Crysis demo countdown clock

[Beirut]

http://www.crysisdemo.com/

Lists the "official system requirements" as well.

I'll be one of the many shmoos in line for this. Will probably be a big fat 1GB+ download as well. Their servers are going to combust.

[edyzmedieval]

I'm really interested to see if it's a must or a bust.
You need about 14GB for it! (the same amount for M2TW too...)

[Husar]

Will probably be a big fat 1GB+ download as well.

I might die of laughter if they managed to compress it to a 900kb download, remember that really small shooter?

[Bijo]

A while ago I received a multiplayer beta invitation. I was delighted. Of course, it took some time to download whereafter one was to carefully read the instructions and perform many actions such as checking a code, checking this, checking that, checking another thing, and another code, and so forth. Finally I was able to start playing. And then what? Well, my settings were forced to Low. "No big deal," I thought. No, no, NO! BIG ******* DEAL. Other games that are played in DirectX 8 (forced or not) can be set to High and look very good, while all this new technology and effects on Low look terrible. Add to it the terrible ATI drivers and I am not even mentioning the Control Center.

Oh, and I did not like the multiplayer gameplay.

So when you know your MP beta runs at a terrible pace or quality, checking the demo is not something I would do. And I suspect SP gameplay -- the most important aspect -- will not be so interesting anyway. A Far Cry lookalike updated with graphics, some gameplay elements, a story and lots of Hollywood-like action with alien monsters. I dare say I would find Bioshock better to play and that's something that pains me to admit. Argh, pain, pain, dammit! See? :P

[Beirut]

A Far Cry lookalike updated with graphics, some gameplay elements, a story and lots of Hollywood-like action with alien monsters. I dare say I would find Bioshock better to play and that's something that pains me to admit. Argh, pain, pain, dammit! See? :P

As Opus said when Steve chocked on his herring flavoured toothpaste. "To each his dentifrice."

Though Bioshock looked great, it wasn't the kind of gameplay I like. Far Cry, on the other hand, kept me going right through. A new Far Cry with better graphics and cool aliens is exactly what I want. My rig meets the recommended specs and I'm looking forward to some next-generation eye-candy.

One week to go.

[Bijo]

As Opus said when Steve chocked on his herring flavoured toothpaste. "To each his dentifrice."

Though Bioshock looked great, it wasn't the kind of gameplay I like. Far Cry, on the other hand, kept me going right through. A new Far Cry with better graphics and cool aliens is exactly what I want. My rig meets the recommended specs and I'm looking forward to some next-generation eye-candy.

One week to go.

Well, then that is good for you. May you rejoice.

What is bad about Bioshock: everything that is not the graphics and story. A shame I wasted monetary resources on it as I didn't even continue playing it after a short time. It was too shallow for my taste.

Far Cry was decent. The end seemed as if stuff was thrown together hastily and the overall game seemed more like a showcase of technology that was manipulated into being a game which if it weren't for its refreshing technology would not be so interesting. It seems Crysis will be superior compared to FC, but even then... It appears too much of a rechewed FC to me, man. I do not play games for graphics first but for gameplay.

Anyway, yes, let us await the demo. I shall check it out since I read somewhere it was being delayed due to making it as best as possible, including performance tweaking. Not that this would matter much for me, but it would still be nice to see how it would run.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

My rig meets the recommended specs and I'm looking forward to some next-generation eye-candy.

Out of curiosity, can you PM me your computer specifications, and how well FSX runs on your computer?

[Viking]

http://www.crysisdemo.com/

Lists the "official system requirements" as well.

I'll be one of the many shmoos in line for this. Will probably be a big fat 1GB+ download as well. Their servers are going to combust.

It better be good.

[Beirut]

Less than 24 hours to go.

[Whacker]

Less than 24 hours to go.

You are drooling. It's very unsightly.




I shall be testing this out on the beast as well, it looks pretty and should be a wonderful stress test. Oddly enough, and I'm sure a few will get good laughs out of this, Far Cry didn't really interest me at all when it was out, I was too busy playing Doom 3 and later RTW. Perhaps this will hold my interest also.

[Beirut]

You are drooling. It's very unsightly.

I'm not drooling. I just like free toys. Especially free toys with cutting edge graphics.

[Husar]

Do you really think you can get it in less than 24 hours?

I suspect they might make it an exclusive deal where you have to pay some network to get access to the fast servers or get into a line that says: "Hello, you're only the 1 millionth person to wait for the Crysis demo, estimated wait time: 4 months" or maybe they'll make it public but for the first 24-48 hours most servers will probably be slow anyway.

[edyzmedieval]

Crysis Demo will be public for other users tomorrow (October 27th) at 12:00 UTC/GMT.

Huzzah EA! We hate you more now.

[Beirut]

Downloading now. 1.77GB demo. They say it's the whole first level worth about 45 minutes.

My stinky cable is going to take hours to DL this, but it should be interesting.

[Ferret]

25% downloaded! only 1 1/2 hrs left! Wonder how long it will take to install though...

[Rodion Romanovich]

Please post screenies once you get it running! I'm for various reasons unable to test the demo for several weeks or months, and am not a major fan of the gameplay, but I'm very interested to see the next gen graphics in action (and not as it looks one the developer's uber-computer when they allow the game to drop to 1 FPS, but as it looks on a realistic computer).

[Ferret]

sorry no screenies but I wanted to say that I was not that impressed. The graphics weren't that impressive even though I had it on high and I prefer the gameplay of Farcry. Still quite enjoyable I suppose.

[Bijo]

I totally forgot I had it downloaded and waiting. Here's a screenshot for you, Rodion. Set to Low and tweaked for maximum possible quality and performance. During the in-game cutscenes it ran well on Medium, perhaps even on High though I don't know about that.


I am impressed only a bit. The weapon I was wielding did not appear as if it was designed rightly. Well, what the hell.... let me just say I don't like the demo and it doesn't have to do with graphics but content.

[Viking]

I had to run with most settings on low, else I would get 2~4 FPS. And at low the graphics looked horrible.

[edyzmedieval]

I expected that a bit. Everyone was hyped over the graphics, but it turns out it's a bust unfortunately.

Will see how the full version is. Then I might try at someone who has it.

[Husar]

It set everything to high when I made it decide automatically, ran a bit choppy, so I went to all medium and it still felt slow. Then it crashed completely...
Well, it wasn't all that impressive even on high, maybe on very high but that seems to be locked in the demo anyway. I don't even know whether it's worth another try.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Thanks for the screenie! With low graphics settings, it looks pretty much like most other games... I kinda suspected it would be like that for people with anything less than dual GeForce 8800s with SLI

[Ferret]

sorry no screenies but I wanted to say that I was not that impressed. The graphics weren't that impressive even though I had it on high and I prefer the gameplay of Farcry. Still quite enjoyable I suppose.

actually scrap that, the more times I play it the more I enjoy it. I must say it is more entertaining to stay back and use sleep darts than to run in blasting things and throwing stuff, I think I was stuck in Halo 3 mode .

[Geoffrey S]

Heh, in low it looks just like... Far Cry!

[Husar]

Uh, tried again today and it was a lot better, found out it only crashes when I use the laser pointer on the pistol for a few seconds. Ran fine on Medium this time around and I actually got some fun out of it.

[Beirut]

Heh, in low it looks just like... Far Cry!

It's Far Cry+. Played with it a bit. Haven't formed a real opinion yet. Not sure if I'll shell out for the full game.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Well, I liked the demo. I have a moderately beastly rig though, so I ran it all on medium and only saw slowdown once or twice. It looked like a next-gen game, which is becoming more and more like "it looked like a this-gen game". As for playing, I really liked the physics and engine and playing around with throwing and punching things (but I never played half-life 2 so I'm physics-engine starved). I liked the gun play more than Far Cry - entering into a firefight can be very dangerous if you don't have good cover, but you are not nearly as vulnerable as you were in Far Cry (from the bit I played and died a whole lot). You can also be sneaky and stuff (and the active camoflauge is a pretty good system). Basically, enemies can't see you in active camo, but can hear you. It also drains the energy of your nanosuit to stay invisible, and the drain's speed depends on how fast you are moving. It's great to open up on a group of them, go to camo, and crawl away to reposition yourself. Clearing enemies is mostly picking them off and hiding - run & gun isn't too good an idea, even with your suit set to "defense".

More impressions later.

[Husar]

It can be fun, though sometimes it crashes every few minutes and sometimes I can start a new game and play until the end of the demo.

I have to say though, that from the ending movie of the demo, that I think the guy nicknamed "psycho" has to be Tribesman.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Played through again on hard. Still enjoyed it, even though there were more "what I am I going to what I am I going to" panic moments. I like how the missions have a degree of freedom in bypassing non-objective obstacles (like a small Korean outpost on the road to one of the objectives).

I'm looking forward to the full game and hopefully a good mod community.

[Zatoichi]

Has anyone tried the 'get DX10 features in XP' trick yet?

There's a text file in "C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis SP Demo\Game\Config" called 'highspec.cfg'. If you set the value here from '3' to '4' you get all the goodies which were supposedly only for Vista enabled DX10 on your lowly XP DX9 rig - it basically makes the 'high' option in game actually the 'Very High' option, which is shaded out unless you have DX10. It will still be unavailable in game, but you'll be running the game with everything set to Very High!

However, you do need to have a beefy XP system with a good card before this will be anything other than a slide show.

I also noticed I needed to set the shaders option in game back to Medium or I had weird lines across my screen (but I had to do this when they were set to High, so no loss).

Anyway, there's plenty of info about this on the Crysis forums (where I picked up this tip), and various other techy sites if anyone is interested.

Looks lovely by the way!