OK, I won't deny that it does realitically require a computer made in at least 2006 to run "well", but how many people complaining about things other than hardware requirements actually played it? Compared to Bioshock, or even CoD4, in terms of solid gameplay, it was by far the best SP FPS released last holidays.
That's really debatable. Sure I loved it, but I know plenty of people with whom the style of gameplay just didn't click, either because they weren't interested in the more dynamic, less scripted singleplayer, or just some other reason. For me, I knew I wanted it as soon as I played the demo (and ran through it like 3-4 times, just trying things different ways. That was pretty rare for me with FPS's ).
And if you actually read the article, a lot of it is in rather broken english, so I'm not entirely sure that they're actually saying that all their future games will be multiplatform, as much as that they decided that they needed to expand into the console arena. We've known about the later for at least half a year (their secret PS3 project).
Also,
Crysis as we have seen is impossible. Crysis would have to be largely changed to bring it to Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Crysis is designed to be PC Exclusive. Our internal focus is not linked to bring Crysis to consoles.
I reckon they mean what's been said there. That quote is from ages ago before they were really looking at consoles with any seriousness. These days the comments seem to be far more positive about just what they can put on the 360 / PS3. Of course, time will tell how well the game survives the translation.
So a PC game containing a new franchise from a largely unknown developer with absurdly high system requirements sold relatively poorly, or rather, not poorly at all but its budget was so fucking oversized that a million copies wasn't enough to break even.
Clearly PC gaming is dying. I'll inform Blizzard.
Well, hey, at least Stardock and Blizzard are getting the picture: reasonable system requirements, no draconian copy protection, and fun gameplay equal money.
At least Crytek realizes that there's a difference between planning games for the PC and consoles, unlike epic or most of the other multiplatform PC releases, which just map the controls to the keyboard and, if we're lucky, redo the UI a bit
I actually liked Crysis. Well, the demo at least. I don't want to buy the game until I can fully realize the visuals. I wish more developers took Stardock's approach ...
WARNING WARNING!! Incoming crappy console oriented UI's and shitty framerates!
Ugh. This gen has made me hate video games more than any other and Ive been playing since the NES dropped.
What sucks even more is that the original UT had the best interface out of the entire series. Simple, direct and to the point, standard window / file manager style interface that let you tweak whatever you wanted instantly.
Even when UT2003 / 4 wasn't on the consoles they still decided to change and make it worse. And UT3's was a bit of a travesty to be honest.
Gears of War I was OK with since there wasn't really much tweaking to do. But no push to talk? That's just standard surely? Oh, and also, having to bring down the command console in order to send text messages. Oh well, at least the option was there I suppose, even if it wasn't documented.
As long as PC gaming's long-impending doom doesn't come before Stalker: Clear Sky or the big Witcher patch next month, I'll find a way to deal with it.
I enjoyed Crysis a lot. Yeah, it's Far Cry 1.5, but I liked Far Cry; yes, even when the trigens started showing up. Still, I really can't imagine this being a huge surprise to Crytek. The game was geared towards those with well-above-average rigs (though it scales decently, but the visuals were obviously emphasized), and frankly, not as many people can afford to keep up. The question is, how long is it going to take developers used to big-budget projects to learn to live cheaply?
Who knows. But I honestly think if the PC market fails - and I mean actually fails, as opposed to just being downsized or whatever - it'll only be because gaming as a whole isn't far behind. Probably because we'll be too busy bracing for the inevitable war with China after America annexes Canada and the European Union dissolves, all just prior to an exchange of nuclear missiles.
We'll still need games to play whilst we're whiling away the hours in the Vaults. Of course, by that stage development will have regressed and we'd probably have to start with Pong all over again.
Why don't they just put their games on Steam, isn't Steam a pretty major deterrent of piracy because of the user account system?
Well, for one thing, EA was their publisher for Crysis.
Their only other game is already on Steam, but who knows where they're going from there? If they stick with EA, they definitely won't be putting their games on Steam any time soon if ever.
Why don't they just put their games on Steam, isn't Steam a pretty major deterrent of piracy because of the user account system?
I wouldn't say it's a deterrent of piracy because all Steam games are also available illegally. However, it's an incentive to buy because it's so easy to do.
Why don't they just put their games on Steam, isn't Steam a pretty major deterrent of piracy because of the user account system?
I wouldn't say it's a deterrent of piracy because all Steam games are also available illegally. However, it's an incentive to buy because it's so easy to do.
Steam doesn't really defeat piracy as such, anything you can find on Steam you can easily get off of bittorrent.
What Steam does do however is quite successfully prevent pre-release and zero-day piracy (well, assuming that you're not dealing with broken store dates and things like that first). That's when the really bad piracy occurs.
Basically if you can prevent it getting on the torrent sites for a few days to a week, then that's a pretty major deal. Or at least that's the way Doug Lombardi (or was it Gabe Newell? ) described the situation in an interview.
When your game does not run on "very high" settings on any computer in existence, even on largely theoretical platforms like Intel's insane Skulltrail nonsense, you're doing it wrong.
I didn't really know that Steam games could be pirated.
Well I knew about single-player, but I didn't know you could do multiplayer stuff too.
I always just assumed you'd get VAC banned if you even tried to run a pirated Steam game online.
victor_c26 on
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
Yeah you can't run pirated games online obviously, but the singleplayer Steam games are all on torrents a day or two after release.
And they're quite popular amongst the pirate folk since they all seem to have this hatred of Steam and what it stands for in terms of DRM.
They also rationalize it quite well because Steam exclusive games that are pirated tend to run slightly better than they do when they're legit since it doesn't have Steam constantly checking on it.
I work in a store that sells games (I work in a different department) but even I buy all my games off of Steam at a higher price. Why? Absolute ease of purchase, patching, and retention. I don't have to go through any complicated process to install it (no serial codes!), just pay for it, let it download, redirect it to my game drive, and let it install.
I never have to keep track of a website to see if theres a patch coming. I never have to track down a patch on a website. Sometimes it fairly easy to find, other times it's hidden in some obtuse corner of the website 5 links under the support page. Heck, 90% of the time I don't even realize that the games been patched, steam runs in the background and happily keeps all my games up to date while I'm at work. I've purchased games that were annoyingly buggy when they were released, simply uninstalled them, ignored them for 2 months, got a temptation to played again, and guess work, they work now.
I don't have to worry about keeping track of the boxes/manuals/codes for the game. If I want to play it at a later time, I simply open up steam and download the game again. Nothing complicated. I've literally downloaded hacked versions of games I've legitimately purchased just because it was easier than finding the media and codes to let it run. On Steam, it's just not a problem.
Heck, you don't even need to know what games are good to use steam. After you get done playing a game on Steam, their news pops up and tells you what they have for new releases/deals going on. You look through it, if something strikes your fancy, they'll link you directly to metacritics which compiles nearly every review ever done for the game. Incredibly well done. Just bought the Civ 4 super pack for $40 this weekend, 100% of the reason why I knew they were doing the sale they had a simple, non-intrusive pop-up letting me know it was on sale.
A good digital distro/subscription based system (ie Steam/Stardock or MMOs) is the future of PC gaming. It makes the process as easy as console gaming. I simply select the game I'd like to play, pay to cost, and download it. When its done, I play it. NOTHING ELSE, no other gimmicks or tricks to get the game going. While it doesn't eliminate piracy, its a fairly good at slowing it down. It makes getting pirated PC games somewhat difficult, which is really as hard as it is to crack a console and download the ISOs. While the question of 'Will my machine run it?' will always exist in PC gaming, I wouldn't be surprised if a future version of Steam does a basic hardware check and at least gives you a warning if your purchasing a game which won't play on your machine.
EA tried the digital distro thing, but they are greedy fucks with it. I decided that I wanted to try Hellgate : London, didn't see it on Steam, and wandered to EA's site to see if I could do a digital from them. I got to the final stage of purchase and found an option for an extended warranty... a warranty for a fucking piece of software. Click on the link to find out what it did, and found out that you could only redownload it once after purchase, and after 6 months you were just shit out of luck. The warranty only extended that to 2 years. I still haven't played anything beyond the demo for HG:L, and have really lost interest in it.
Oh wait, most of that post only had a vague relationship to the OP. I haven't played Crysis, or even run the demo. Everything I read about it is that its mostly a demonstration of what a PC is capable of doing, with a competent but not good shooter behind it. My PC isn't bad (e6300, 2gb RAM, 9600gt) but I'm more interested in gameplay than graphics. Another reason why I love Valve/Stardock/Blizzarivision.
This console/pc gaming situation has recently gotten me very interested, most likely because I'm trying to decide whether I should build a new computer or just buy a PS3 (already have a 360 and I love MGS.) It's a hard choice to make but the way I see it is that most of the games I want are coming out on consoles and it seems like developers are taking on a more console-centric focus. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a perception.
Take for example, Bioshock. I was incredibly excited for the game and went out and got it on the first day. I didn't have to worry about it running well or screwing around with Draconian DRM, I just popped it in and played it. And the way I see it is that most people don't want to have to deal with screwing around with graphic settings to get it to run just right or even run at all. Take that with the fact that a lot of people buy pre-built rigs and don't use them for much other than email and Facebook. PC gaming is definitely on a decline, which saddens me because I absolutely love PC games. But I find myself saddened by the fact that anytime I want to play a new game, I have to worry about system requirements and what framerate it'll run at and it's quite nervewracking.
I know this might be rather off-topic but it'd be interesting to hear reactions.
Everything I read about it is that its mostly a demonstration of what a PC is capable of doing, with a competent but not good shooter behind it. My PC isn't bad (e6300, 2gb RAM, 9600gt) but I'm more interested in gameplay than graphics. Another reason why I love Valve/Stardock/Blizzarivision.
See, this is what bothers me about people and Crysis.
There's this perception that it's not actually good and it's all about the graphics.
I may be an idiot, but I'd call Crysis one of the best shooters I've ever played. Did it look beautiful? God yes. Was it a great game at the same time? Yes. Definitely yes. It was the first shooter to suck me in and grab me like it did in years.
And the story might not be incredible, but its excecution was top tier. Not many games, especially shooters, can take a cliched and unremarkable story and make it feel so grand and impressive and fill a player with such a sense of wonder and anticipation like Crysis can. And I think the visuals really do play a part in this. Many, many sequences in the game just couldn't be what they are without them.
This console/pc gaming situation has recently gotten me very interested, most likely because I'm trying to decide whether I should build a new computer or just buy a PS3 (already have a 360 and I love MGS.) It's a hard choice to make but the way I see it is that most of the games I want are coming out on consoles and it seems like developers are taking on a more console-centric focus. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a perception.
Take for example, Bioshock. I was incredibly excited for the game and went out and got it on the first day. I didn't have to worry about it running well or screwing around with Draconian DRM, I just popped it in and played it. And the way I see it is that most people don't want to have to deal with screwing around with graphic settings to get it to run just right or even run at all. Take that with the fact that a lot of people buy pre-built rigs and don't use them for much other than email and Facebook. PC gaming is definitely on a decline, which saddens me because I absolutely love PC games. But I find myself saddened by the fact that anytime I want to play a new game, I have to worry about system requirements and what framerate it'll run at and it's quite nervewracking.
I know this might be rather off-topic but it'd be interesting to hear reactions.
I'm mostly into shooters, 4x games, and MMOs. The though of playing any of those without a keyboard and a mouse scares me tremendously. I'm not in the target audience for consoles, and have very little interest of them. I don't really see any of those markets moving out of PC gaming. If those aren't your cup of team (more into sports and racing or things of that nature) I'd go get a console first. If you like them all, get a console and something like the 8800gs for your computer. Its a sub $150 card, and would play all the games decently. The shooters will work fine on it (comparibly to a console) and 4x/MMOs generally don't require very high end hardware. If your a big fans of RTS type games, your fairly well screwed, as those tend to need a good graphics card and are very poor on consoles.
Everything I read about it is that its mostly a demonstration of what a PC is capable of doing, with a competent but not good shooter behind it. My PC isn't bad (e6300, 2gb RAM, 9600gt) but I'm more interested in gameplay than graphics. Another reason why I love Valve/Stardock/Blizzarivision.
See, this is what bothers me about people and Crysis.
There's this perception that it's not actually good and it's all about the graphics.
I may be an idiot, but I'd call Crysis one of the best shooters I've ever played. Did it look beautiful? God yes. Was it a great game at the same time? Yes. Definitely yes. It was the first shooter to suck me in and grab me like it did in years.
And the story might not be incredible, but its excecution was top tier. Not many games, especially shooters, can take a cliched and unremarkable story and make it feel so grand and impressive and fill a player with such a sense of wonder and anticipation like Crysis can. And I think the visuals really do play a part in this. Many, many sequences in the game just couldn't be what they are without them.
Many of the sequences in CoD4 were balls-tightingly fantastic with an old x1950 that I played through on the first time.
Kerdos on
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TetraNitroCubaneThe DjinneratorAt the bottom of a bottleRegistered Userregular
Everything I read about it is that its mostly a demonstration of what a PC is capable of doing, with a competent but not good shooter behind it. My PC isn't bad (e6300, 2gb RAM, 9600gt) but I'm more interested in gameplay than graphics. Another reason why I love Valve/Stardock/Blizzarivision.
See, this is what bothers me about people and Crysis.
There's this perception that it's not actually good and it's all about the graphics.
I may be an idiot, but I'd call Crysis one of the best shooters I've ever played. Did it look beautiful? God yes. Was it a great game at the same time? Yes. Definitely yes. It was the first shooter to suck me in and grab me like it did in years.
And the story might not be incredible, but its excecution was top tier. Not many games, especially shooters, can take a cliched and unremarkable story and make it feel so grand and impressive and fill a player with such a sense of wonder and anticipation like Crysis can. And I think the visuals really do play a part in this. Many, many sequences in the game just couldn't be what they are without them.
I just broke down and bought Crysis over the weekend, and even after a minimal amount of playtime I have to say I quite agree with this. It's a really good game in terms of execution, even if the story is a little wonky and cheesy (But I admit, I do like that). It's not the most fantastic game ever, but it's certainly above the cut. The graphics aren't the best on my rig (playing Dx9), but they're good enough to make the game immersive. It's like a tropical vacation. With guns. And superpowers! It's a really good run so far that I overlooked at first because I thought the game was a glorified tech demo, but I was (gladly) wrong.
On the larger topic, though, all PC developers keep bemoaning piracy as the death of the industry. I don't deny piracy damages their interests, but is there any evidence of how much it actually impacts their revenues?
Every time there's a quote by these guys, it makes it sound like each person who pirated the game would have gone out and bought it otherwise. While it's obvious piracy is stealing, what's to say that in the absence of piracy that a pirate would actually purchase the game instead? What if it's still just a lost sale, but now for other reasons?
It's really hard to get real numbers on the impact of piracy. The real damage is the people who would of bought it, but instead pirated it. The numbers of the number of pirated copies is something you can get a fairly good estimate for it, but figuring out how many sales that prevented is far more difficult.
Everything I read about it is that its mostly a demonstration of what a PC is capable of doing, with a competent but not good shooter behind it. My PC isn't bad (e6300, 2gb RAM, 9600gt) but I'm more interested in gameplay than graphics. Another reason why I love Valve/Stardock/Blizzarivision.
See, this is what bothers me about people and Crysis.
There's this perception that it's not actually good and it's all about the graphics.
I may be an idiot, but I'd call Crysis one of the best shooters I've ever played. Did it look beautiful? God yes. Was it a great game at the same time? Yes. Definitely yes. It was the first shooter to suck me in and grab me like it did in years.
And the story might not be incredible, but its excecution was top tier. Not many games, especially shooters, can take a cliched and unremarkable story and make it feel so grand and impressive and fill a player with such a sense of wonder and anticipation like Crysis can. And I think the visuals really do play a part in this. Many, many sequences in the game just couldn't be what they are without them.
Everything I read about it is that its mostly a demonstration of what a PC is capable of doing, with a competent but not good shooter behind it. My PC isn't bad (e6300, 2gb RAM, 9600gt) but I'm more interested in gameplay than graphics. Another reason why I love Valve/Stardock/Blizzarivision.
See, this is what bothers me about people and Crysis.
There's this perception that it's not actually good and it's all about the graphics.
I may be an idiot, but I'd call Crysis one of the best shooters I've ever played. Did it look beautiful? God yes. Was it a great game at the same time? Yes. Definitely yes. It was the first shooter to suck me in and grab me like it did in years.
And the story might not be incredible, but its excecution was top tier. Not many games, especially shooters, can take a cliched and unremarkable story and make it feel so grand and impressive and fill a player with such a sense of wonder and anticipation like Crysis can. And I think the visuals really do play a part in this. Many, many sequences in the game just couldn't be what they are without them.
I'm curious, what rig did you run it on?
EDIT: Settings would also be helpful.
An AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, a GeForce 8800GT, and 4GB of RAM with Vista.
I was running it at 1440x900 with all settings on high with no AA at a fairly steady 30fps with the only significant drops being in the very last areas of the game.
I haven't played it yet so I could be way off, but Crysis seems like a situation where graphics do strongly impact the overall gameplay experience. Do you think you would have enjoyed it less if you had to settle for medium settings, with more frequent slow-down Pancake?
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That's really debatable. Sure I loved it, but I know plenty of people with whom the style of gameplay just didn't click, either because they weren't interested in the more dynamic, less scripted singleplayer, or just some other reason. For me, I knew I wanted it as soon as I played the demo (and ran through it like 3-4 times, just trying things different ways. That was pretty rare for me with FPS's ).
I reckon they mean what's been said there. That quote is from ages ago before they were really looking at consoles with any seriousness. These days the comments seem to be far more positive about just what they can put on the 360 / PS3. Of course, time will tell how well the game survives the translation.
You're right, my bad.
Clearly PC gaming is dying. I'll inform Blizzard.
Well, hey, at least Stardock and Blizzard are getting the picture: reasonable system requirements, no draconian copy protection, and fun gameplay equal money.
Just because someone buys a 8800GT to play Crysis doesn't mean they will buy Crysis...
Ugh. This gen has made me hate video games more than any other and Ive been playing since the NES dropped.
Probably because you are playing the exact same games as last gen, but with less features and new graphics engines.
What sucks even more is that the original UT had the best interface out of the entire series. Simple, direct and to the point, standard window / file manager style interface that let you tweak whatever you wanted instantly.
Even when UT2003 / 4 wasn't on the consoles they still decided to change and make it worse. And UT3's was a bit of a travesty to be honest.
Gears of War I was OK with since there wasn't really much tweaking to do. But no push to talk? That's just standard surely? Oh, and also, having to bring down the command console in order to send text messages. Oh well, at least the option was there I suppose, even if it wasn't documented.
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512
Yes but they're not "abloo abloo abloo piracy abloo abloo abloo".
I enjoyed Crysis a lot. Yeah, it's Far Cry 1.5, but I liked Far Cry; yes, even when the trigens started showing up. Still, I really can't imagine this being a huge surprise to Crytek. The game was geared towards those with well-above-average rigs (though it scales decently, but the visuals were obviously emphasized), and frankly, not as many people can afford to keep up. The question is, how long is it going to take developers used to big-budget projects to learn to live cheaply?
Who knows. But I honestly think if the PC market fails - and I mean actually fails, as opposed to just being downsized or whatever - it'll only be because gaming as a whole isn't far behind. Probably because we'll be too busy bracing for the inevitable war with China after America annexes Canada and the European Union dissolves, all just prior to an exchange of nuclear missiles.
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Thanks for linking this, sorry that I couldn't be bothered to do it myself :P
Well, for one thing, EA was their publisher for Crysis.
Their only other game is already on Steam, but who knows where they're going from there? If they stick with EA, they definitely won't be putting their games on Steam any time soon if ever.
I wouldn't say it's a deterrent of piracy because all Steam games are also available illegally. However, it's an incentive to buy because it's so easy to do.
Steam doesn't really defeat piracy as such, anything you can find on Steam you can easily get off of bittorrent.
What Steam does do however is quite successfully prevent pre-release and zero-day piracy (well, assuming that you're not dealing with broken store dates and things like that first). That's when the really bad piracy occurs.
Basically if you can prevent it getting on the torrent sites for a few days to a week, then that's a pretty major deal. Or at least that's the way Doug Lombardi (or was it Gabe Newell? ) described the situation in an interview.
I wonder how many people pirate the game simply to see if their computer will run it.
There is a Crysis demo.
Jesus, it was even mentioned in the thread already.
Never mind me.
Well I knew about single-player, but I didn't know you could do multiplayer stuff too.
I always just assumed you'd get VAC banned if you even tried to run a pirated Steam game online.
And they're quite popular amongst the pirate folk since they all seem to have this hatred of Steam and what it stands for in terms of DRM.
They also rationalize it quite well because Steam exclusive games that are pirated tend to run slightly better than they do when they're legit since it doesn't have Steam constantly checking on it.
I never have to keep track of a website to see if theres a patch coming. I never have to track down a patch on a website. Sometimes it fairly easy to find, other times it's hidden in some obtuse corner of the website 5 links under the support page. Heck, 90% of the time I don't even realize that the games been patched, steam runs in the background and happily keeps all my games up to date while I'm at work. I've purchased games that were annoyingly buggy when they were released, simply uninstalled them, ignored them for 2 months, got a temptation to played again, and guess work, they work now.
I don't have to worry about keeping track of the boxes/manuals/codes for the game. If I want to play it at a later time, I simply open up steam and download the game again. Nothing complicated. I've literally downloaded hacked versions of games I've legitimately purchased just because it was easier than finding the media and codes to let it run. On Steam, it's just not a problem.
Heck, you don't even need to know what games are good to use steam. After you get done playing a game on Steam, their news pops up and tells you what they have for new releases/deals going on. You look through it, if something strikes your fancy, they'll link you directly to metacritics which compiles nearly every review ever done for the game. Incredibly well done. Just bought the Civ 4 super pack for $40 this weekend, 100% of the reason why I knew they were doing the sale they had a simple, non-intrusive pop-up letting me know it was on sale.
A good digital distro/subscription based system (ie Steam/Stardock or MMOs) is the future of PC gaming. It makes the process as easy as console gaming. I simply select the game I'd like to play, pay to cost, and download it. When its done, I play it. NOTHING ELSE, no other gimmicks or tricks to get the game going. While it doesn't eliminate piracy, its a fairly good at slowing it down. It makes getting pirated PC games somewhat difficult, which is really as hard as it is to crack a console and download the ISOs. While the question of 'Will my machine run it?' will always exist in PC gaming, I wouldn't be surprised if a future version of Steam does a basic hardware check and at least gives you a warning if your purchasing a game which won't play on your machine.
EA tried the digital distro thing, but they are greedy fucks with it. I decided that I wanted to try Hellgate : London, didn't see it on Steam, and wandered to EA's site to see if I could do a digital from them. I got to the final stage of purchase and found an option for an extended warranty... a warranty for a fucking piece of software. Click on the link to find out what it did, and found out that you could only redownload it once after purchase, and after 6 months you were just shit out of luck. The warranty only extended that to 2 years. I still haven't played anything beyond the demo for HG:L, and have really lost interest in it.
Oh wait, most of that post only had a vague relationship to the OP. I haven't played Crysis, or even run the demo. Everything I read about it is that its mostly a demonstration of what a PC is capable of doing, with a competent but not good shooter behind it. My PC isn't bad (e6300, 2gb RAM, 9600gt) but I'm more interested in gameplay than graphics. Another reason why I love Valve/Stardock/Blizzarivision.
Take for example, Bioshock. I was incredibly excited for the game and went out and got it on the first day. I didn't have to worry about it running well or screwing around with Draconian DRM, I just popped it in and played it. And the way I see it is that most people don't want to have to deal with screwing around with graphic settings to get it to run just right or even run at all. Take that with the fact that a lot of people buy pre-built rigs and don't use them for much other than email and Facebook. PC gaming is definitely on a decline, which saddens me because I absolutely love PC games. But I find myself saddened by the fact that anytime I want to play a new game, I have to worry about system requirements and what framerate it'll run at and it's quite nervewracking.
I know this might be rather off-topic but it'd be interesting to hear reactions.
See, this is what bothers me about people and Crysis.
There's this perception that it's not actually good and it's all about the graphics.
I may be an idiot, but I'd call Crysis one of the best shooters I've ever played. Did it look beautiful? God yes. Was it a great game at the same time? Yes. Definitely yes. It was the first shooter to suck me in and grab me like it did in years.
And the story might not be incredible, but its excecution was top tier. Not many games, especially shooters, can take a cliched and unremarkable story and make it feel so grand and impressive and fill a player with such a sense of wonder and anticipation like Crysis can. And I think the visuals really do play a part in this. Many, many sequences in the game just couldn't be what they are without them.
I'm mostly into shooters, 4x games, and MMOs. The though of playing any of those without a keyboard and a mouse scares me tremendously. I'm not in the target audience for consoles, and have very little interest of them. I don't really see any of those markets moving out of PC gaming. If those aren't your cup of team (more into sports and racing or things of that nature) I'd go get a console first. If you like them all, get a console and something like the 8800gs for your computer. Its a sub $150 card, and would play all the games decently. The shooters will work fine on it (comparibly to a console) and 4x/MMOs generally don't require very high end hardware. If your a big fans of RTS type games, your fairly well screwed, as those tend to need a good graphics card and are very poor on consoles.
Many of the sequences in CoD4 were balls-tightingly fantastic with an old x1950 that I played through on the first time.
I just broke down and bought Crysis over the weekend, and even after a minimal amount of playtime I have to say I quite agree with this. It's a really good game in terms of execution, even if the story is a little wonky and cheesy (But I admit, I do like that). It's not the most fantastic game ever, but it's certainly above the cut. The graphics aren't the best on my rig (playing Dx9), but they're good enough to make the game immersive. It's like a tropical vacation. With guns. And superpowers! It's a really good run so far that I overlooked at first because I thought the game was a glorified tech demo, but I was (gladly) wrong.
On the larger topic, though, all PC developers keep bemoaning piracy as the death of the industry. I don't deny piracy damages their interests, but is there any evidence of how much it actually impacts their revenues?
Every time there's a quote by these guys, it makes it sound like each person who pirated the game would have gone out and bought it otherwise. While it's obvious piracy is stealing, what's to say that in the absence of piracy that a pirate would actually purchase the game instead? What if it's still just a lost sale, but now for other reasons?
I'm curious, what rig did you run it on?
EDIT: Settings would also be helpful.
SteamID: FronWewq
Battle.net: Orange#1845
3DS Friend Code: 1289-9498-5797
An AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+, a GeForce 8800GT, and 4GB of RAM with Vista.
I was running it at 1440x900 with all settings on high with no AA at a fairly steady 30fps with the only significant drops being in the very last areas of the game.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I haven't played it yet so I could be way off, but Crysis seems like a situation where graphics do strongly impact the overall gameplay experience. Do you think you would have enjoyed it less if you had to settle for medium settings, with more frequent slow-down Pancake?
SteamID: FronWewq
Battle.net: Orange#1845
3DS Friend Code: 1289-9498-5797
Jesus.