Editorial:Crysis Demo Review
From Wikia Gaming
by SkywalkerPL
I just played the Pre-Release Demo of Crysis and would want to share some opinions with you. I watched several videos from game, and my first reaction was "Damn, it will never work on my PC!", but you can only guess how I was amused when got it running on my PC :D (Sempron 2200+ (1,5GHz when 2.8 GHz is official minimum), Radeon X1300 Pro, 1GB Ram, Win XP Home) and what made me even more happy - I manage to run it sooth with some of these cool F/Xes so advertised in all promos - like view depth, blurring, etc. So guys, if your GPU supports DX9.0c - get the demo now! ;)
Gameplay
Ok, let's admit the true - on my PC it's pointless to say anything about how the game looks like, as I doubt if it shows at least 10% of it's capabilities. But the gameplay... ok, step by step: First of all, the thing made me very amazed, was that in Advanced setup I could choose how much physics details do I want o_O it's the first game I seen with such option. I took low, as I guessed that CPU takes calculations, and when I have over 1GHz below minimum... ;) Then I run the demo - nice intro movie (pre-render of some shots and suit capabilities), then some in-game animation. Guys were talking about mission, that I'll have to recover some doctor from island took by Korean forces. Everything looked nice, facial animation was done very well. Ok, finally some action - my dude codename "Nomad" stood up and jumped off the plane. Hands in front of eyes were quite nice addon - gave the feeling of jump. The beginning of game is quite good introduction, as I seen no 'tutorial' option in menu, they had to make it some way, and therefore we have first how-to-look-around, then how-to-move, how-to-use-suit/gun setup and how-to-fight for the end :) good and easy.
AI
If we talk about how-to-fight - AI controlling opponents is very nice. First of all they try to search for cover, help each other, call support, etc. You've got very nice feeling of fighting with good enemies. If you'll try to make a small car accident and check their reaction on close contact with your tyres - they will try to run away. If you'll go and hide yourself behind the stone - some of them will shoot to hold you there, while other guys will try to walk around to make you small surprise with their rife's. If they see you run mad on them - they will keep shooting and move back in hope your suit isn't THAT hard. Everything looks ok, besides few odd situations. For example - enemy boat comes to my, I jump off into water, and on speed mode swim under it - what they do now is stand in place looking for me, and then move few meters forward, and do that same again - I don't know how long it can take, but I guess that they never try to do something more creative. Now - I jump from back on boat - nobody reacts, I take my rife with silencer, kills the guy sitting in Rife turret - boat pilot not reacts, even when he sees someone just died in front of him. After few seconds he returns to normal patrol - I make something like that: o_O. First of all - he should stand up and look around, and secondly - dude, you have dead man onboard! Get back to the base and try to help him, or get another gunman or at least stop patrolling! - but ok, let it be. I try to make that dude do something - punch him straight into helmet - no reaction. I shot him once in a hand - no reaction. Ok, boat pilot AI really needs patch!
Racer!
Crysis Races - that's one of aspects I like most in this game - realistic phisics which is used well for all types of cars and boats you can drive. Someone should have though about adding new mode for multiplayer - "The Race" ;) Car accidents looks quite nice (yet - I couldn't drive through building... or it might be because I wasn't inside a tank as it was on one of cinematics ;P), only sometimes I got feeling that these palm trees are too delicate, even low-speed crash makes them fall down. Also I was very dissapointed that my Hammer stops just in a moment it's roof goes below water surface... or might be it should be like that... never tested it ;)
Phisics
That's what all the talk, movies, etc about this game were, and... guys, I <3 IT! You can throw here almost everything, from Bananas and crabs, till large trash cans, fuel barrels or even soldiers. If you'll hit the explosive barrel - you can take and throw each element of it. If you'll kill the soldier, you can take his helmet and use it as weapon (helmet-helmet crash can be deadly! :P), what a pity that you can't throw dead bodies, then I would make some graveyard or something like that ;) some place to count how many enemies are on map :P. Also lovely is that when you hit the tyre of moving vehicle it makes nice bang into nearest building on it's way ;). Other funny things is trying to kill the enemy with said bannana - yet I never manage to do that, or putting granade under motorboat on shore and watch how it jumps into air.
The living world
What more I liked in this game is that there is real daytime - you can watch sunrise during your mission, check that shadows are changing, etc. Also there are animals - I seen 2 kinds of fishes, some small birds running like chickens, crabs and seagulls. I know that it's mayby not much, but such small elements are what makes game fun :) Also forests are very well made - you can see that there are few layers of it - grass, bush, small trees, and large one, you can check that deep forest is shady, with very few bushes, when edge if full of them between several larger trees.
Final score
I love the demo, even if it's only pre-release, it shows great hopes to the game, gives the feeling of real gameplay, and shown me that that game sucks in for a long, long hours. Even if it still has few bugs - normal player would propably not catch them, and enjoy the game a lot.
