11 Games That Will Punish Your PC

Posted 10/24/2007 at 1:55pm | by Will Smith

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Crysis

Physics phun

There’s not much more that we can say about Crysis that hasn’t already been said. Crysis was the first DirectX 10 game we saw that truly rocked us, and while it won’t be the first DirectX 10 game to ship, it will definitely set the standard for both graphical goodness and environment interaction.

The thing about Crysis is that it’s not just another pretty face. The game’s nanosuit lets you play however you want—use stealth, brute force, amazing aim, or a combination of all three. The weapons are customizable: You can add scopes, stabilizers, and silencers to the arsenal that’s available.

We’ve played precious little of Crysis so far, but the time we’ve spent has convinced us that it’s a worthy successor to Far Cry.

Cevat Yerli Dishes About Crysis

We sat down with Cevat Yerli, executive producer and director of Crysis to talk tech—specifically about the most beautiful game we’ve ever seen. Here’s our exclusive chat with Yerli; we talk about DirectX 10, the problem with hardware physics, and shooting trees.

Maximum PC: Will there be obvious visual or performance differences for people running Crysis in DirectX 10 mode vs. DirectX 9 mode? Can you describe some of the differences people who’ve upgraded to Vista and DirectX 10 can expect to enjoy?

Yerli: The DirectX 9 version of Crysis will be the one for the bulk of current-generation PC gamers. It will feature the maximum fidelity you can achieve with DirectX 9 standards, alongside high dynamic range rendering, advanced skin and vegetation shaders, soft shadows, and more. In DirectX 10, however, you will experience a quality of Crysis that is deeper in lights and shadows and atmospherics and has a full-motion gameplay experience.

MPC: CryENGINE2 in general, and Crysis in particular, obviously utilizes physics-based gameplay. It’s equally obvious that physics requires lots of processing horsepower. Where will the engine and the game look to get those processor cycles? What will be the best solution for gamers: A multicore CPU, a multiple-GPU rig with graphics running on one GPU and physics running on the other, or a dedicated physics processor?

Yerli: We are not supporting GPU or dedicated physics processors for a variety of reasons. The main one is that we did not want to change the core gameplay physics for our min-spec configurations. We have been optimizing our dynamics code for many years now, so it can run robust and as optimally as it can on CPUs of previous generations while also taking advantage of newer multicore architectures. So you are best equipped with a quad core (if you have the budget), but Crysis will do great on dual-core configurations as well.

MPC: As the game nears its release date, has the development team found it necessary to scale back any features in order to obtain reasonable performance on midrange hardware, with midrange being defined as an Intel Core Duo E6600 CPU (or AMD equivalent), 2GB of memory, and either a Radeon HD 2900 XT with 512MB of memory or a GeForce 8800 GTS with 640MB of memory.

Yerli: If that’s midrange for you, then not at all! This spec is well within our plans. Most important to us is that we scale Crysis from a three-year-old configuration (by release date) to a current and next-gen configuration and take maximum performance from the available hardware. Our benchmark has been to compete for various generations of hardware alongside the generations of games shipped around them. For example, our min spec is competing with Far Cry, and that’s over three-and-a-half years old.

MPC: Will Crysis be made available on Steam or another digital distribution source? Or will it follow the more traditional model of boxed-copy sales only?
Yerli: We are going to be available for digital distribution through the EA Link Service. We see only benefits in this model; it’s our goal to serve the customer, and giving them choices is a great way to do that.

MPC: How many execution cores will the game support? What will you use the different cores for?

Yerli: Our multicore implementations encompass physics, AI, game logic, and particles and are balanced over two or four cores to take next-generational advantage. Of course, we also run on single-core highly optimized.

MPC: How will gameplay be affected by multicore? Will there be any noticeable differences for people with multicore systems, or just better performance?

Yerli: Nope, smoother and higher frame rates in simulation is the key here for us.

MPC: Will players be able to play Crysis in DirectX 10 mode on high-end hardware at high resolutions (1600x1200 or higher) using current-gen hardware (GeForce 8800 GTS and up, or Radeon 2900 series boards)?

Yerli: I believe in maximum settings you will run at 1280 resolutions, but to run even higher you need a better configuration. However, that is because we feature out-of-the-box future-proof technology and settings that will keep Crysis state-of-the-art looking even for the next next-generation hardware, allowing the PC gamer to take advantage of evolution!

MPC: Have you ever actually tried to shoot down a real tree? It’s much harder than you guys make it look in the game!

Yerli: Hee hee, did you ever run into a camp and fight alone for survival? It’s much harder in real life. :) Getting your point though! :)