ArtisticallyChill

Downloaded, installed and tried to play the Crysis Single Player Demo last night. It installed fine and I went thru the options and used the ‘determine optimal settings’ under the graphics tab. Then the red box pops up stating all settings were switched to low. I got the impression that all the textures and animations were gonna be bland on low settings. I was wrong. The graphics on low settings were of still modest quality. You can still see a lot of texture in your hands, the weapon you carry, and the surrounding environment. The in-game cut scenes were ok but suffered from the audio being heard progressing faster than the animation. It looked like I was watching a foreign movie with english dubbing. The gameplay suffered with laggy movements and targeting. I got as far as the third checkpoint before I called it quits. So it’s obvious that my computer will have trouble running this game even on low settings.

In Vista, the games folder has the option of gathering info on the “Vista Approved” games you’ve played, and shows anything important on the right side bar. When I click on the Crysis SP Demo icon, the sidebar says: The Game Recommended Rating is 5.0. WTF does it mean? Vista has this system assessment tool where it check several of your components (RAM, Hard drive, graphics etc.) and give you a rating based on your lowest rated component. This number indicates the rate of your computer’s performance. A 5.0 machine is considered ‘top-of-the-line’ while anything below that means it is recommended that you perform an upgrade for better PC performance. Currently my index is 4.5, with my graphics card being the lowest component. I’m not gonna make a Fry’s run anytime soon just for one game.

I always thought that this rating system was a conspiracy setup by MS and the PC industry to force me to spend more money on parts. But after playing the Crysis demo. My view has changed. The software industry is in on the conspiracy too.

Looks like I’ll just have to wait it out and hope that EA’s greed for more of my money will produce a console port of Crysis sometime next year.

~ LoneWolf