Crysis 2: Xbox 360 startlingly weak, PC very promising

At Gamescom 2010 PC Games Hardware had the opportunity to try out the multiplayer portion of Crysis 2 on both the Xbox 360 and the PC.

Following the presentation of CryEngine 3 on a midrange PC, the 360 version looked particularly ugly. While the final output is 720p at 30fps, it is obvious that the geometry natively renders at sub-HD and gets scaled up to 720p. Paired with a lack of anti-aliasing, Crysis 2 was a flicker fest that failed to impress with its rough shadows, blocky fog effects, blurry textures and pre-calculated physics animations.

The lighting, reflections and camo mode were nice to look at but couldn't rectify the overall weak visuals. Previously published "bullshots" are nowhere close to how the console version looks.

[swiftshot93]

Bubbles for everyone then!

[Newtype]

I never liked Crysis, probably getting Rage over this. Crysis was made to fry your gpu out.

[dosgrtr]

far better than this and that's at 60 frames meaning this looks nowhere close to being the best looking game on consoles as claimed by crytek , far from it

[nickjkl]

we will see

@tdrules :its id software not john carmack one person doesnt automatically make the coding better for an entire team

[Nihilism]

You don't seem to know much about John Carmack...the technology used in MANY game engines was created by that 1 man. See developers put new dot points on the features of their engines each gen. Ambient occlusion for example...but do you think epic games etc invent these things? no they don't. J.C is one of the few innovative programmers in the industry who actually pushes technology forward rather than latch on to the flavour of the month. Ambient occlusion, although by another name...was used first in Doom 3. There is a rendering technique called 'John Carmack's Reverse' and rightly so...he invented it.

The guy literally builds rockets ( he competes with NASA engineers ) IN HIS TIME OFF. I believe he won last time...in his victory speech in front of all the NASA tech guys...he said without the slightest hint of ego...that designing rocket tech was easier than creating graphics tech... The video is on youtube I suggest you go take a look.

"The stencil buffer implementation of shadow volumes is generally considered among the most practical general purpose real-time shadowing techniques for use on modern 3D graphics hardware. It has been popularized by the computer game Doom 3, and a particular variation of the technique used in this game has become known as Carmack's Reverse" -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

A quote from the youtube clip, and the clip summary.

"It still really isn't that complicated, it is simple compared to a lot of things that we do nowadays in the modern world, in the work that I do in video games is actually far more complicated than the aerospace work" -J.C

"John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace accepts his $350,000 Prize for winning Level 1 of the 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. The Prize purse was put up by NASA as part of their Centennial Challenges and the competition was administered by the X PRIZE Foundation.

The Challenge is designed to accelerate commercial technological developments supporting the birth of a new generation of Lunar Landers capable of ferrying payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. Such a vehicle would have direct application to NASAs space exploration goals as well as the personal spaceflight industry, including the Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors. Additionally, the challenge will help industry develop the operational capacity to launch quick turnaround vertical take-off, vertical landing vehicles, which will be of significant use to many facets of the commercial launch procurement market.

The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitude, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 50 meters away. The flight must then be repeated in reverse—and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period."

[nickjkl]

dchal you went overboard with that

im just saying john carmack isnt the only one at id software its the exact thing jaffe was talking about when people talk about rage they bring up john carmack like when people brought up twisted metal it was david jaffe other people work on these things to and its like gamers just leave them out

and i know about the rockets thing he didnt do tha tby him self he had a team with him which leads to my other point its like the team doesnt get any credit just that one person

[tdrules]

I am inclined to agree with you.
I mean John Carmack will always be better at coding than Crytek its no contest

[ChronoJoe]

It's interesting everyone forgets what happened to IDTech4. It flopped, basically. So to say something developed by Crytek will always be worse than something developed by IDTech, doesn't seem quite right since Cry engine 1 was clearly a superior engine to IDTech 4. Hell, unreal 3 was too.

IDTech 5 looks impressive though, but seriously John Carmack isn't a god, as some of you seem to believe.

[Hoje0308]

I defense of Crytek, at least Crysis 2 doesn't have static environments with low poly count character models. Rage on the other hand...

[PotNoodle]

I'm not a big crysis fan, i adored playing around in the engine and consistently being blown away by it - but as a game, it wasn't all that exciting for me. So while I hope it is a better game this time around, I'm also hoping they don't scale back such support on the PC version this time around - because much of the fun in crysis was messing around with the engine.

[Neko_Mega]

Looks like 360's lack of Bluray power is showing, the 360 needs more bigger hard drives to make up for the DVD.

It be awesome to have a 500GB or 1TB 360, but it won't happen, anyways it isn't a shock but it is nice to know it is going to look better for PC (Seeing that is where it started from).

I might get it for PS3 but I don't know, never played any of the games, but I'll at least will give it a try before judging it.

[Kroganwrex]

And disc space will help visual quality how? You do realise higher res textures use up almost no extra space than a low res texture. "lack of bluray power" - lol.

[RagTagBnd445]

Lol, higher quality textures take much more space than low quality textures.
Take Dragon Age(PC) for an example.
High Res Textures: 1.27GB
Med Res Textures: 400MB
See the difference?

[dosgrtr]

helps as it allows more space for uncompressed textures,cutscenes to name a few

[Zechs34]

So Krogan... You just owned yourself hard dude. Disc space doesnt help with visual quality? Then why are game games shipping on multiple discs, being down sampled or compressed, or simply modded (ie Half Life Cinematic Mod) C'mon do some research before you fail miserably at making YOURSELF look like an ass.

[sack_boi]

You need RAM to run those textures.

[Biggest]

So what if you have the RAM, but the textures aren't there because there was no space? You obviously need to have the textures present before you worry about how you're going to run them.

[CWMR]

Some of you guys are silly. The bottleneck for modern console games in terms of textures is the RAM, not the size of textures that can fit on the disc. Fitting higher res textures on the disc is worthless if the size of the RAM is too small to hold them.

[kharma45]

A lack of Blu-ray will make no difference as to what it looks like as the PC one will come on DVD like the 360.

[RagTagBnd445]

But you can compress files much more in the pc version, so they can put more on the disc.

[Sarcasm]

Uh and just like most PC games, they require anywhere from 5gb to 15gb of space when it installs on your system.

[ZeroX9876]

PC games always take HD space to compensate for decompressing files. Even if the PS3 had much more high res texture in one bluray, process time would be much longer, since loading from a bluray is slower than a harddrive.

[STONEY4]

Even if they could fit higher-res textures, both consoles honestly don't have that much v-RAM. So it really wouldn't make a difference.

[Nihilism]

They also don't have the texture fillrates on the graphics cards either. But we'll just let them have their little victory...and let them keep posting stats about the PS3's ram. I won't bother to show them that the difference between the slowest DDR2 ram known to man, and the fastest DDR3 known to man is >1% for gaming...

[Ravenor]

Did you guys miss the part where a large number of console exclusives don't run in full HD, and almost none but the most bare bones run in 1080P. God of War 3 and Uncharted 2 are some great looking games but you're delusional or blind if you didn't notice the spots of ugliness. Concessions have to be made to get a smooth play experience on the console, and high res textures are one of the concessions that gets made repeatedly. If it was only a case of disk space then every PS3 game would look better texture wise, and we all know that isn't the case.

[Neko_Mega]

Because the only developers that seem to get it right are the ones working with Sony, heck even MGS4 looks awesome for a compress game.

The disc my not be the main think, but it does help alot more then just using a DVD.

[Neko_Mega]

I like it when people seem to only think about the part that said bluray.

If they even read what I said, they would have read the part that it would help the 360 more if the hard drives were bigger for data to be save on it.

[gamer2010]

Then why is it the PS3 versions that usually have longer load times and force you to do partial installations?

[Neko_Mega]

Oh? Like what game now really does that? Nothing made by Sony needs you to install the game, and I wouldn't open your big mouth about installing.

Microsoft says it is best to install your games to the hard drive to kill loading times, so I wouldn't be talking about that if I was you.

[Hades1337]

It still looks class on the 360, regardless of whether other versions look better.

[pork_chop_express]

how did you work that out, it says it looks like crap, about the only thing you zealots have left is your denial ;)

[Hades1337]

Cause I have seen it with my own eyes, Game Trailers posted gameplay videos of the game running on the 360 version. What evidence do you have? An article which isn't even in English? Wow don't you look silly you ignorant twat.

[SaberEdge]

Think about it, this is coming from 'PC Games Hardware' which obviously have the PC as their yardstick to measure against. Compared to the PC version it is noticeably inferior, but it isn't a bad looking game in its own right. It actually looks really impressive by console standards.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...
This video was confirmed to be the 360 version and it looks awesome.

[MrLife]

Your ass is startlingly weak.

[Blazing_Crabs]

Oh Lawdy.

[The real killer]

"Wow
Looks like 360's lack of Bluray power is showing, the 360 needs more bigger hard drives to make up for the DVD.

It be awesome to have a 500GB or 1TB 360, but it won't happen, anyways it isn't a shock but it is nice to know it is going to look better for PC (Seeing that is where it started from).

I might get it for PS3 but I don't know, never played any of the games, but I'll at least will give it a try before judging it"
----------------------------- ------------------------------ - --------------------

It's not only Blu-Ray what the 360 is missing, also processorpower and a decent GPU that work perfect with the cell architetcure.

The lack of RAM speed is also a big problem for the 360, we know that the PC using more RAM than 512 GDDR3 from the 360 but also the PS3 use 256 XDR RAM and is also very fast 3.2 Ghz and very efficient.

The Blu-Ray is very handy for those specifications.
Bad news for 360 gamers.

If i get some childish disagree get some proof dude and explain why!!
----------------------------- ------------------------------ - --------------------

"Console hardware is dated shhhh... No need to believe all those next gen hd adds.

Ill be running this game in 1080p just like the first one. Ps3 and the xbox will be left in the dust just like always:p"

Well, you got a point but the most PC architecture is allready maxing out.
We know you are a PC lover just as i do, but do not put me as PC lovers in bad name for trolling the console's.

Blu-Ray is not the only thing what the 360 is missing, becouse Blu-Ray is needed for for fast processor power and the 360 don't have such power to read Blu-Ray.

EDIT: No boby can explain why i get the disagree? very shame that people only can cliking rather than talk about it.

[Eazy-Eman]

Why do people get so upset about disagrees? Dude if you're going to state in your comment "If i get some childish disagree get some proof dude and explain why!!" people are just going to disagree with you because they either want to make your blood boil or can't take you seriously because you put that statement in your comment. I disagreed with you because you put that statement in your comment so voila.

[dark-hollow]

you are right but in n4g you get disagree for breathing

[dark-hollow]

i hate articles-like comments

[seann]

you need a bubble dude, pretty interested in what u have to say

[Ninjamonkey82]

wasnt expecting anything different. Ps3 will fair slightly better but if asked where id play this. Id say my dx11 rig...

[Chucky2003]

no surprise here

[ndibu]

Lol, see? Works both ways

[jy_mrnd]

Getting Superior PC version as well!

[Nihilism]

"Xbox 360 startlingly weak, PC very promising"

The story of this entire generation. ZING!

[GarandShooter]

Harsh.

[Vip3r]

For the sake of common logic, obviously a 5 year old console won't have the same graphical grace as a modern 2010 PC.

[sack_boi]

No sh!t, you're kidding right?!

[Vip3r]

Given the intellect of the fanboys on this site, it needs pointing out.

[Darkfocus]

thing is there's more powerful PC's than an xbox from 5 years ago.

[DeathMetal]

"For the sake of common logic, obviously a 5 year old console won't have the same graphical grace as a 2006 PC"

FIXED

[Eazy-Eman]

I'm not surprised, pc to 360 ports tend to look nasty. I wouldn't say that the PS3 version is superior until we get actual screenshots of the Ps3 build. I love the ps3, but I have to see Crysis 2 run on the ps3 before anyone says the ps3 will be better. Worst case scenario is that crytek pulls a rockstar and says that the ps3 port will be inferior to the 360.

[Zechs34]

Here I found this video that shows all 3 systems running it, Im sure there are better quality vids out there. It has been said for quite a bit with regards to the videos and such that the PS3 version is running better than expected and looks and performs best right now (between the 2 home consoles)

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[OSU_Gamer]

So lets again listen to some German website on the quality of a multiplat. That already worked so well with Mafia 2.

[aGameDeveloper]

Crytek is a German company, itself, so you would typically expect a bit of favoritism from German press (IIRC, most of the recent Crytek fanfare comes from German sites). The fact that a German site comes out with any negative spin on the game is significant - to me, at least.

[PrinceOfAnger]

if the ps3 version looks better than the 360 version so i will get the ps3 version.^^

[Jazz4108]

We all know the 360 version will look better then the ps3 or they would have 1. been bragging to high heaven about it at e3. 2. would show it running on the ps3 when in fact I have only seen the the 360 and pc version running at conferences. 3. its multiplat and they almost always fare better on the 360. Last I checked 500 is greater then 200 when it comes to ram and alot of dev's have spoken out against ps3's split ram not working well with the system and then the slow bluray. so many negatives and strikes. I know the 360 has its limitations as I am reminded of them daily when I visit n4g but that said I thought it was time to bring the ps3 down a notch as its not that great.

[CernaML]

Quit being such a sourpuss, Jazz. There are many multiplats out there that look better on the PS3 or at least just as good as the 360. Yeah it's no surprise when the 360 version of multiplats win but it's also no surprise when PS3 versions of multiplats win. DVD format is really starting to hurt the 360. There are 360 games coming on multiple discs left and right. I cannot believe how low res pre rendered movies look in 360 games even when they are on two DVDs!

[etownone]

very disappointed to say the least

hope its not true cause i was really looking forward to this game to see how far Crytec can push the 360's hardware.

[Roozium]

Trust a german site, get fooled.

[theonlylolking]

Crytek already said that you shock people with the weaker version then when you show them the best they are amazed.

That explains why they have only showed the xbox version which to me looks great.

[Nihilism]

I think all the Crysis 2 footage so far has looked amazing. I guess the poor language conversion of the article has something to do with the overstatement in the title and the article. I'm sure it will look great on all platforms, my main concern is not how it looks, it's a given that it will look great...I want to know how it runs...

The article suggested 60 frame @1200p with 4aa maxed in dx9...I wonder how it runs in DX11...

@3monthsp

lol

Have a cigar, that was some fine trolling indeed.

[Avraj45]

i guess this could be the reason they delayed to 2011

[belal]

i mean, number 1 wasn't that good only visually impressive, and second one look ok at best. leaning more toward ps move,gt5,black ops, assasins creed brotherhood etc than this game.

[DeathMetal]

the reviews tend to disagree with you as far as Crysis goes.

[lolzers]

Crysis was excellent both in looks and gameplay.

[Scenarist]

BUH BUH BUH ..... This is the game that will look the best on all platforms.. PS3 not > 360 not > ps3 ? is what they said?

I was wondering how they were going to pull it off and was actaully hoping they did (pc dont count because we already knew it would be best visually )
but i guess they wont.

Thank God Im a PC enthusiast , I love Mind blowing Visuals beyond what consoles are capable of.

[jy_mrnd]

Agree that's why i game on PC!

[The Milkman]

Where did all these bubble come from, did I miss a bubble fest or something? Anyway I can't afford the PC to play crysis 2 on highest settings if it were to come out right now. But it isn't and by time it does I will have money saved up for a good PC to run it. It all depends on how much money I spend on other things and college also though.

[hiredhelp]

how strange noting mention about the ps3.well what a supprise maybe the official playstation mag. here in uk that had contacts with EA that come around and showed him early footage build of crysis 2 that was being made on the os3 may have been true after all. i still stand by that.
just as i always said crytek like power so ps3 would be sweet one for them. of course it wont beat a pc on a high end gaming rig. and even some middle end cards. but im sure it beat the 360 hands down. not im not knocking the 360 as lately all multiplatform seems to be looking really good for 360 as alot have been displayed and lets face it. rage.brink.you name em they still look better than halo reach and all the 1s