Fairly impressed with the performance of Crysis 2/3.

I've recently played through Crysis 2 and 3 and ran both games with the visuals maxed using a GTX 780 (Galaxy HOF model) (Crysis 2 w/DX11 and texture pack, Crysis 3 with SMAA T2X). I ran these games at 1680×1050 and they both maintained at least 60FPS except for that rainy area at the beginning of Crysis 3 (I'm going to ignore that since the rest of the game was fine).

I've always considered the Crysis games as a bit of a masturbatory tech demo and I still kinda feel that way since the story, while it is kinda neat, isn't all that enthralling and the gameplay seems mostly run-and-gun with some stealth if you choose, but I was extremely impressed with the presentation. The gameplay did seem to improve in Crysis 3, especially with the hacking stuff thrown in. I think that if they could have thrown in something to improve stealth, like distractions, that could have helped the gameplay but that could have made it too easy.

I spotted some cheap-looking visual effects (Crysis 3, blow the damn and the water is a bit ugly) such as the smoke effects and the water physics not being that great but not once did I see broken graphics or areas where some geometry didn't meet up, like a white line going across a wall of rocks because something wasn't lined up. There was absolutely zero stuttering or hitching during gameplay when things were blowing up in the background or during the cut scenes (not FMVs, real-time renders). They spent as much time on audio as they did the visuals. The audio was extremely solid, the reverb wasn't ridiculous and the sound effects weren't disgustingly loud; I guess they didn't compress all of the dynamic range out of their sound effects because none of the sound effects were distorted or washed-out or they were extremely well-EQ'd. The audio was what you would expect from a movie. You could crank it and it would still sound good while many other games have harsh sound effects that just get worse with volume increases.

I understand that anything will run smooth given enough processing power, but I guess I'm impressed because I've played too many Unreal engine games that take a dump when PhysX kicks in (Borderlands 2, maybe Batman) and there's texture pop-in or random stutter throughout the game or cut scenes. None of that crap was present in these Crysis games. I'm running an i7-950 balls to the wall and CPU-hungry Crysis 3 still did fine.

"But can it run Crysis" has been a long-running joke, yeah, the first Crysis game was a beast, but at this point I feel like Cryengine is probably more consistent than games using engines we take for granted. Maybe Crytek used some tricks to get the latest Crysis games to run smoothly, but I thought they looked and sounded great and performed exceptionally well in comparison to other modern games.

Eh? Had no problems running Crysis 2 and 3 on 580 SLI's at 1080P at ultra details but no AA, so its not really surprising that you can do the same at 1680x1050 on a GTX 780.

And the tricks employed by Crytek to achieve these performance improvements are self evident.....gut out complex physics engine, reduce destructibility of environment, create smaller linear levels, use lower resolution textures (more so in Crysis 2), dumb down AI....release on consoles and then do your best imitation of Scrooge McDuck diving into a pile of money (their theory, not actually achieved in practice).

I'm playing Crysis 3 again and really like the game but hate how obviously console-based everything is, from the simplistic menus in gigantic font to the FOV. The Predator Bow makes the third game way better than the second; I don't get any fun out of run and gun gameplay. Also, the music is a masterpiece.

http://youtu.be/h6zQkqUVdyY?t=1m11s

I mean, this is just pure fucking genius.

I remember playing the first level on C3 and having it lag terribly with my 680 and 3770k that other levels didn't have, then I found out about the ropes issue so I wasn't the only one having problems. Glad they fixed it though, it was actually a pretty decent performer on my system at 1080p

crysis 3 was released to the public many months before your 500$ 780 gtx hit the shelves, and you're impressed because you managed to keep 60fps+ @ 1680*1050 2x SMAA ? you ppl have low standards lol


edit : your "ancient" 4.2 ghz nehalem is stilll pretty good for pretty much anything, especially when compared to AMD cpus http://www.techspot.com/review/787-thief-benchmarks/page4.html

Just recently fired up Crysis 3 and I must say I am very impressed with the game. It runs like butter at 1440p and 96hz. I am still blown away by the performance offered by my dual 290's at this resolution, when crossfire is properly supported. FPS counter likes to hover around the 100 mark using mostly very high settings and FXAA.... The game is beautiful and fun to play. Way better than Crysis2.

I remember getting terrible frame rates with Crysis 2 a couple years back. I forget which video card I had at the time. Either a 680 GTX or SLI 460s. I remember frames dipping into the 20s. But I think I had the settings cranked too high and I was also running at 2560x1600. Still though, every other game I had performed great.

My brother showed me Crysis 2 then he had another kid and never finished the game =(

Comixbooks said:

My brother showed me Crysis 2 then he had another kid and never finished the game =(

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I never finished Crysis 2 because it bored me to tears.

At 2560x1440 on an overclocked i5 2500k and overclocked 680gtx this game lags at medium. *780* at 1680x1050 LOLLLSSLOSLLOL you have money for that card but still at low pre millenium resolution? A 780 is way overkill dude. A 780 would lag at 2560x1440

Blade-Runner said:

Eh? Had no problems running Crysis 2 and 3 on 580 SLI's at 1080P at ultra details but no AA, so its not really surprising that you can do the same at 1680x1050 on a GTX 780.

And the tricks employed by Crytek to achieve these performance improvements are self evident.....gut out complex physics engine, reduce destructibility of environment, create smaller linear levels, use lower resolution textures (more so in Crysis 2), dumb down AI....release on consoles and then do your best imitation of Scrooge McDuck diving into a pile of money (their theory, not actually achieved in practice).

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They definitely spared a few CPU cycles by dumbing down the AI. I noticed this mostly in Crysis 2. Some of the AIs knew exactly where you were but probably just didn't shoot if you were cloaked and other AIs would get stuck doing stupid stuff.

jaguax said:

I remember getting terrible frame rates with Crysis 2 a couple years back. I forget which video card I had at the time. Either a 680 GTX or SLI 460s. I remember frames dipping into the 20s. But I think I had the settings cranked too high and I was also running at 2560x1600. Still though, every other game I had performed great.

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I played through some of Crysis 2 with a GTX 480 and visuals had to obviously be reduced.

UnclePauly09 said:

At 2560x1440 on an overclocked i5 2500k and overclocked 680gtx this game lags at medium. *780* at 1680x1050 LOLLLSSLOSLLOL you have money for that card but still at low pre millenium resolution? A 780 is way overkill dude. A 780 would lag at 2560x1440

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I prefer to get 60FPS than to run at a very high resolution and get ~30FPS. I'd get a much higher-resolution monitor if I thought I could maintain 60FPS, I guess you can at least disable AA at those higher resolutions.

Simmonz said:

I never finished Crysis 2 because it bored me to tears.

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I definitely wanted Crysis 2 to just end. Throughout the game you feel like you're in this perpetual forward motion of fighting group after group of enemies. That's why I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of substance to the games. It is a straight-up action shooting game.