Crysis 2 :(

[silverkcab]

It's not a bad game just a pure sell out to consoles. (adjust your TV brightness) WTF... Its rather disappointing how the company that once pushed the envelope in PC graphics, physics and sandbox type environments has made so little progress since crysis in 2007 or in some cases taken steps backwards. Levels are smaller, physics are much worse, MP count is down, no editor shipping with the game, no custom servers, only DX9, vehicles are much worst than the first game, etc. There is an overall feeling of being dumb down for a 12 year old. And lets not forget the shiny new 60$ price tag with DLC maps coming soon.

[Armenius]

EA strikes again! I heard DirectX 11 support is going to be added later... If everyone just used OpenGL we wouldn't have these problems. It does everything DirectX does and more, and is a whole lot easier to develop with.

[Armenius]

Kyle Bennett over at [H]ardOCP tells us what he really thinks.

An in-depth article of everything Crytek did wrong.

Ironically, someone who currently works for EA says $60 games are exploitative.

Crysis 2 is officially off my Steam wishlist. No 64-bit executable? No DirectX10/11? WTF, Crytek.

W.
T.
F.

I expected better out of you.

[tet5uo]

I can't even play it to see how consoled up it is.. I have a massive flickering of shadows that seems to be a bug with my SLI setup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjpN5HoX8xA

Okay, besides the flickering shadows when Tri-SLI is enabled

There is also the Motion-Blur that gets messed up badly by SLI

SLI enabled motion blur (Ghosty after-images instead of smooth blur)
http://s2.postimage.org/6n4n02sbj/****blur.jpg

SLI disabled Motion-blur (smoother and less jarring)
http://s3.postimage.org/5rna0eidb/no_SLIblur.jpg

[medtech]

If you read between the lines, then you'll realize that Crytek has abandoned ANY 'PC' side versions for any game they make now.

"When Crytek announced that the third iteration of its ambitious CryEngine technology would appear on both PC and consoles, a portion of its hardcore fans became skeptical -- would the engine's progression be hampered by a dumbed-down ball-and-chain?

The company's R&D principal graphics engineer, Tiago Sousa, responds to that mindset in a new interview with Digital Foundry, saying that a multiplatform approach in developing Crysis 2 was beneficial to the company's central goal -- which is to make big-budget games, not just budget-hostile benchmarks. "The PC market just does not support that cost of development, but going multi-platform does," Sousa said. "If making a game that is bigger, better, more stable, performs better across a wider range of hardware, provides a continued visual benchmark for PC gaming, and more fun with a huge single-player and multiplayer offering is considered selling out, that seems like a really odd application of the phrase. The decision to go multi-platform has allowed us to bring a better game to everyone, which has been our goal all along."

That isn't to say Crytek opted for the easy route. The interview highlights Crytek's struggles with limited memory on consoles (just 512MB on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3), adjusting its workflow to eliminate the reliance on a single lead platform, and a lighting feature that didn't quite make the cut for every system. Oh, and you won't believe how much triangle culling there is. Just ... relentless slaughter of triangles, left and right.

Source: Digital Foundry

[Armenius]

Translation: piracy made us do it.

And no, Crytek, the game is not better for being multiplatform: it's worse and less fun. I guess we have to rely on id Software to push the market forward again since Crytek is now a shill for EA.

[tet5uo]

Considering ID tech is made to run on Ipads now, I'm not sure they're who you want to look to to move us forwards either...

Maybe DICE !

[medtech]

Seems that Sweden is the last bastion of REAL game companies, DICE and SIM BIN and both top shelf PC companies, both at the top of their respective genre.

[DaFox]

Seems that Sweden is the last bastion of REAL game companies, DICE and SIM BIN and both top shelf PC companies, both at the top of their respective genre.

To be fair you are talking about a company that completely abandoned PC gaming for one of their titles. (BF:BC) :(

[Anprionsa]

Seems that Sweden is the last bastion of REAL game companies, DICE and SIM BIN and both top shelf PC companies, both at the top of their respective genre.

And don't forget Valve!

[medtech]

[quote]Seems that Sweden is the last bastion of REAL game companies, DICE and SIM BIN and both top shelf PC companies, both at the top of their respective genre.

To be fair you are talking about a company that completely abandoned PC gaming for one of their titles. (BF:BC) :(


One top shelf PC title is better then a slew of crap console ports.. at least that's how I see it.

[Splinter]

Thanks for your review of Crysis 2, I played the free beta and was unimpressed, You just saved me $60 :cheers

[Armenius]

[quote]Seems that Sweden is the last bastion of REAL game companies, DICE and SIM BIN and both top shelf PC companies, both at the top of their respective genre.

And don't forget Valve!While Valve's game design is always top-notch, remember they are still developing on a 7-year old engine. I don't think that that is pushing PC development forward.

[sixshot]

[quote][quote]Seems that Sweden is the last bastion of REAL game companies, DICE and SIM BIN and both top shelf PC companies, both at the top of their respective genre.

And don't forget Valve!While Valve's game design is always top-notch, remember they are still developing on a 7-year old engine. I don't think that that is pushing PC development forward.
Their engine is solid and robust. Portal 2 is a testament on how far they've come to adapting their engine for play on the console, PS3 especially. Granted, there are minor issues. But at the very least, it is solid. Sure, using that engine isn't really making progress. I've no argument on it. But when yer surrounded by games powered by the Unreal 3, Modern WarFAIL 2, and Crytek3, all of which has gone from PC-centric design to sell-out console-first engine, I'll take an aging and robust engine than one that limits as to how I see the 3D world, especially in Eyefinity.

[Anprionsa]

[quote][quote]Seems that Sweden is the last bastion of REAL game companies, DICE and SIM BIN and both top shelf PC companies, both at the top of their respective genre.

And don't forget Valve!While Valve's game design is always top-notch, remember they are still developing on a 7-year old engine. I don't think that that is pushing PC development forward.

Also, their engine is consistently modded and upgraded... it isn't the same thing like it was in 2007, you can see the difference in Portal 2 and Half-Life 2 (or even episode 2).

[medtech]

I've decided to jump the que on the latests batch of updates, this particular update set is of some interest as it is, in order of appearance for download:

patch 1.9
1.6gig high resolution upgrade texture pack
DX11 update patch ( to be used only with the above two patches )

So, Finally, the high end PC user gets the game they were suppose to have gotten months ago..

[sixshot]

In terms of visuals and details, yeah, we should have gotten that from the start. But given how the game was designed, a DX11 and Texture Pack isn't enough for me to seriously consider getting the game.

Once a dev or company sells out to the console market, I ain't touching their stuff, ever.

[Paradigm Shifter]

I nearly bought Crysis 2 when I saw it on Play.com for £13 yesterday. Then I figured, "What's the point, I've already got loads of stuff to play?" It might get purchased when it hits a fiver. Same with Shogun 2, Dragon Age 2, The Witcher 2... jeez, talk about sequel-itis...

[JohnnyWakko]

In terms of visuals and details, yeah, we should have gotten that from the start. But given how the game was designed, a DX11 and Texture Pack isn't enough for me to seriously consider getting the game.

Once a dev or company sells out to the console market, I ain't touching their stuff, ever.

We need a "like" button for posts. Cause I like the above post from Sixshot.

[medtech]

The game is still going to be saddled with console vertices optimisations so high res models will need to be done on a
per mod' basis, but since the Cryengine is very similar to the UDK ( Unreal)3 engine I use then it 'should be' fairly easy for some industrious little person ( my tip of the hat to top gears season 17 starting today ), to build higher polygon models.

However with the DX 11 SDK you can 'fake' high res with tessellation and displacement maps ( been using these along with instancing for over 15 years in the production animation world ), looking forward to seeing how this experiment plays out. If this does work out to at least look as good as the ' real world' mod for Crysis then I hope that other companies see this and take the time to build in a back door for later upgrades for the PC.

In terms of visuals and details, yeah, we should have gotten that from the start. But given how the game was designed, a DX11 and Texture Pack isn't enough for me to seriously consider getting the game.

Once a dev or company sells out to the console market, I ain't touching their stuff, ever.