# [GYSB] Games You SHOULDN'T Buy #2 - Crysis



## Ryukouki (May 29, 2014)

​

 
On this installment of Games You Shouldn't Buy (GYSB), we have a guest writer for this issue, and it's a pleasure to introduce this issue's writer: codezer0! Without further ado, we look at a game that is not only become a running stereotype for PC gaming, but is both paradoxically lauded by the "PC Master Race" fanboys and symptomatic of a studio that clearly has nothing but contempt for the very consumers supporting it. A game that clearly launched with no realistic expectations at launch, or for the future of gaming at large, as it systematically makes computers bleed and wallets drain for unrealistic expectations and a curiously disturbing vegetation fetish. Fellow tempers, without further ado, the next in the list of _Games You SHOULDN'T Buy_? _Crysis_.

[prebreak]Continue reading[/prebreak]

I know ahead of time that I'm probably going to get a lot of flak from some people, who will cite _professional _review sites and metacritic scores and sales figures, but truly that means nothing in the scope of this segment. This segment is taken from a very personal experience and account with the game specifically, and in trying to figure out why it was this bad, and why people were still harping on like it was the second coming to gaming. The further I delved in, the more I realized that Crysis wasn't just the cause of something, but rather the symptom of a much larger problem with the industry at large, and especially with its fanboys. Allow me to get into the meat of the matter...



​Before I can talk about _Crysis_ in depth, I have to start by discussing specifically its creator, Crytek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek ). For the large part, and especially more evident now, Crytek has existed in large part as the pet project of EA to become a new "tech demo" company, in a similar vein to how id software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_software ) was one before being bought out by Bethesda. The key difference here is that Crytek in its business decisions and corporate attitude, wishes to have the clout and the presence of id, without the years of contributions to the game development industry at large, or the shared achievements and experience to back it up. If it weren't for the contributions from id being made public, 3D graphics as we know them would still not be possible on the large majority of systems, or would have taken far longer, and relied on more proprietary engines and environments, instead of being shared to become a practical necessity. The problem is Crytek wants you to think you need them, without actually demonstrating why you need them.
​I also use tech _demo_ company to be more succinct about the nature of the company, because that is essentially all they ever want to be. Crytek's business model seems to hinge entirely on the process of "make a new engine, make a game running on the engine, then license the engine to everyone else to use." On the face of it, there isn't anything inherently wrong with this business model. The problem is in the game part. See, in order to make a game engine attractive enough to get other parties to want to license it, you have to make a game with it... and this is where Crytek fails. It is famous for being the progenitor of a tech demo company, and for a large part got a free pass at it for making the likes of Doom and Quake, and being able to make a lot of engine and technologies that have allowed their games to have incredible longevity. Croteam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croteam ) behaves as a tech demo company on the face of things, and a similar business model, as does Epic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_games ). The difference is that both of these other studios make fun games - Serious Sam, and Unreal Tournament, respectively - whereas there was no fun to be had with _Crysis_. In short, Crytek appear to be a group of Germans who spent all their budget on making a game engine but had nothing left to figure out how to make a fun game with it.​​Another thing that must be brought up is why the game was famous in the first place. The developers went out of their way to laud the technical achievements of the engine powering the game, and how it would likely tax a lot of computer systems at the time. A lot of console fan boys would start referring to this as bloat, and have their reasons for doing so. See, a taxing game engine isn't bad in and of itself. If it's taxing because it really is doing a lot of stuff to make for a more immersive experience, this isn't a problem. If it's doing it to create a more accurate simulation, or to help create what would be a convincingly living and breathing world, then there isn't anything wrong with the idea of a game engine being taxing. If it's aggressively using the available resources to create a visually stunning world, or an audio environment where you can really see, feel, and hear everything around you precisely, those are good reasons to be a taxing game engine. Why? because usually such reasons to be taxing only get better when the hardware gets better at coping with the demand. The problem with Crytek and _Crysis _specifically, is that the experience doesn't get any better, or any more fluid on new hardware. This isn't a taxing engine. This is an unoptimized and poorly written engine. Where do I begin to explain this?​​At the time of the game's release, my computer consisted primarily of a Core 2 E6600 CPU, 2 gigs of RAM and an 8800GTS graphics card and Windows XP. Not top of the line, but certainly no slouch in any regard. I had my initial reservations, and naturally wanted to see what the game would run like before buying it. So I did the legitimate thing and downloaded the Single Player demo, as that was the most likely mode I'd be running with the game, and that was also the part of the game that interested me most anyway. In summation, at the only configured settings that did allow me to play fluidly - not exactly 60frames/sec all the time, but not getting hiccups and stutters anywhere either - the graphical quality was somehow worse than running the original Half Life on my prior main computer. I don't just mean poorer quality textures... but an exorbitant amount of aliasing and pixelated textures that I thought companies stopped doing since the PS1 era. To be honest, the poor experience had me legitimately concerned that there was something wrong with my machine, until I tested a variety of other games and demos available, and realized everything else ran like it should. This led me to conclude that it wasn't something wrong with my computer, per say... but with how the game itself handles a lot of things based on those settings. Many of the fanboys and press about the game lauded how the game featured fully destructible buildings, and advanced physics and AI. At the Medium Setting, I found that not only was this untrue, but the AI for the enemies that there were in the demo were basically devolved to a hiveminded set of robots with the singular purpose of eliminating you from across the island if they could get a bead on you. Most obnoxious was getting sniped to death repeatedly by enemies *I* could not see but somehow knew where I was. What I discovered after fiddling with the settings to experiment, was that on High, you could get the destructible buildings, and even being able to chop down trees with your weapons fire. Admittedly this was a cool feature at the high setting. But what I discovered was that by playing it on the more playable Medium setting at the time, the game would treat destructed buildings and foliage as if they were indeed destroyed, but did not render them as such. So the game was having an unfair advantage, where they were able to see me as if I were standing in a bare parking lot, but I couldn't see them through the still-standing trees. Can you say _logic failure_?​​Also, because this was a demo, it managed to create the cardinal sin above all things else in regards to being a demo...*it was boring*. At no point were there more than a handful of guards, the world felt as on rails as _Final Fantasy X_, and by the time that we as players start actually seeing something mildly interesting, the demo is over. There was no followup action. There was no interesting boss encounter or fight, there was no hint of a stereotypically awful story even getting better. It just... stopped. There wasn't even a chance to play a chapter further into the game where there might have been more action or more going on. Better demos, even better FPS demos, usually feature more than one segment you could play from that might let you see a more exciting portion of the game, to motivate you to want to play the full game.​​​

_Unfortunately, great graphics don't make a game great._​​In the interest of trying to rule out as many variables to why my experience with the game was so bad, I came back to it about another year later, once I was able to actually do a set of sizable upgrades that should have greatly improved my experience. Again, if it were a taxing engine, it should have improved with better hardware to run it under, right? Well... get this. While the in-game framerate counter was now saying I was pegged at about 90 frames/second in running it, even with everything at the official "Very High" setting ( the upgraded included Windows 7), the whole thing stuttered and spasmed like I was running at 10 frames a second... As paradoxical as that sounds, you heard it right - upgrading actually made the game run worse. Looking into it I did read that the full game did receive a bunch of post-release patches that were supposed to address these engine problems. So then why didn't Crytek ever apply these patches to their DEMO? See, the other thing that a demo (especially a PC game demo) has to do, is to give you a realistic expectation of how the game will run on your hardware. And as it stands, the SP demo was never updated to give a more realistic expectation of how it would run on my system. Literally, the only thing that did look visibly better as a result of the upgrades was the foliage and grass... which in a first person shooter, is pretty low on my internal list of things I would care about looking good in an FPS.​​As if to add insult to injury, my roommate at the time had a spare copy of _Far Cry 2_ he had received with a graphics card upgrade of his own. If I remember right, _FC2_ used the same engine, but had time to be worked on by Ubisoft, right? Well, after installing it, not only did the game run much better, and could be turned up to much higher settings than _Crysis_, but I actually had a hard time believing the in-game frame rate counter because it ran so delightfully smooth. I was not only able to kick a few of the visual settings to Ultra, but even with it reporting it was running at 25frames per second, it was running so smoothly that I would have just as easily been convinced it was really running at 60, or 120 for that matter.​​This confused me to no end, so I had to do some investigating to try to find out why _Crysis_ sucked so much to play even this much later. It was around this time that I stumbled across one of their dev blogs (sadly lost to the annals of internet history) with the timeline from around when they were working on _Crysis_ and its follow-up _Warhead_. To be honest, I felt utterly insulted by the amount of complaining and whining that the devs were doing about the duties EA requested of them... which really boiled down to basically trying to optimize any given facet of the game, so that it wouldn't run horribly on 90% of the available computers on the market. They complained about being requested to optimize the graphics. They complained about having to optimize the controls. They complained about optimizing the sound, the framerate, *everything*. It's rare for EA to look like a good guy these days, but as their publisher, all they were asking for was some basic optimization so that more people could actually run the game, and want to buy it. It seemed it was Crytek's opinion as a company, that only people who could afford to spend into god-box territory for a computer were worthy to run their game, and a collective* ignoring of everyone else* that wouldn't spend as much as a car for a machine to run their proverbial magnum opus.​​To this day, there are a number of things that befuddle me about _Crysis_ and Crytek. And given this attitude, I'm honestly surprised that EA hasn't wholesale punished them or simply shut them down like they did so many better and more capable studios, like they did:​
Westwood Studios ( all the good C&C games )
Pandemic ( Destroy All Humans )
Bioware ( KotOR whyyy?! )
But still leave Crytek intact like they've done nothing wrong to deserve such treatment.​​It also always got on my nerves to hear the amount of fanboys defending them, claiming crytek and crysis are the be-all, end-all of PC gaming... the next bastion after the likes of VALVe. Yet if pressed, you'll find that none of them actually ran the game at a level to justify such outlandish claims, and continue to parrot off the likes of paid-off reviewers like IGN as gospel, instead of - oh, I don't know - actually _playing the game_ to see how terrible it really is!​​In summation, we already have one tech demo company in the form of id Software... well, we did until they got bought out by bug-infested Bethesda. However, even id has actually shared their breakthroughs as contributions to the industry, so that everyone as a whole can make better games. Crytek wants to be a famed tech demo company so hard, but has completely forgot that it needs to contribute to the industry, and more importantly, _make a fun game_, before it could earn that status. It's the story of a company that wants to be known as a tech demo company, without the years of contributions or successes to back up such outlandish entitlement. Crytek as a business seems to have no interest in sharing its breakthroughs, and instead wants to demand the industry at large to fix their broken messes. The whole thing ticked me off enough, that I hand wrote Crytek a letter explaining in so many words, that not only did I find their software awful, but that it was so detestable, I wouldn't even waste the time to pirate their shlock because I'd only be able to see it as an immense waste of disk space. At the time, I couldn't even really care if I ever got a reply back... I was just so infuriated with the game and their attitude that I wanted nothing to do with them, and even to this day, I find that I couldn't be bothered with any of Crytek's own work, because a lot of it simply has been a terrible, bloated mess.​​And that, my friends and fellow Tempers, is why _Crysis_ should be added to the list of _GAMES YOU SHOULDN'T BUY!_​​And look at that, we've got ourselves a great article. Please keep the comments clean, everyone, and it would be appreciated if you guys stuck to the game at hand. Feedback on the series and submissions are welcome. Please note that if you wish to submit an article for the series, having a solid grasp of the English language is an absolute must. Thank you!​


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## GameSystem (May 29, 2014)

I don't even think someone could even buy this game anymore. It's like a hundred years old.


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## WiiUBricker (May 29, 2014)

GameSystem said:


> I don't even think someone could even buy this game anymore. It's like a hundred years old.


I bought it a couple months ago from PSN. Well worth the money.


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## Psionic Roshambo (May 29, 2014)

Yeah I am going to say it was not all it was hyped to be... Wasn't a horrible game but not awesome either. 

About the only thing it really did "right" was as a good tech demo of what PC's could do. 

I still have my copy around here somewhere... lol


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## codezer0 (May 29, 2014)

WiiUBricker said:


> I bought it a couple months ago from PSN. Well worth the money.


Honestly, that's the first I've heard of it even being available on console.

Even so, the game is such a stupid mess even on its demo form that I don't think I could even be _paid_ to suffer through the campaign of it even if I could have gotten my dream rig for it. It honestly burned me with such frustration that I wouldn't even make the effort to pirate any entry in the series because the first one just soured me so terribly.


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## Seyiji (May 29, 2014)

Far Cry 2 used the Dunia engine. Far Cry 1 was the only Far Cry game that used the Cryengine (Cryengine 1)


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## liamash3 (May 29, 2014)

That was an informing article. I always just thought of Crisis and its sequels as a "look at the pretty pictures and what is potentially possible to pull off" games moreso than the fun ones you'd play to relax and enjoy yourself. Mind, I haven't played the game, so my opinion isn't necessarily valid here...
Graphical feats are a nice addition to games, but the "meat", as it were, are stuff like the story or gameplay, not how pretty this forest looks or the fact you can inflict lasting environmental damage.


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## CathyRina (May 29, 2014)

Yeah the story with poor graphic engines is always funny.
I remember playing Gothic 4 Arcania and the game would run at 7fps  on medium on my pc (which looked okay-ish) and when I turned it down to lowest the game looked worse than Gothic 1 bus still ran at 15 fps.
Speaking of Arcania why you don't make an article about this game? The entire Gothic fanbase was disappointed with this game.


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## Gahars (May 29, 2014)

Counterpoint: Play it right and the first couple hours are the best Predator game we've ever gotten.


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## LegendAssassinF (May 29, 2014)

_"Unfortunately, great graphics don't make a game great."​_ 
This statement is not said enough..... Too many games boast about having great graphics and nothing else. I really feel like games get away with the graphics card way too much that people are using resolution as the new thing. When it doesn't really matter even games like Infamous Second Son.... yes it looks great but it doesn't hold a candle to Infamous 2 when almost every single type of power does the same things.


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## FAST6191 (May 29, 2014)

Should someone say "it was a better tech demo than most, still a tech demo though" I would be inclined to agree. As much as I do not like scripted setpieces it seems maybe giving some thought to having them happen organically and then hoping for the best is worse, though even there far cry 2 managed it OK. I do still have to check out Crysis Warhead though.

On the other hand it might have suffered what Duke Nukem Forever ultimately became known for and being vintage gameplay, give or take the suit stuff, in a modern skin.


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## hksrb25s14 (May 29, 2014)

These " you shouldn't buy topics are getting out of hand" I love these games why? Without bad games there would be no good games, what would happen if no one buy harvest moon or hello kitty? I here and there love a bad game, not because it's there, it's because it has tobe played and that my friends is what true gamers do.
We play everything from simulation of trains, farming,  cleaning house,  taking care of pets, you name it.
And to say games you shouldn't buy would hurt the gaming industry and people losing jobs.


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## JPhantom (May 29, 2014)

i feel it bears repeating from the previous thread 

Should be GYSNB, GYSB could just as easily mean Games You SHOULD Buy


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## Tom Bombadildo (May 29, 2014)

I didn't think the game was terrible  Definitely the worst in the Crysis series overall, and it's shit optimization was terrible in general, but other than that the game was about as solid as a tech demo could get.


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## Mario92 (May 29, 2014)

GameSystem said:


> I don't even think someone could even buy this game anymore. It's like a hundred years old.


 
Game being old doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it. I bought first Bioshock in 2012 and I must say worth every cent. Then I didn't know what FOV meant so I had to take pause playing before I realized that in settings menu 

Back to topic: I would almost say I liked Crysis a lot before whole alien invasion thing, even after that it was pretty neat shooter. I was actually quite amazed when I could go pretty much any way I liked and with those graphics it was fun to just stroll around shooting stuff.
Crysis 2 however I had to force myself to play even over half of it and it was just generally really dull corridor shooter with downgraded graphics.



LegendAssassinF said:


> This statement is not said enough..... Too many games boast about having great graphics and nothing else. I really feel like games get away with the graphics card way too much that people are using resolution as the new thing. When it doesn't really matter even games like Infamous Second Son.... yes it looks great but it doesn't hold a candle to Infamous 2 when almost every single type of power does the same things.


 
Even if 1080p/60fps is truly better than 720p/30fps I'm already sick of hearing it because of console generation change, everybodys talking about only that and how games still can't reach it. #justpeasantthings
If crysis were all about the graphics then why the fuck would they put it on consoles afterwards? Graphics are easiest thing to market and argue about as if game is coming to several platforms then there's no differences gameplay vice.


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## LegendAssassinF (May 29, 2014)

Mario92 said:


> Even if 1080p/60fps is truly better than 720p/30fps I'm already sick of hearing it because of console generation change, everybodys talking about only that and how games still can't reach it. #justpeasantthings
> If crysis were all about the graphics then why the fuck would they put it on consoles afterwards? Graphics are easiest thing to market and argue about as if game is coming to several platforms then there's no differences gameplay vice.


 
It was all about graphics.... When it first came out no GPU could run it at 1080p and 60FPS that was the big deal about it when it was released. Putting it on consoles was just to make some extra money because no one I knew brought it for PC. It wasn't until Crysis 2 came out people cared about the series since it was released on everything at once. That aside I agree with the gameplay since today it is just a matter of which controller you like more. I ended up buying a CronusMax just because I like the PS3 controller the best so I use it on the PS3, PS4, 360, and X1 lol


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## WhiteMaze (May 29, 2014)

In all honesty, I enjoyed Crysis 2.

Solved many problems that the original Crysis presented, was insanely optimized, (I run it on *Very High* settings on a god damn GTX260m. Yes. A laptop. The same laptop that couldn't run its predecessor on *Medium* settings) and it gives you a nice feel of what its like to have an ultra technological advanced combat suit.

And then there's the eye candy. The graphics are absolutely phenomenal.

Sure, it could have been better. The story could have been better. Hell even the god damn monsters / aliens could have been better.

But to NOT be worth a buy? I disagree.


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## Tom Bombadildo (May 29, 2014)

WhiteMaze said:


> In all honesty, I enjoyed Crysis 2.
> 
> Solved many problems that the original Crysis presented, was insanely optimized, (I run it on *Very High* settings on a god damn GTX260m. Yes. A laptop. The same laptop that couldn't run its predecessor on *Medium* settings) and it gives you a nice feel of what its like to have an ultra technological advanced combat suit.
> 
> ...


 
Sure, but this thread is about Crysis 1, not 2 or the whole series lol.


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## Ryukouki (May 29, 2014)

JPhantom said:


> i feel it bears repeating from the previous thread
> 
> Should be GYSNB, GYSB could just as easily mean Games You SHOULD Buy


 

Hey bud, thanks for your input.  Don't worry, I didn't ignore and forget you! I might just remove the tag as it's more for my own record keeping.


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## WiiCube_2013 (May 29, 2014)

GameSystem said:


> I don't even think someone could even buy this game anymore. It's like a hundred years old.


 
Oh really? You don't know what you're missing then.


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## Öhr (May 29, 2014)

signed. crysis is just an interactive techdemo with eyecandy and boredom.


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## Celice (May 29, 2014)

I have no real clue on what the first post was saying... but for what it's worth, I highly enjoyed Crysis 1 and its expansion content.

Crysis 2 was very mediocre and felt and played like Bioshock Infinite. At least I was able to see a very pretty cityscape thanks to the MaldoHD mod for the game. Crysis 3 similarly felt as boring as the two games, and I never finished it.

I don't like playing games where the playable character is so powerful and the AI so bad that it becomes some weird power masturbatory experience.


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## Skelletonike (May 30, 2014)

hksrb25s14 said:


> These " you shouldn't buy topics are getting out of hand" I love these games why? Without bad games there would be no good games, what would happen if no one buy harvest moon or hello kitty? I here and there love a bad game, not because it's there, it's because it has tobe played and that my friends is what true gamers do.
> We play everything from simulation of trains, farming, cleaning house, taking care of pets, you name it.
> And to say games you shouldn't buy would hurt the gaming industry and people losing jobs.


 

I'd like to know how how Harvest Moon is a bad game. The series have it's fair of success and most of them are pretty good games. Heck, the latest Harvest Moon in the series was pretty awesome. One thing is an actual bad game, another thing is a game you yourself dislike.



Anwyay, I did try Crysis when it came out just to test me computer, I was actually able to run it in the highest settings at the time, but the game itself wasn't that fun. z.z


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## jagerstaffel (May 30, 2014)

Tom Bombadildo said:


> Sure, but this thread is about Crysis 1, not 2 or the whole series lol.


 
Then why is there a screenshot for Crysis 2?

In my honest opinion, this thread should be about Crysis 2 and 3, the real offenders. Crysis 1 and Warhead were, in my opinion, the last Real PC game FPS'. And that is because their developments were meant for PC, and my main gripe with every FPS game (console or PC) since then are the menus. Look at the menu for Crysis 1 and compare it to the console mess that is Crysis 2 and 3. Crysis 1 is clear as day made for a mouse and keyboard, while Crysis 2 and 3 are the silly controller friendly menus. For crying out loud if the game is on the PC, don't make it a freaking clicking mess of menu after menu that has a scrollable mess of options instead of using the rest of the screen real estate available.

And then there's the matter of the menu in-game. In Crysis 1, hey I can save anywhere, change my resolution if an area gets laggy, without the game reloading (changing non-resolution graphical settings does reload the last checkpoint.) Crysis 2 and 3? Forget about it. Reload last checkpoint? Are you kidding me? If I want to test which setting is best for my style of play, I got to quit to the main menu (Crysis 2 requires a game restart), and there's no saving anywhere if I want to test my last rocket against an alien, etc. I'm not even going to talk about the ridiculous debacle of the DirectX 11 1.9GB patch for Crysis 2 which came out much after the game came out.

Some time after Crysis 1 came out, someone made the stupid decision to put it on consoles. Be it greed, or simply wanting to appeal to a bigger market, Crysis 2 and 3 were hampered by a more restricted linear gameplay when compared to Crysis 1, the ridiculous graphics streaming due to console limitations compared to loading elements to RAM on a PC, and then there's the over simplicity of 2 and 3, yeah, if I had to say, games you shouldn't buy are Crysis 2 and 3.


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## Ryukouki (May 30, 2014)

jagerstaffel said:


> *Then why is there a screenshot for Crysis 2?*
> 
> In my honest opinion, this thread should be about Crysis 2 and 3, the real offenders. Crysis 1 and Warhead were, in my opinion, the last Real PC game FPS'. And that is because their developments were meant for PC, and my main gripe with every FPS game (console or PC) since then are the menus. Look at the menu for Crysis 1 and compare it to the console mess that is Crysis 2 and 3. Crysis 1 is clear as day made for a mouse and keyboard, while Crysis 2 and 3 are the silly controller friendly menus. For crying out loud if the game is on the PC, don't make it a freaking clicking mess of menu after menu that has a scrollable mess of options instead of using the rest of the screen real estate available.
> 
> ...


 
Oh, crap!! That was actually my fault. The screenshots were added by me (original submission was sent as a text-only message) and I was told to add some photos wherever it was convenient. Thank you for catching that. Will rectify shortly.


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## natkoden (May 30, 2014)

Yeah, good advice, after 7 years of it's official release.


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## Tomy Sakazaki (May 30, 2014)

natkoden said:


> Yeah, good advice, after 7 years of it's official release.


 
Well, for starters, there's still supply of the game, seems like Origin won't run out of copies of it. 
And then there are some games that even at ridiculously low prices aren't worth to buy, or simply doesn't justify all the hype.
Well, I have a digital copy of Crysis 1 collecting dust at EA's servers, I will have a try of it and see how it fare on my rig.


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## naxil (May 30, 2014)

i have finish that games on 360, it's maked with cryengine3 but it is crysis1, for my opinion is very nice fps. a little bit ripetitive, but the games is very good! exist a strange bug in the end of the games, and u can't hit the last boss if u jump some previous step... but isn't bad games.. i don't know the situation on pc but on 360 is good


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## Hells Malice (May 30, 2014)

Crysis was never meant to be GOTY. It was pretty much a tech-demo to show off what a PC was capable of.

Though I have to admit, it had some of the funnest multiplayer of all time. I had an absolute blast playing that. Plus nuke tanks and black-hole tanks. How the hell can another game beat that? They can't, that's how. Too bad multiplayer died ages ago.

Also too bad 2 and 3 got royally fucked and turned into Crysis of Duty.


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## WhiteMaze (May 30, 2014)

Tom Bombadildo said:


> Sure, but this thread is about Crysis 1, not 2 or the whole series lol.


 
Oh I thought this included the whole series.

Well then, in that case, I agree. The original Crysis is definitely NOT worth a buy.


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## tbgtbg (May 31, 2014)

GameSystem said:


> I don't even think someone could even buy this game anymore. It's like a hundred years old.



5 seconds of googling would have stopped you from making such an inaccurate remark.


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## WhiteMaze (May 31, 2014)

tbgtbg said:


> 5 seconds of googling would have stopped you from making such an inaccurate remark.


 
True lol, the original Crysis sells on Steam.

Along with Warhead and Maximum Editions.


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## GameSystem (May 31, 2014)

I meant brick and mortar stores. The "like a hundred years old" thing is just hyperbole.


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## Dangy (May 31, 2014)

I actually liked Crysis quite a bit, but it might've been nostalgia for the CryENGINE I fell in love with in Far Cry a couple years prior.


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## Ericthegreat (May 31, 2014)

I played like half the first level, didn't like it.


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## Deleted-188346 (Jun 1, 2014)

jagerstaffel said:


> In my honest opinion, this thread should be about Crysis 2 and 3, the real offenders.


Agree. Crysis 1 was great, I loved the "you can approach this combat scenario situation in at least 15 different ways" gameplay, very replayable.
Crysis 2 and 3 however, were terrible. I've tried about 3 times to finish the 2nd one, but always lose interest. It went from a huge variety of combat options that were up to the player to figure out, to OPTION 1: SNIPE, OPTION 2: THROW GRENADE, OPTION 3: FLANK. Just lazy.

Ultimately, whether you should play Crysis or not is based on whether the gameplay resonates with the player in question, and whether they can actually run it. Who cares about Crytek as a developer, or EA; it's the products we care about. You might object, saying "oh, but they're holding back the industry!", or "but...their business practices!", but remember that EA is made up of _people_. Every game development cycle is overseen by different people, executed by different people, and launched by different people. Granted, they are all under the umbrella of EA, but does that mean that we should pre-emptively hate all EA games regardless of their merits?

As for the issues described, every game has it's oddities, but the question is, does the good outweight the bad? Is the bad generally negligible? I feel that in the case of Crysis, it is. For instance, Skyrim has issues. Whether it's being launched into orbit by giants, a deeply flawed skills progression system, the ability to scale near-vertical walls with jumping horses, repetitive dungeons, or negligible loot. However, the rest of the gameplay generally does make up for it, in my opinion.

I do, however, the negative use of the word "fanboy" to describe people with opposing views to him. When you resort to words like that, it reeks of a desperate and flawed argument.


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## Ryukouki (Jun 1, 2014)

Puppy_Washer said:


> Agree. Crysis 1 was great, I loved the "you can approach this combat scenario situation in at least 15 different ways" gameplay, very replayable.
> Crysis 2 and 3 however, were terrible. I've tried about 3 times to finish the 2nd one, but always lose interest. It went from a huge variety of combat options that were up to the player to figure out, to OPTION 1: SNIPE, OPTION 2: THROW GRENADE, OPTION 3: FLANK. Just lazy.
> 
> Ultimately, whether you should play Crysis or not is based on whether the gameplay resonates with the player in question, and whether they can actually run it. Who cares about Crytek as a developer, or EA; it's the products we care about. You might object, saying "oh, but they're holding back the industry!", or "but...their business practices!", but remember that EA is made up of _people_. Every game development cycle is overseen by different people, executed by different people, and launched by different people. Granted, they are all under the umbrella of EA, but does that mean that we should pre-emptively hate all EA games regardless of their merits?
> ...


 

Pssst, I'm not the writer of the article. I just posted it on behalf of a member.  This article was a guest column piece that someone submitted to me.


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## Deleted-188346 (Jun 1, 2014)

Ryukouki said:


> Pssst, I'm not the writer of the article. I just posted it on behalf of a member.


My bad, edited.


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## Taleweaver (Jun 1, 2014)

It started out as an interesting article. There is this anecdote about sport shoes and marketing I once heard (I forgot which brand, but a mayor one. Probably nike, but...not sure). Sales were so-so for a particular kind of shoe, and the manufacturers wanted to sell more (obviously). Rather than lowering the price, they INCREASED it. Counterintuitive to the law of supply and demand, sales increased. Not just revenue: the sales. The reason is that people apply the worth of something to what they're paying for it. By making the shoes more expensive, people expected them to have better quality (and believed it to be so). There's this particular marketing segment that will buy something expensive, pretty much more as a marketing statement than as something else.
Crysis certainly tapped into that vein. Pretty much every game reviewer proclaimed that it brought the average gaming PC to its knees or "made the video card bleed" or something. For some reasons, that didn't matter. On the contrary: I bet many people in those days upgraded their PC mainly to play "games like crysis" (the thing is that there were no OTHER games like Crysis for quite some time). And I remember reading quite some video card comparisons that measured crysis' framerates next to 3Dmark (there were even cards that shipped with crysis). In those days, "your pc cannot run this game" had the same effect on nerds' wallets as today's "limited 75% off!". In that regard, I can understand this sentiment. The attitude at which this game was made upped the hardware sales for no other reasons than upping the hardware sales. In fact, if you want to look at the exact opposite of what indy games do, crysis would be pretty much at that other end of the spectrum. Visuals over anything else.



...but it kind of falls flat at this point:


Ryukouki said:


> At the time of the game's release, my computer consisted primarily of a Core 2 E6600 CPU, 2 gigs of RAM and an 8800GTS graphics card and Windows XP. Not top of the line, but certainly no slouch in any regard. I had my initial reservations, and naturally wanted to see what the game would run like before buying it. So I did the legitimate thing and downloaded the Single Player demo, as that was the most likely mode I'd be running with the game, and that was also the part of the game that interested me most anyway. In summation, at the only configured settings that did allow me to play fluidly - not exactly 60frames/sec all the time, but not getting hiccups and stutters anywhere either - the graphical quality was somehow worse than running the original Half Life on my prior main computer.


This rig is kind of reminiscent to one I know very well...my own rig was similar. Even slightly below that (I had a 8800GS). I played crysis on it. Not on launch, so perhaps later patches fixed things aside from the grass, but comparing it to half life 1? No way. That sound like serious driver issues. Sure, it wasn't top notch on my end, but more than enough to be playable (okay, the tank section got close to it...but the rest of the game was solid).

But I kind of liked the game. Overhyped? Perhaps. Not worth upgrading your entire rig to? Absolutely. But the article makes it sound as if the game itself was a sell-out, and I must disagree on that. I liked the different ways of using the suit to fit a different playstyle. I liked the overall openness of the game (for that time). And it was the first game I played with auto-healing (which wasn't done to death at that time). No...my ownly gripe was that it was so damn SHORT. After that fight on the aircraft carrier, I was sure that this was about halfway or something. Instead, there were just ending credits. Yeah...ending on a cliffhanger. Who the hell thought THAT was fun? Never played warhead or any of the other Crysii, so can't comment on that. I liked it...but not enough to follow a series.


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## jdsony (Jun 30, 2014)

Because you were butt hurt by a game that didn't run on computers back in 2007 isn't a reason to not buy it today. It was a far far better game than Far Cry 2 which was pretty terrible. I agree other than the graphics here was nothing groundbreaking about Crysis but I did find it to be a solid experience in a world of diminishing quality of FPS games. Crysis Warhead tightened things up in a lot of regards and perhaps might be the better game. It could have been a much better game but I really enjoyed dying and trying different tactics to push forward. Crysis 2 went console friendly and though I find it worse in many regards it's still a bit of mindless fun and still I find it better than Far Cry 3 with it's completely pointless repetitive game play and random loot. Crysis 3 I have yet to play and might never.

The bottom line is Crysis isn't a terrible game and actually it's probably better now when comparing it to how terrible the new "paint by numbers" generation of gaming has become.


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