Crysis 2 DX11 Tessellation & High-Res Texture Pack @ [H]


You're going by how the game performs, I'm talking about the game itself, story, visuals and gameplay.
A better video card isn't going to create a better game, a better experience fps wise but not a better game. Understand that?

If I get a GTX 580, will there be an alternate ending or the original Nanosuit controls are unlocked?

Finished playing Warhead after a four month hiatus, and the comparison is not even close. The original Crysis series is way better. I take back the little praise I gave Crysis 2.
What happened to the Maximum Game intro? Immediately I knew that C2 was missing the core essence of the original game.
Warhead looked better, the mechanics are better, the sound is better and it's feels like a genuine PC game because it is.

Settings: Enthusiast, 16xAF, 16xQ AA, 36 Avg. 52 Max. Very playable and my PC isn't OC'ed that high right now.
Oh that's not good enough because according to you, I don't have enough VRAM to enjoy the game.
 
So wait, you're telling me you've never had issues installing an update before? One person having problems does not mean that the update was "fail". I had it installed in under 10 minutes (after downloading of course) and the Steam version auto-patched to 1.9 without a hiccup. While I'm not saying you're the only person that experienced these problems, I haven't heard of any other major complaints (with the installation at least) across several game forums.

As for the complaints with Crytek, again, is this the first time you've had problems with a game at launch that weren't fixed immediately? The first time a feature was delayed? I take it you've never bought a Valve game before or tried to play a DICE game's multiplayer at release... And hell, even the (PC exclusive) Total War Shogun 2's DX 11 patch was delayed for a while after launch!

Finally, in terms of having only minor graphical improvements, let's face it, advanced graphics are experiencing diminishing returns as technology advances. The improvements Crytek made to the game aren't trivial, they're just the kind of thing that if you don't stop and look for them, you won't consciously notice. They add to the experience in more subtle ways now by building the atmosphere of the world, instead of being the centerpiece like they were when 3D first became popular, or the last generation of consoles came out.

Anyways, sorry for the rant, I just have felt that way too many of the 'hardcore' PC gamers have been taking this whole situation way too personally. As I've said before, it's just a game; don't like, you don't have to buy it and you can move on.

There used to be a time when HardOCP was about making serious reviews and they got in trouble because of that. Like in the case of the Phantom console. Nowadays it seems that it is mostly about being complacent with the biggest percent of readers and generating traffic. It seems the [H] it's resting on its Laures. Just like Intel did on the P-IV era. Whoever wrote this article needs to work at least for 6 months doing Quality Assurance engineering. And if they did, they should do it again!! And if they actually tested all possibilities they should clarify it. The tone of the articles are not impartial or informative anymore. It has gotten too personal to be that credible.
 
I'm not surprised that the DX11 patch is complete garbage. The Hi-Res pack should have been included with Crysis 2 on release day.

Im bored so I guess ill weigh in on this one. I think the whole Crysis 2 issue has really divided people in to two camps.

one group thinks it's a great game and that everyone complaining is just a whiner who only cares about graphics.

The other group claims crysis is terrible looks like crap and they wouldn't buy it if it came in a gold plated box stuffed with hundred dollar bills and hand jobs.

Actually, I'm part of Camp #3 which is sort of aligned with Camp #2.

I'm an ORIGINAL Crytek fan... Purchased and LOVED Far Cry, Was both impressed and disappointed in Crysis 1 + Warhead, but not insulted, then held off on purchasing Crysis 2 till the "reviews came in" and because of its regression from Crysis 1 features, was disgusted at Crytek and refused to purchase Crysis 2.


Rant mode on:

I bought Far Cry, and in its day, IT WAS AMAZING! I was really looking forward to Crysis 1.

Burn me once, Shame on You.

I bought Crysis 1 on release day.
To me, Crysis 1 was disappointing. Sure it had better graphics, but it would bring the highest end PC's to a standstill at 1920x1200 and no major improvements were made to the revolutionary-at-the-time Far Cry character A.I. Crytek focussed on making a graphical tech demo that only worked well on nVidia based graphics cards and neglected improving their AI... sure it had limited destructible environments, and yeah, the grass looked a lot better... but gameplay was not longer heads and shoulders above the competition.
Good Points: it had DX10 support on day 1, amazing graphics
Disappointments: Optimized for nVidia so much that at release it ran slower with Crossfire ATI setup than with crossfire disabled, little improvement in gameplay, not playable on ANY current system at release day at 1920x1200 with highest possible settings.

Then Crytek told everyone that piracy was rampant and no more patches would be made to Crysis 1, and if anybody wanted patches, they'd have to buy Crysis Warhead... I bought that the day it came out as well.

Pretty Warhead much a $30 expansion pack for Crysis 1 with the patches that should have been applied to Crysis 1. To THIS DAY, ATI keeps on optimizing its drivers for Crysis Warhead's built-in benchmark in a vain attempt to approximate the performance on nVidia cards since Warhead's canned benchmark is still used by many lame sites in its video card reviews.

Burn me twice, Shame on me

Because of Yerli's statements that Crysis 2's engine would have a console focus, I decided to hold off on purchasing Crysis 2 till after the boyz here at [H] got their geeky hands on it and gave it thorough going through... and boy was it a good idea.
Although Crytek spent ALL the years between Crysis and Crysis 2 "developing" a new generation CryEngine, they couldn't be bothered to code in DX11 support which was already in Crysis 1's engine in the form of DX10 support. From what I've read, not only were the graphics no better than Crysis 1 and actually lower res textures were being used, gameplay was not only NOT IMPROVED, but seemed to be dumbified to work on consoles. The only improvement from Crysis 1 was UI design, especially for switching between the different "suit power" modes.

However, I've got to give crytek credit, it gave console gamers their first taste of less scripted, more expansive gaming environment with great graphics to boot. Sadly, that didn't help PC gamers... since effort was diverted from making a great PC game to making it a great console game.

Rant mode off
 
You and plenty of others have made it clear that regardless of how good or bad the graphics may be, you feel that the gameplay is "a steaming pile of shit." I have to ask, what other first person shooter singleplayer games are you guys playing that are SO much better than Crysis 2?. Because I would really like to play them. I've heard FEAR 3 mentioned, I'll have to play that some day. But it's interesting to note that FEAR 3's reviews are universally worse than Crysis 2's.


Read the news page and your questions are already answered.
 
I love that needing 64-bit and a 1GB vid card is listed as a complaint. Pretty much what I expected out of this review. :rolleyes:
 
I love that needing 64-bit and a 1GB vid card is listed as a complaint. Pretty much what I expected out of this review. :rolleyes:

Check the screen shot and make up your own mind. You don't need to be a sheep.
 
I gave up, never did the the POS to update. Eight tries in all different ways. Looks like I'm not missing much over 1.8.
 
Great review. One of the reasons I visit this site regularly is the honesty that comes from the reviews.

I didnt have problems installing the patches. I did have a problem with the game still being a piece of shit [a glossier piece of shit].

But like they always say, you cant shine a turd; you can only put glitter on it.
 
Would you be happy if the texture resolutions were 4096x4096 instead of 2048x2048. Then the patch would probably be twice if not three times the size and every graphic card would choke. Would that be ok?

No, the gameplay is still crap no matter how pretty it looks.

I'm far from being a sheep. The game definitely isn't GOTY material. It is yet another generic shooter. But the graphics are far, FAR from terrible. And this whole "Crytek pissed in my cheerios" flaming is retarded. Crysis 1 was pretty generic as well and was unique mainly for its rig-crippling graphics. The sequel doesn't kill as much and isn't as groundbreaking graphically, but is still in the top 5%-10% of PC games, visually, right now.

I enjoyed the game. I don't really care what BS developers spew before games; it's always overblown and ridiculous. I just play the game and judge it on it's own merits; it is a decent FPS, one of the few that was fun enough for me to actually play all the way through it's SP. The graphics definitely gave me a few "Wow" moments.

Glad you got your money's worth, I did not.
 
I'm far from being a sheep. The game definitely isn't GOTY material. It is yet another generic shooter. But the graphics are far, FAR from terrible. And this whole "Crytek pissed in my cheerios" flaming is retarded. Crysis 1 was pretty generic as well and was unique mainly for its rig-crippling graphics. The sequel doesn't kill as much and isn't as groundbreaking graphically, but is still in the top 5%-10% of PC games, visually, right now.

I enjoyed the game. I don't really care what BS developers spew before games; it's always overblown and ridiculous. I just play the game and judge it on it's own merits; it is a decent FPS, one of the few that was fun enough for me to actually play all the way through it's SP. The graphics definitely gave me a few "Wow" moments.

I agree. It was a good game, I think most people pissed off about it, Kyle included, are just pissed off because it didn't live up to some god-like expectations they had. Doesn't change the fact that for me Crysis 2 looked pretty damn good and was an enjoyable game, one of the better games I've played in the past few years.

Crysis 2 seems to me to be a game that would have gotten almost universal praise if it wasn't called "Crysis 2" and was released by any company but Crytek. It has some of the best graphics around, it has good performance on a wide range of systems (better graphics quality to performance ratio than most games, C1 included IMO) and it has IMO pretty good gameplay. Some people say its COD-like gameplay, but to me this is not COD-like, its the gameplay for which COD should be striving to achieve.

That said, I've always respected Kyle and the other [H] team for their hardware reviews, but never paid much attention to game reviews/summaries/opinions. They're self admittedly biased, so I pay as much heed to them as I would any other member on a forum.
 
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I guess I'm biased too, I'm biased towards great games and I feel compelled to be biased to hate shitty games.

After Bioshock 2 came out, I never again bought a game on launch day. That's because professional gaming review sites simply cannot be trusted to give you the truth, I'd rather place my faith in fellow members of [H] giving enough user feedback to enable me to make a decision. Everyone knows the old joke about how if a game is scored as a 8 on IGN.com, that really means it's probably a 6, or a 6.5. That's just one case in point. Metacritic is useful as a general indicator of how good a game is, and then after that, the next best thing one can do is come here and look at user feedback, which often includes the launch day surprises, and those can be either good or bad experiences, depending on the game.

Anybody with any sort of rationality to them would not say that Bioshock 2 was an improvement on the first Bioshock in any way except for perhaps gameplay, or more specifically, the gameplay mechanics, every other area was simply mediocre, the environments felt recycled, a bit bland, a little bit too much been there, done that to it. The story was watered down and unoriginal, and the "alternate endings" which were supposed to provide replay value weren't really different endings at all, just the same ending with only one small bit of it altered.

I'd say that buying sequels is the real crapshoot, because more often than not lately, the gaming industry does not want to take risks to make a great game anymore, they simply want to establish franchises that they can issue out sequels to on a preferably annual basis, or biannual basis in order to use them as profit centers. The game simply must be released on time, quality be damned. They will do whatever they have to do to get it out on time, and that includes but is not limited to sacrificing your gameplay experience and satisfying your expectations.

Bioshock 2 was a huge let down, and this philosophy also kept me from buying Dragon Age 2, which was a good thing, and again here, with Crysis 2. Dragon Age 2 suffered from the same flaws that Bioshock 2 did, but it was even more dumbed down, consolitis here, again!

Consolitis is the main culprit behind these games being bad games, when your game is made for consoles first, the PC version is simply destined to be mediocre. Crysis 1 was made for PC, Crysis 2 was not, Dragon Age 1 was made strictly with PC in mind, but DA 2 was not. For Crysis 2, it shows, especially with those stupid comments about this patch being a "gift" when it should have been there in the first place. Consolitis, in all of it's forms, is a bad thing, consolitis waters down the PC gaming experience, it perverts it, and it serves only to bring us down to the base level of the console, which is simply unaccepable. Nobody in their right mind who spends hundreds or thousands of dollars on their PC rig with gaming in mind does so because they will be satisfied with a console experience on their PC.

If you're going to spend all that cash and you want better games on the PC, do the right thing, and that thing is to vote with your wallet, withold your money from the developers and game companies that want to force consolitis on you. Inevitably, our capitalist system will move to correct the void filled by those companies going out of business or choosing to focus on consoles. Other game companies will be formed, who will learn from the mistakes of the companies that went out of business. They will identify the potential of the PC market, and they will form a greater understanding of what PC gamers want and expect.

Bending over isn't the solution, withholding your dollars is.

Nobody likes feeling disrespected, but I sure as hell won't bend over for $60 to be fucked by my purchase and then disrespected on top of it. Fuck that.
 
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I guess I'm biased too, I'm biased towards great games and I feel compelled to be biased to hate shitty games.

I'm biased towards nonbiased, adult reviews. What if Asus or Antec is next on the shit list? No more reviews for them?

1.9 patched worked just fine.
 
Nobody likes feeling disrespected, but I sure as hell won't bend over for $60 to be fucked by my purchase and then disrespected on top of it. Fuck that.

Overall I agree with your assessment about console porting, that said the market is what it is and most developers see more money in consoles at the moment, whether or not that's true is another matter.

But I am just perplexed by all of the people saying they were "fucked" by Crytek over Crysis 2. There was plenty of information about the consolization of this game well prior to release as well as a demo.

One can call Crysis 2 shit all that they want but there simply isn't a logical reason why anyone who bought this game should feel "fucked" for spending $60 on the game at release as there was simply too much information on this game as well as a demo CLEARLY showing what this game was about. How many people made a comment about the "Press Start" text in the demo's initial release?

Bash the game to hell and back but there's no logical excuse to have spent $60 on this game at release and feel fucked when all of this information and a demo were available PRIOR to the game's release.
 
I'm biased towards nonbiased, adult reviews. What if Asus or Antec is next on the shit list? No more reviews for them?

1.9 patched worked just fine.

While I agree with you in reality most people tend to have biases when it comes to matters they care about.

I do give credit to the [H] staff in that they don't try to cover their biases and it's clear generally where they stand. It's hard to construe "X FAIL" as anything other than the highest degree of negative bias.
 
What is really funny is that I did not even write the article. I just edited it for Steve. I thought it was better to have Steve do it since he was detached from the previous articles.

I have shared my opinions here, but I did not change Steve's article for all intents and purposes. He is the "true" game guy on staff. He was just supposed to evaluate the feel of the patch enhancements and what was supposed to be a quick article turned into a nightmare for him.

Steve had no bias coming into this from a reviewer standpoint.
 
Yes, [H]ard may be [H]arsh at times and I prefer that to diplomatic double talk that basically shakes out to be a disingenuous defense for whatever is being "reviewed".
 
* Group Hug Time *

Kyle, Steve, etc... we love you guys and your work, remember that always, we wouldn't be here otherwise
 
I'm siding with the article on this one. I can barely tell the difference in graphics quality pre and post-patch. The most noticeable thing is the High Res textures, which make the textures look like they should, but the rest is just hard to make out in screenshots, let alone while you're playing the game. Not to mention that the new features will drop your framerate by 25-50%. It's hard to say if it's even worth it.

I loved Crysis 1 and Warhead, but I won't be buying another Crytek game until I see reviews of it first. I bought Crysis 2 on day one with good faith and got burned. It won't happen again.
 
LOL, I've never seen the [H] Fail stamp before. Crytek truly merits it. Another game company with empty promises to PC gamers that ends up delivering a console port.
 
I guess I'm biased too, I'm biased towards great games and I feel compelled to be biased to hate shitty games.
....

Nobody likes feeling disrespected, but I sure as hell won't bend over for $60 to be fucked by my purchase and then disrespected on top of it. Fuck that.

I too am biased towards great games... but we clearly have different definitions on what is a great and what is a shitty game. A shitty game to me is something that isn't fun. Crysis 2 was fun, therefore i dont think it was a shitty game.

I also dont feel disrespected when playing C2. Maybe its because I dont have a super high end rig, just my i5 750 and GTX460. The game played almost maxed at a solid 30fps and looked pretty damn good. It may be "consolised" in the sense it didn't release with super-duper high system killing graphics, but you can't deny that it was graphically well optimised for PC.

I didn't feel disrespected by the level design, I thought overall the level design was good, a departure from C1, but that doesn't make it bad. If you were expecting C1 level design I can see how you might be disappointed.

I didn't feel disrespected by the controls and FOV. I simply googled Crysis 2 fov and immediately found the console command required to change it to what I wanted.
 
water and Tessellation

DirectX 9 + high resolution textures




DirectX 11 + High Resolution Textures

 
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It still looks like nothiong special. I'm glad I'm waiting to pick up a used copy.
 
Honestly, I do feel for game devs these days because they often have suits leaning on them to push content out the door as fast as humanly possible with little regard for how finished a product may be. They're sort of in a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation.

It's big business and greed plus the bottom line are somewhat fucking things up.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/adv...tigating-team-bondi-workers-rights-complaints

http://www.develop-online.net/news/38113/Team-Bondi-interrogated-The-list-of-accusations
 
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....there simply isn't a logical reason why anyone who bought this game should feel "fucked" for spending $60 on the game.

Please reread your posts.

Why are you so hell bent on telling people how they should feel after spending $60 of their hard earned money? Seriously, if someone spent THEIR money on the game, they have the right to feel how they want...don't they?

And denying that [H] hates Crysis 2 is even more foolish. They hate the game from top to bottom.

Please, do not speak for us. Thanks.

Want to hear something REALLY, REALLY....REALLLY sad?


I swear to god, this is how the whole thing started...


Kyle says "want to take some screenshots?"


That's it. No conspiracy. No ulterior motives. Nothing sinister...he just asked me to take some before and after screenshots. What you see in the article is EXACTLY what happened as we tried getting through a simple patch process. :(
 
I have surfed this forum for years and have come to the conclusion that I will not be coming back. Nor will I tell friends and family to do so. Kyle's lack of professionalism and foul language is a huge turnoff to me. Kyle claims that he is not a journalist nor a game reviewer, but "just a PC gamer with a bully pulpit.The reality is a little different sir. You have many people who rely on your site to make informed and accurate decisions about hardware and gaming purchases. Mnay times your percieved credibility will sway me to buy a new piece of hardware or purchase a game. If that is not the function of a reviewer or journalistic site then what is? In addition it seems to me that you ally yourself with players in the industry such as AMD for your BIG TEXAS EVENT.;) Would a company like AMD affiliate itself with a "pc gamer with a bully pulpit." Kyle, it's time you recognize your responsibilities and position of influence. You can start with conducting yourself a little more professionally........PLEASE CANCEL MY ACCOUNT I'M HEADING OVER TO ANANDTECH.:)
 
Please reread your posts.

Why are you so hell bent on telling people how they should feel after spending $60 of their hard earned money? Seriously, if someone spent THEIR money on the game, they have the right to feel how they want...don't they?

There was a demo and you yourself posted weeks before the game was released that it was DX 9 only and then there was all of the rumbling about how crappy the demo was. I'm not trying to say how anyone should feel about spending their money I'm pointing out that there was PLENTY of information and a demo which should have been enough not to spend the $60 in the first place.

Please, do not speak for us. Thanks.

I'm not speaking for you, I'm simply repeating what [H] staff has said. How many times has Kyle called the game shit? Did you not give this update an "X FAIL" rating? You hate the game, there are many thousands of words written by [H] staff on this subject that beyond any doubt prove this. I can find post after post after post by [H] staff denouncing this game vehemently. If someone were to ask me what I thought [H] thought of Crysis 2 on the PC I would tell then that they hate it. Honestly, how could any rational person come to ANY other conclusion?
 
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I played the game for a couple of hours (what a fucking slog) and have not bothered with this pile of shit since. Not even remotely bothered about their useless patches by the sound of it.

Fantastic summing up!
 
Hmm... well, it looks like the update went fine for those of us who have the Steam version. It auto-updated to the current version fine, and I installed the patches in moments without issue.

The game now looks closer to the first game, though personally I still think the first looks better ( HATE the huge guns!). But it's still just not that exceptional of a game. I don't think it's bad... I enjoyed it enough to play it through once... but even if I can accept that Crytek tried to go a different direction with the franchise and the experiment mostly failed, these features still should have been there on day one.

I can only hope Crytek listens to its fans and gets back on track with the sequel or their next property.
 
The first game had an amazingly fun physics system that Crysis 2 lacks. You could toss a grenade into a building and watch it explode differently every time. You could drive cars through houses, then get out and admire your work.

Not in Crysis 2 :(

Crysis 2 went at least 1 step backwards for every step it went forwards.

And to Kyle and Steve, don't even listen to Heatlesssun, for as long as I can remember he's been posting the stupidest shit I've ever read. I skip over his posts for the most part now.

I LOVE Hardocp because you guys actually have an opinion and you aren't scared of pissing people off.
 
I don't think any of the people that didn't cry about the non-DX11 release and bought it on Steam anyway had any real problems with the patch or the update packages. All of the whining about how difficult it was to get set up seems like an exception to the rule. Sure, it was promised that it would ship that way (and that was a huge let down), but its pretty funny to watch all of the people that bitched that it didn't ship with DX11 and higher-res textures now bitch and moan that their systems can't even max it out at the resolution they want to play at with a framerate that they find acceptable.

I knew that [H]'s review of this was going to be a bad one, but I was also hoping for some VRAM usage measurements and framerates. You know, now that you actually have a game beside Metro 2033 that will push your bench systems.

Crytek NEVER promised that Crysis 2 would have DX11 support. Some people just assumed that it would and when it didn't, they bitched that Crytek lied...

As for the rest, pretty much agreed on all counts. Now even installing the patches is a reason for bitching and moaning (when in reality it's not difficult at all, it's just double click, install, close...3 times...on the retail version, Steam version should be even easier, with almost no input from the user), but I guess that's way too difficult for some people...
 
While I agree with you in reality most people tend to have biases when it comes to matters they care about.

I do give credit to the [H] staff in that they don't try to cover their biases and it's clear generally where they stand. It's hard to construe "X FAIL" as anything other than the highest degree of negative bias.

Well, it's obvious some people in here just follow what others say. They have no opinion, they just choose to agree with someone else's opinion. This thread and even the review have that clear intent, much like Kyle's post when Crysis 2 was released, was what increased the uproar over Crysis 2. People that didn't even thought of buying the game in the first place chimed in agreeing with Kyle that the game sucked, without even trying it.

"Sheep" comes to mind, but so be it.
 
Would you be happy if the texture resolutions were 4096x4096 instead of 2048x2048. Then the patch would probably be twice if not three times the size and every graphic card would choke. Would that be ok?

These changes aren't holy fucking shit amazing since the base game already looked pretty good. Increasing the resolution on the textures isn't going to work wonders on a game that already had high resolution textures. In a game like Oblivion it works wonders since the base resolution on the textures is quite low.

In that case, the bitching and moaning about how with the new patches Crysis 2 can no longer be run @ 2560x1600 everything maxed and 60 fps would increase in volume. I'm imagining pitch forks and torches towards Crytek's HQ :rolleyes:

First it's "OMG!11!!! Crysis 2 is teh FA1L! No high res textures!!!!"
Crytek: "Ok, here are the high res textures"
Reaction: "Crytek FA1L!!!1! Now the game runs like sh1t" or "They're not high-res enough"

The moral of the story here folks is that Crytek can't win. It's damned if you do and damned if you don't.

It's funny though. Crytek is the ONLY...let me say it again ONLY developer that for ALL their games created entirely new engines. With all of them pushing towards a new graphics paradigm in both PC Gaming and now console gaming as well. A few years ago, in this very own site, this was a reason to put Crytek (or any other company that did it) on a pedestal. Nowadays...that's long lost.
 
Crytek should've just apologised for not releasing it with DX11 and high res textures etc and left it at that and then learn from their mistake.
Would've been a lot less damage that way.
 
It's funny though. Crytek is the ONLY...let me say it again ONLY developer that for ALL their games created entirely new engines. With all of them pushing towards a new graphics paradigm in both PC Gaming and now console gaming as well. A few years ago, in this very own site, this was a reason to put Crytek (or any other company that did it) on a pedestal. Nowadays...that's long lost.

DICE just joined that club. The Frostbite engines were made for the BF series. Each game was on a different version. FB3 being the latest for BF3.
The difference is Frostbite 3 went to a level beyond Frostbite 2, while CryEngine 3 took a step back from CE2.
 
DICE just joined that club. The Frostbite engines were made for the BF series. Each game was on a different version. FB3 being the latest for BF3.
The difference is Frostbite 3 went to a level beyond Frostbite 2, while CryEngine 3 took a step back from CE2.

Not really. BF1942 and BF2 both used an engine originally developed by another company. For BF2 specifically it was updated, when DICE bought Refraction Games and their engine Refractor.

Also, Frostbite 3.0 doesn't exist. BF3 uses Frostbite 2.0,
 
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