Crysis, for better or worse, is a landmark title for PC gaming. Aside from being a high quality FPS, it is the peak of graphical beauty for the video game industry thanks to visuals possible only on PC’s, leaving consoles drooling in jealousy at its gorgeous lighting, models and textures. Adding insult to injury were player modifications which only blew the gap between PC and consoles even wider. Metro 2033 is arguably a better looking game but the sheer customizability of the visuals and the large open worlds keep Crysis as the reigning king of graphics in the industry.
This is only with a texture mod.
So it was no surprise that when Crysis 2 was announced, expectations for the game’s visuals would be high. When information poured out on the sequel, it was clear that Crysis 2’s development would be more gameplay-focused. Now, the Crysis was an above average FPS with tight controls, a convincingly pseudo-open level design and the nanosuit added a whole realm of possibilities to the standard run-and-gun gameplay. A brief search on Youtube will pull up many videos of people getting through levels all sorts of different ways from stealth (a.k.a. the Solid Snake approach) to throwing explosive barrels at helicopters (a.k.a. awesome). It really was not a bad thing for the focus to be on the gameplay. After all, the idea of playing Crysis in a broken-down urban environment with better designed levels and a larger focus on gameplay mechanics sounds heavenly. As long as they kept at least the same graphical and community experience of the first game, of course.
On March 1st, it was revealed that Crysis 2 will not have customizable graphics settings. Instead, it will only have three distinct settings: Gamer, Advanced, and Hardcore. This is already problematic since the demo gives absolutely no indication what the hierarchy of the settings is. Just looking at those three names, can you figure out which one is highest? What if I told you that, in Crysis Warhead, “Gamer” was the second highest level? In Crysis 2, “Gamer” is actually the lowest of the three settings. The only way you would know this is if you searched it up online or actually tested all three modes yourself. That problem is only the superficial one. Deeper yet is the problem of limiting a PC game to a small number of graphics settings, especially in a Crysis game. It has been reported that the difference in performance between the Hardcore and Gamer settings is up to 20 frames per second. For reference, 30 FPS is considered the minimum for a game to look stable and 60 FPS is optimal for most displays. This means that there is such a huge discrepancy between the settings that the difference between them can literally be playable or unplayable. The whole idea of customizable video settings is so that a user can customize the settings for the maximum playable quality for their PC.
The first question asked after this revelation was “Can’t you just edit the configuration files, like in the first game?” If the demo is any indication, no. It is encrypted and locked away. You cannot edit the configuration files at all. So, what does that mean? You cannot customize the graphics to balance playability and quality, temporal antialiasing is always on by default and the field of view is locked to a small, zoomed in level permanently. Each of these is a serious issue, especially for a sequel to a game famous for its degree of customizability. What’s bad about the latter two? A small field of view is the key element that causes feelings of nausea for FPS players, made worse by the rise of widescreen monitors. Half-Life 2 had this problem for years but always allowed for changes to the field of view in the console and Valve patched in a slider for it in the graphical settings last year. As for temporal antialiasing?
Technosteve of NeoGAF illustrates that there's a difference between motion blur and ghosting.
Later that day, an even bigger problem was revealed: Crysis 2 will ship without DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 rendering. So Crysis 2, sequel to the game renown as the pinnacle of video game graphics, is not going to have graphical quality close to its predecessor until it is patched in at an unknown date. None of the advanced lighting or efficient post-process rendering of DirectX10, nothing of tessellation or even more efficient rendering of DirectX11. Crysis 2 will instead be reviewed and benchmarked on a two generations old rendering engine.
There should be no excuse for this. This is akin to Grand Theft Auto with linear levels, Gears of War with first person view, Half-Life with a verbose Gordon Freeman. As shallow as it sounds, the graphics really are the heart of Crysis. This is made even worse with the reception of the gameplay from both PC and console crowds: the console crowd find the gameplay too clunky and the PC group find it too unresponsive and simplified. Without solid gameplay to fall back on, Crysis 2 had graphics to propel it into the annals of video game history—and now that, too, is gone.
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Many are already calling it “consolification”. The demo helps none as it comes with a screen that literally says “Press Start to continue”, Auto Aim enabled by default and unconfigurable mouse smoothing. Frankly, I disagree since many PC ports come with configurable graphics settings. Bulletstorm, which was released just recently and has a reputation for being a bad console port, has customizable graphical settings. As for the DirectX renderers, even Capcom games come with DirectX10 rendering when the console versions come equipped with only DirectX 9. This is either laziness or a rushed release. Or worse.
But I suppose any sales lost because of all this nonsense will be blamed on piracy and not angry PC gamers who don’t like paying a premium for less. But, good news, there will probably be DLC to tide us over at $10 a pop! So what do I know?