[simpson_yellow]

Thanks, man. Yeah, I played around with the settings after my last post and and managed to get most things running on High at 1680x1050, so I was pretty happy with it. Like you say, Shaders Quality, Shadows, and Volumetric Effects seem to be the ones that most significantly affect framerates.

Forceware driver 169.01 supposedly gives quite a performance boost - people are reporting framerate jumps from mid-30s to mid-40s once the new driver is installed. Unfortunately, I'm one of the growing crowd of people for whom Crysis just won't run under x64 with the 169.01 driver (the DirectX 9 mode works fine, but it just isn't the same ), so I've had to roll back my driver to the previous version. I assume it'll all be sorted out by the time the release date comes around.

[samIamsad]

@ your service. You know all these people who don't have the money to go on holidays each weekend? I see a possible market gap here. I mean, I find the whole thing just pretty convincing as is on my card. A couple of more months down the road every household will have a PC like that. Think of the money one could make off this virtual holiday simulator! Crysis:Honolulu, Crysis:Crete, Crysis:Monkey Island... This was supposed to be fun, but only half-way. I'm spending way too much time just shuffling around whenever I fire this up.

My fav spot is when you reach the first Korean encampent (when the sun goes up) and you walk left instead of right where the road leads to the middle of the island, you keep on walking and reach a dead end. Turning in its direction, you get a pretty sweet view on the bay, you can make out some smallish islands and the opposite site of the island a few kilometres away. And upon turning around again and seeing the trees and bushes and grass behind you, you're almost convinced you are right there.. on that island somewhere far, far away. Ahem.

[Bobske]

So how are you guys liking the demo? I not too much into the "sneak around, hide and shoot" FPS game like COD, Rainbow Six (I'm more of a Jericho, UT, Quake type of guy ) but Crysis seems to be really cool. Not sure about the alien setting but it seems like fun.

[Kolzig]

I tried the start of the demo and it was breathtaking, I had everything on low details, but it ran like a dream on my PC.

Still this seems way too technological, to fully enjoy a product like this, you need to buy a powerhouse of a pc.

[RLacey]

Finally got around to running this.

If I run everything on low settings (apart from Medium textures and couple of other slight enhancements), I can get it playable. Which is really silly, and yet it means that this is probably going on my Christmas list...

[Terramax]

This game just didn't do it for me. Maybe it was the stupid American VS the Other - in this case, North Koreans, typical of a game like this to make money from all the hysteria regarding such a country.
It also seemed like a souped up version of Far Cry. Ah, hell, just seemed like another 'better graphics, remotely better AI' FPS.
Unfortunately the demo is sneaky in not allowing me to play the game with the ultimate settings. But from what I got from the second highest option available, it didn't seem anything less than Quake 4.

I think I'll go for Bioshock instead.

[samIamsad]

Originally Posted by RLacey

Finally got around to running this.

If I run everything on low settings (apart from Medium textures and couple of other slight enhancements), I can get it playable. Which is really silly, and yet it means that this is probably going on my Christmas list...

Try at least to set the shader settings to medium, everything lower and you could go as well with Farcry (which looks much better then). I found that if I set the "object detail" setting to low the issue with objects popping up gets worse, and some details seem to disappear completely, but then I can run the demo on shader quality set to high. Visually, the shader settings make by far the biggest difference... Reports have it that the full is much more demanding than the demo occasionally.

Originally Posted by Terramax

I think I'll go for Bioshock instead.

You haven't played it already? Good game. Has absolutely nothing in common with Crysis, though. Well, except that you're carrying a gun every once in a while. Still, from what I filtered through the Crysis demo, at least in terms of gameplay and depth to it I actually like that better.

Also, the world in Crysis is much more believable, that is, in how far it goes to really pull you in. Bioshock is full of invisible stop signs everywhere. It doesn't even allow me to step into water once there seems to be an opportunity to do so. It pulls off the cheapest of tricks possible to prevent me to: Invisible walls that restrict me to jump over railings, etc. And that in a game set below the sea. The PC version doesn't even allow you to WALK. Seeing what school of awesomeness Irrational did graduate at, that was a little weird to see. Now I start comparing myself, what crap, really. By all means, go out and buy it now!

[Fop]

What? I spent some time walking in water in Bioshock.

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

Try at least to set the shader settings to medium, everything lower and you could go as well with Farcry (which looks much better then). I found that if I set the "object detail" setting to low the issue with objects popping up gets worse, and some details seem to disappear completely, but then I can run the demo on shader quality set to high. Visually, the shader settings make by far the biggest difference... Reports have it that the full is much more demanding than the demo occasionally.

I don't mind how it looks, but then I'm not actually that interested in Crysis for the graphics (if I was, I'd be after a new PC now). Something about the gameplay feels much better in this than it did in Far Cry. Possibly helped by a) the existence of an easy mode that's actually pretty straightforward and b) quick saves.

[Terramax]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

You haven't played it already?

I played the demo. I was about to buy it but found out the PC version has adware. I'm waiting for the price to go right down and find out if there's a way of playing this without all the adware installed.

Game was ok. Reminded me of Psychonauts for some reason. Seemed a lil different to a lot of FPSs. But the constant darkness was a nuisance more than heightening the experience.

[Dale Baldwin]

Originally Posted by Terramax

I played the demo. I was about to buy it but found out the PC version has adware.

Adware??

[Kolzig]

What are you talking about Terramax? It surely has no Adware.

[Terramax]

It was some sort of extra program that tracks the sites you go on, allows the company to hack into your cpu, etc, just in the same way EA's War 2095 or whatever it was called did.

I remember a few internet sites and amazon reviews saying stuff about it.

[RLacey]

Bioshock has a fairly strict copy protection system (SecuRom, not StarForce), but definitely no adware.

[Terramax]

OK, it doesn't have adware. I looked it up, and there's the reports offcloacked RootKits, Drive-Blockers, temperamental installations ...none of which is clearly marked on the product description!!

Another tells that there's no exe. programme on the disc, so technically the disc doesn't include the game.

Then there's the story that you only have 5 'credits' - 5 times to install the game. If you uninstall, you're supposed to get a credit back, but this isn't always the case.

And then there's the fear of whether authentication servers are still being run in years time.

Actually, on second thought, I think I'll buy neither.