gets so much right-- including mind-blowing visuals, a stirring soundtrack, wonderfully ambient sound effects, a well-plotted storyline, movie-quality voice acting, fabulously open-ended gameplay, and a meticulous attention to detail--that its few flaws are noticeable because the game is so adept at immersing you in its world. [...] Be warned, developers: Expectations have just been raised.

Who is this man, and where's my check for his appropriation of my Vanguard hyping?

I dare you to find page 90 of this issue of PC gamer.  (Spoiler: It's hidden behind a 34 page cel phone ad.)

[schild]

So, he's saying it's almost as good as Deus Ex and Half-Life 2 and Portal.

Got it.

[geldonyetich2]

Actually, I think he's calling anything that's not Crysis:


"excruciatingly linear, stupid-AI-having, plastic-looking, videogame-y shooters"

Mmmm, no, I'm sorry PC Gamer, but the love just isn't there anymore. 

[Nija]

I pretty much felt the same way while playing COD4 right after Crysis.

[Morfiend]

Please tell me Steam will have Crysis. That would be 

[schild]

Nope. Steam is only getting Kane & Lynch and CoD4 this month.

[Miasma]

They only rated it so high because this has been touted as the game to justify our two thousand dollar consoles and they don't want to dash our hopes.

[Big Gulp]

They only rated it so high because this has been touted as the game to justify our two thousand dollar consoles and they don't want to dash our hopes.

Yeah, if you listen to their podcast there are like two members of the staff who felt let down by the game, and they were shouted down by the other staffers who are desperate to stay relevant in an era when paper magazines are an anachronism and PC gaming is heading down the tubes.

Dan Whateverhisnamehis especially annoys me.  He's your typical "If it's not PC it's shit!" douchebag.

[Fabricated]

Psst: PC Gamer has a lot of hacks working for it now and lots of payola reviews. All the good people were either fired or quit.

[Trippy]

They had good people? I always considered them the PC games version of EGM.

[Samwise]

I have one question about this game.

Can enemies see you if you can't see them?  I.e. if you're hiding behind some shrubbery, do enemy gunners two miles away still see you instantly because nothing "solid" blocks their line of sight?

This was the thing that made me uninstall Far Cry.  The AI was clever enough to hide in bushes but not clever enough to respond realistically when I did the same.  /sadf

[geldonyetich2]

Well, from the demo, it seems like stealth is considerably easier in Crysis.  The world of Crysis comes with patent-pending shrubbery that is mysteriously missing any stems or roots, so you can dive under the canopy and have your own little tree-dome of invisibility.  Even dropping prone (Z key) in thick grass is pretty effective at not being seen.  However, if you are at all exposed, boats patrolling in the water will spot you from an eighth of a mile away and open fire.  I hear the enemy Helicopters (which are not in the demo) seem to have body-heat sensors based on their ability to spot you.

The tricky thing about judging the stealth in Crysis is you've got a suit with a stealth mode that can only be seen through when the enemy is about to trip over you.  By toggling stealth you can dive from bush to thick grass to rock outcropping, recharging in between, and essentially be a ghost.

Quickest Review of Crysis Ev4r: Mildly enhanced Far Cry with a neat suit.

[Chenghiz]

I have one question about this game.

Can enemies see you if you can't see them?  I.e. if you're hiding behind some shrubbery, do enemy gunners two miles away still see you instantly because nothing "solid" blocks their line of sight?

This was the thing that made me uninstall Far Cry.  The AI was clever enough to hide in bushes but not clever enough to respond realistically when I did the same.  /sadf

No, they won't know where you are but they will look for you in the area they last saw you.

[Venkman]

Single player sounds pretty compelling. I've only been playing the Fileplanet multiplayer beta and am buying it on that alone... particularly since someone found out how easy it was to unlock full visual potential by de-gimping some config file (DX9 folks are limited to "High", not sure if just for Beta).

[geldonyetich2]

Yeah, apparently they just copy over the very high detail configuration file on top of the high detail configuration file and they're good to go.  Unsure of if that'll be patched out of retail or not.

For all my derision of the game, I'll probably buy it.  If it's only a better Far Cry with a cool suit, that's still worthwhile to me: Far Cry was (and remains) a pretty good game.

[Triforcer]

Yeah, if you listen to their podcast there are like two members of the staff who felt let down by the game, and they were shouted down by the other staffers
Dan Whateverhisnamehis especially annoys me.  He's your typical "If it's not PC it's shit!" douchebag.

So, except for the getting paid part, how does it differ from this site exactly? 

[Rasix]

Yah, you pegged us.   

[Sky]

I pretty much felt the same way while playing COD4 right after Crysis.

I agree. But I've always been a fan of more free-form open gameplay and have never like the MoH/CoD train.

[geldonyetich2]

GameSpot joins in on the fun and delivers a 9.5.

With its sophomore effort, Crytek has managed to deliver an incredibly advanced and exciting first-person shooter that practically rewrites the rules for the entire genre.

Rewriting the rules for the existing genre through subtle improvement of Far Cry.

The single-player game is a considerable accomplishment by itself, but Crytek has also included a full-featured multiplayer mode called power struggle that combines the best of the Battlefield games and Counter-Strike

That's... that's a lot of best.

Quite simply, Crysis represents the first-person shooter at its finest, most evolved form.

Well, then.

Personally, I like GameSpot reviews, they're generally closer to the truth than most.  So, assuming Jason Ocampo isn't being given the typical injections, it sounds like the demo is not entirely representative of the retail game.

[Sky]

HAY GELDON WATS UP

WE GOT IT

[geldonyetich2]

HEY SKY.

I'm actually not trying to trump up this game, I'm actually trying to go with a "why are Game Reviewers having such an orgasm over this game that did not impress me in the demo" angle.  Unfortunately, to my chagrin, it's blown up in my face.  Now I'm genuinely curious.

[Morfiend]

HAY GELDON WATS UP

WE GOT IT

I'm so quoting you on this next time you chime in on a gaming on a big screen thread.   

[Rasix]

Gamespot review is just weird. Felt exactly like the Halo 3 review to me where I end up thinking, "yah, but how did you give this a 9.5.  Where's the revolutionary, life changing experience from your headline?  I don't get it. Looks like another FPS. "   

Time to see if the demo doesn't rape my pc.

Edit: No dice.  HOG.

[Azazel]

I loved Far Cry.

As a result, this game fits into the narrow list of PC games I'll likely buy within a week or three of release.

[Sky]

I'm so quoting you on this next time you chime in on a gaming on a big screen thread.   

Years of the george grief title have numbed me to that one. Besides, gaming on a big screen is the shiz and you all know it. Some day you'll all write books about me and they'll compile them into a bible of sorts and you'll fondly remember your big-screen-gaming messiah type early adopter. And drink some red wine and eat crackers.