TITLE : CRYSIS 2 TO SUFFER ON CONSOLE DATE : 30th AUGUST 2010
You couldn’t help but notice Crysis 2 at Gamescom last week and fans must have gotten around to the massive EA booth on the show floor and queued up to get a look at the multiplayer shooter that was on show. Those fortunate to have gotten into the Crysis 2 booth and headed straight for the PC’s all came out quite happy but as I was last in the queue and the only machine left for me was a 360. As I rarely game on PC anymore I was quite happy to get a go on a console version and I still thought that this should look good after all the developers have assured us that they can create stunning graphics on the consoles but how wrong I was. I should point out that this is not a console bashing article, I am a console gamer. Nor is it an Xbox360 V PS3 article as I’m confident that the game will not be any better on the PS3.   To take a step back a day to the Wednesday the trade only day at Gamescom. Crytec had a small booth on the way in to display what the new engine could produce. As this booth only remained in place for one day I’m sure many will have missed it. What they had on display was clearly a very high powered PC running Crysis 2 on a new 3D TV. So I put on the glasses and sat down to enjoy the show. What I saw blew me away I don’t think I have ever seen graphics of this standard or any kind of game in 3D that was so perfect. It really did match real life. I visited many other 3D stands over the week but nothing even stuff running on high powered PC’s came close.   So on Thursday when I had a break in my interview schedule top of my list was Crysis 2 so I headed off to the EA booth to see if I could get my hands on some game time. All the time getting more and more hyped up about the game, In the back of my mind I knew that Crysis 2 has been put back until 2011 so I wouldn’t get another chance to play it for quite a long time if I didn’t take this opportunity. I also knew that it wasn’t a finished product and that it still had time to improve so I was willing to let a few small glitches go, but none the less my expectations where very high. Mainly because of the bragging from the developers have done about how good a product they can produce even on the consoles. So off I went to stand in line with everyone else desperate to get a game. This was approaching 7pm I had been up since 6 am and on my feet all day so standing for 45 mins took a lot of effort but I was determined to stick it out for my chance.   After 45 minutes we finally made it through the first door only to be met with another queue. But at least now I could watch people playing and was fortunate enough to be viewing the game running on a PC and it looked really impressive now excitement levels are really high. We get moved on again into a small room where we treated to the same 3D footage I had seen the day before only this time on a cinema screen way too big for the room rather than a high powered 3D TV the result was a stark difference. I was sitting too close to the screen for it to work properly and it ended up being an attack on my senses rather than a wonderful moment of gaming pleasure. The poor picture quality and blasting sound levels meant I couldn’t either hear or see what was going on. The single player campaign just looked like there was so much going on I couldn’t make sense of what was happening who was against you or with you or why it seemed impossible to die even though he was getting cut apart by a massive rail gun attached to a huge mechanical enemy.
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Glad to be out of the little cinema and now standing at an Xbox360 about to play a death match with around 30 other players. I selected my class and weapon and hit start. What I was greeted with was not pretty at all. The screen straight away started jumping I wasn’t sure if it was the machine about to crash or if there was some kind of a bombing raid going on in the game. This did settle after around 30 seconds just before a headache set in. Once that had settled a bit I was able to see what was going on. As long as I stood still everything looked okish. Nothing special and certainly nothing genre changing. In fact it reminded me of low budget games we saw 3 or 4 years ago. Every line that wasn’t perfectly horizontal appeared jagged to such extent that the banister on the stairs resembled stairs themselves with constant steps up to match the incline.   That was disappointing but nothing compared to what happened once I started moving. As soon as I moved the character all those jagged lines went mental. As the map was set in a bombed out building almost every line was a diagonal line and they all started glitching and moving around so much so it was impossible to tell what was a wall and what was a door. I spent the next ten minutes going around in circles getting the occasional kill when I came across someone who was just as confused as to what to do as I was. As the ten minute game approached the end I was getting to grips with the level layout and started to rack up a few more kills but all the time I just wanted the game to end so I could get out of the booth.   For all its bragging about graphics the game is starting to look very average, the single player footage looks like a mess with too much going on at once to see what is meant to be happening. The multiplayer was nothing special I’ve played better this week and certainly Killzone 3 or Halo Reach both look much better.   To be fair the video I saw the day before had some of the best graphics and 3D effects ive ever seen. But I now fear that Crysis 2 wont be able to create anything close to that on console and that the game itself will be little more than a PC tech demo for the new game engine anyway. I was left very disappointed by Crysis 2 and it will go down as my second biggest disappointment of the weekend just behind Mafia 2 who made me queue again for 25 mins to get into play the same demo that has been available to anyone for the last two weeks. I really hope they iron out these bugs for release but for the moment I can definitely wait for this title after being so excited about it that’s a massive disappointment STAY TUNED TO WWW.BONE-IDLE.IE FOR MORE INFO ON THIS.