Okay, so after owning Crysis for over a month I decided to install it last night and give it whirl, starting with single player and then moving onto some online gaming (to get a feel for the popularity).

Clicked "Optimal Graphics" and it put everything at medium and said, "These settings are optimal for you system."  I turned AA off (mainly cause I adjust this through nVidia control panel for for the sake of performance I'll leave it off for now.)  Started a single player campaign and graphics looked sweet!  A "tad" cartoony.  I mean, no textures really had any detail.  The rocks looked like rocks on Splinter Cell Chaos theory, just really rubbery looking.  Okay, I said, maybe just cause everything is medium.  Plowed through the forest, which is the most impressive part of the game, even shot some branches and leaves and crawled on my belly and shouted to my wife, "LOOK AT ME PLAY!"

Got to the beach and was VEEEEEEEEEERY dissapointed.  Now I realise the settings were on medium, but come on!  Can it look any MORE like FarCry?  The reason I bought Crysis was cause it was supposed to take FarCry to the next level, but the graphics were identical - even running a 8800GTX.  About the funnest thing I did on the beach was steal a jeep and cut down about a dozen trees with the .50 on top.  I quit the game promptly.

So I took a break for a half hour and figured, maybe I'm just too picky.  Loaded up a MP game on high graphics (oh, btw... the medium... the OPTIMUM settings were laggy at times... so I knew setting to high would kill me)... Anyway, I set to high and then joined a map (the one with all water and you take a boat to for 2 minutes to the becah before you see anything.  The graphics were BY FAR less apealing than COD4 even on HIGH.

In order to get the same experience out of Crysis as COD4 you have to set your rig to HIGHEST and you need a beast to run it.  On high, as expected, I was getting about 8 frames per second... but it didn't look cartoony and rubbery anymore.  I think the problem is that hte maps are so insanely, rediculously HUGE that it's lagging the graphics.  They should have made smaller maps and better graphics for lower-end systems.  Meanwhile this is all without AA on.

Don't get me started with multiplayer!  This was at 11:30 at night when ppl should be playing.  With no filters selected there were, at most, about 15-20 servers populated.  TOTAL there was only 500-and-some servers.  I applied some filters to enabled punkbuster servers... 10 servers populated.  Then I enabled DX10-only servers (for the fun of it... completely empty.)  Anyway, so I decided to join some of my 50-some online buddies that were playing Crysis.  (This is sad by the way.  It's ALMOST as sad as UBISOFT'S multiplayer servers where you can never find more than 10 people playing the same game as you online.

Anyway, I think the problem is that the maps are rediculously huge and only 32 player support (not to mention no normal person can run the game at an enjoyable experience.)  I joined a 32-player server and seriously, I had a hard time finding people to kill.  Sorry to say this to Crysis fans, but I thought that was dumb.  I quit the game after that.  Maybe tonight there'll be more people playing online in Crysis-world.  The reviews weren't kidding when they said that Crysis was a good SP-only game.  Hahahahaha

Review By Resurrection!