『 Crysis 』

The pre release demo of Crysis has finally arrived so I took the opportunity and tried it out right after I got home from work today. So how does it look like, how does it play and is the CryENGINE2 properly utilizing your computer's resources?


Graphics wise, the game can be described as a fine blend of Far Cry [the 360 version] and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. If you set everything to "high" in your config menu, you'll see the jungle moving, lights playing, particle effects all over the place, depth of field stuff, HDR processing and all that. To make a long story short, the game has it all.


How does it play, you ask? It plays just as you'd expect it to play. Like a decent FPS game should. You have your weapons, flashlight, silencers, you can pick up objects and throw them [and you don't even need a gravity gun], you can swim, you can jump and you can withstand against a rain of bullets thanks to your suit. It plays like a fine tuned and slightly upgraded Far Cry.


Being a new game and all, what do you need to run this one? If you want all of the effects and fireworks, you'll need a DX10 graphics card and of course Windows Vista. If you're perfectly fine with DX9 and XP, I'm afraid a single core CPU and a half ass graphics card aren't going to cut it.


The hardware requirements for Vista / DX10 setup are slightly higher than a normal XP / DX9, but if you want it all while the game pushes some decent frames, you should own a dual core processor and a 512 meg graphics card [GeForce 8XXX series for example]. 1 gigabyte of RAM is a must have if you want to boot the game in the first place. 2 gigabytes of fast memory on dual channel should do the trick though.


So we got that out of the way. You need a rather powerful PC, the game looks really nice, plays decent, but what about the story? I didn't play much, but from what I could tell it's your standard "mission gone wrong" scenario.


This game is what a "Predator" game should be like. Jungle, weird stuff going down, gutted soldiers hanging from the trees upside down ... If anyone dares to make another "Predator" branded title, it should be the Crytek guys who do the job.