» Thu Mar 07, 2013 5:36 pm If you have friended "Frank N Stein" on Facebook, I created an album on there named "Crysis 3 Campaign" and it has several hundred screenshots taken during my campaign journey. Many gaps between game play and "oh yeah I need to take some screenshots and not just sit here with my jaw open drooling while trying to stay alive". I would post some here, but how do you chooose? Go friend Frank N Stein on FB and you can see them all. I am not done w/the campaign yet, but as I progress I will update those images.
I am sure everyone has their varying opinions and experiences with this game thus far. I know tech heads can come in and show places where this or that was wrong or had low resolution bitmaps or reused from previous games, etc - nitpicky crap that takes away from the overall experience IMO - my view is simply one from a fan of FPS games that loves to go through a visually appealing and great game play campaign. I am not here to pick apart any technicalities or storyline flaws.
This is simply my take and it is slightly skewed because I have been a huge fan of Crysis since the first game brought my PC to its knees when I was running 8800 GTX's in SLI, I vowed I would be as prepared as possible from that point forward to have the power at my disposal to experience the graphical bliss only Crytek seems to be able to deliver since that game release. Crysis 2 I was ready with 3x GTX 580 3GB cards and a 990X CPU in a massively water cooled and detailed out rig named Frank N SteinPC. This year was no exception, Frank got upgraded again on hardware already, now just waiting on the rest of the water blocks and custom case to do this years upgrade and massive rig build out. Point is, we were ready for this game to be released in just raw power, I have had this game on back order at BB since last July.
Frank N Stein PC
- Core i7 3930k @ 4.3Ghz (slight OC)
- Asus Rampage IV Extreme X79 MB
- EK RE4 Waterblocks
- Watercool Heatkiller CPU v3 CPU water block
- Alphacool UT60 3x120 Radiator
- AlphaCool Repack Dual D5 5.25 Bay Pump/Reservoir
- G.Skill RipJaws 8x4GB (32GB) DDR3 Quad Channel 1866Mhz
- EVGA GTX 680 4096MB GPU x 3 in 3WAY SLI
- Asus Phobeus Xonar Sound Card
- Corsair Force GT 120GB SSD x2 in RAID 0 BOOT
- Patriot Pyro SE 120GB SSD x2 Programs
- WD Caviar Black 1.5TB & 2TB SATA III HDD
- LEPR G1600 1600W PSU
- Razer Tiamat 7.1 Headphones
- Razer Nostromos keypad
- Razer Naga Molten Edition 5,600 DPI Laser mouse
- Logitech G19 Keyboard
- Klipsch HD500 5,1 Speakers
- Yamaha RX-567 Receiver
- 3x Asus 24" 60hz 1920x1080 3ms gtg
- 1x Asus 27" 144Hz 1920x1080 2ms gtg 3D monitor
- Nvidia 3D VISION 2 Kit w/v2 Glasses
- Buttkicker Gamer connected to a Herman Miller Aeron Large
PERFORMANCE
First off I had to go max out the settings as I built Frank to say “yeah, I’ll take that and that and that – just max me out, I can handle it”. As pretentious as Frank can be, he really could handle it. Though we did dip into the 20-30FPS ranges at times, the game never felt that it was running that low of FPS. I honestly think the game itself needs some optimization still as well as Nvidia kicking in some better and more optimized drivers for SLI configurations - but hey this was day 1 of the release, so I am not complaining. I saw that cards 2&3 maxed out with RAM usage on those 4GB GPU’s, but GPU 1 was sitting >2GB. Where the GPU processor usage was maxed on card 1 basically, card 2 was sitting between 1 & 3 in usage, card 3 was running about ? speed most of the times. This means that none of the cards were operating in a balanced state where all were taking on equal shares of the load, it was rather strange to see how the drivers ran this game compared to others. Crysis 2 when playing runs basically all three cards equal/balanced in GPU use and RAM use.
Visually the game remained smooth for me through most of the campaign and I have yet to finish the campaign, but what I have so far has been amazingly fun. I spent about 10+ hours playing it yesterday, but I am sure there are many places where I ran through the same scene multiple times which ate into that total game play time because I kept dying due to key mapping issues which I will get at later – but overall the games performance was smooth and fun.
3D the game was really nice. The warning comes up an says there is a halo around the weapon, if there was it certainly wasn’t enough for me to notice and go "wow that svcks". It was amazing IMO to play it in 3D, the depth, clarity, and immersive game play was just enhanced by the fact I was able to do it in 3D. Frank ran it flawlessly in 3D and I actually prefer it in 3D over regular style, aiming was so much easier, and it drew me into the monitor - at times I would find myself face burried in the screen almost trying to see around corners. I literally got lost in the game and was "in" the game as opposed to just playing it. In 3D I can say it was simply impressive and had me at hello!
VISUALS
Yeah – the one thing Crytek can do better than any game MFG out there atm IMO is visuals. They may have tried to optimize for the consoles because that is a much more lucrative market, but thankfully they are one company that still loves its PC base and knows our GPU’s are years ahead in power over the consoles. So they certainly tried to cater to the PC gamers as well. They did yet another amazing job this go round and I believe they will continue to tweak like they did the previous titles until it runs like it should. Though Crysis 2 was a bit more “bright” and cartoony in the sense of the aliens and the environment, it was like they were trying for the bright cartoony colors of Halo 3 and beyond and mix it with the detail that made them famous in Cryisis 1 and really didn't hit the "look" I prefered, but still appreciated. I think they did MUCH better in the tones, colors, and environment feel this time around in Crysis 3. I totally love how this game feels and looks.
Yes, cloth is still shiny at times, but most of the time you are wet so you have to take that into account. When banners are blowing in the breeze and they are not wet, they are not shiny either. So many could tear at it one way or another, however set it up against anything else out there right now for FPS games, and this game will win hands down IMO on visuals and realism. If Crytek continues, they are probably going to be the first company that develops as close to cinematic quality graphics above all others out there if they stay the current course. The depth of detail is amazing in some places like when Psycho gets in your face or is in the dark and shines the light on himself, whiskers, defects in the skin, lighting, and everything was like OMG this is CGI? It’s almost realistic at times on the detail, then you see a purple & pink alien and realize you’re in a game. I have to say though, who is to say if purple and pink aliens don’t exist in those exact tones? For all we know those do look real. Either way, those aliens are some mean MF once they wake up the Alpha Seth.
Crytek continues to kick ass on water and plants as well. MANY scenes with water in them and in various shades, clarity, movement, etc and every one of those scenes are beautifully done. Plants are amazingly detailed if your just cruising by enjoying the eye candy. I am sure if a botanist were to stop, zoom in on a leaf they could be nitpicky, however as a gamer, I have to say it’s awesome to hear the leaves and the grass brush past my suit and how they look as they do. I can duck in the grass or foliage and hide and it works, etc. I love the greenery in this game its simply amazing.
Destructible environments are something else they do well. I found myself crouching behind a log hoping to recharge my suit levels to run the hell out of the situation I was in – the Seth was blowing the cover away from me, I turned and the log had chunks out of it and was being blown apart as I was. So as the weapons discharge, the landscape and the environment changed. Trees fell, rocks got chipped away, holes would appear in walls and you could see through them, etc. All I can say is the games are evolving and Crytek is pushing the limits on these things. Crytek is still pushing DX11 to see how far they can go with it and so far they are doing a great job.
At times I would experience flickering and image maps being redrawn or something in front of me, mainly within the grass scenes. It would go light, then add in the shadows, etc, like it was trying to render the scene and having a hell of a time doing it - but never did I experience a slowness in game play even at these times. It was just visually places where the game wasnt optimized or the drivers where having issues or both. Frank's GPU RAM of 4GB per GPU was maxed out as well most of the time. I can only imagine what a standard 2GB GPU would have done with this game. I was glad I had the 4GB versions of the GTX 680's seeing how Nvidia's drivers were using them - at least the game ran, Nvidia just has some work to do to eliminate the tearing and the flickering I got in places I would assume. A new set of drivers hopefully will fix this when they address the remaining optimizations they need to do to the drivers.
DRAWBACKS
As with most games on release day there are bugs. This is one thing that caused me to take longer in the campaign than I probably would or should have. This was due to a glitch that would not allow you to custom map the “USE” button of “F” to something like Mele. I always map Mele to F, it’s on my Razer Nostromos, not the V key they wanted me to use. However the Nostromos does not have the V key on it native (unless I go custom map the devices keys). This means I had to use the Crysis default layout on key placements, totally changing how I play. There are places where you have to hack a sentry gun or a door entry or a mine field. Well to “hack” you have to have the visor open and then hit the F key, if you remap it, it still requires the F key no matter what is assigned to F. The action is still performed in the sense it says you hacked it, however it does not do what it should once hacked. The only way to get past it was to go back and set keys to default layout and play the game this way.
Nvidia really needs to optimize how this game is rendered in SLI and 3WAY SLI. With three GTX 689 4G cards I should be ripping through this without incident. The fact that a single GPU can run this game as well or about 95% as well as 3WAY SLI tells me that Nvidia needs to get their drivers optimized better to take advantage of the power being brought to the table. RAM usage is strange currently in SLI and GPU percentage usage also isn’t balanced. So there are times the game will “slow down” but remained smooth. The strange thing was at the times it was hitting <30FPS most of the time it was smooth still. There were times I was >50 FPS and it would like go into slo-mo for about ? a second like the SSD was trying to catch up or something, it was weird, but otherwise a great game experience.
RATING
I cannot give anything but love to Crytek for releasing a well-balanced game, probably the least amount of errors in any game I have yet to experience day 1 of its release. Again, others perceptions, experiences, thoughts, appreciations, and results will vary - this is simply my point of view.
I held a steady 60.1 FPS in 3D, rarely did it ever bounce up or down from there. In regular I was all over the board in terms of FPS, so the drivers still have a way to go before they are settled down.
- Visuals: 9.5
- Performance: 7.5
- Game Play: 9
- Sound: 9.5
Well worth the money and the time to experience for both the newbie and the hard core long term Crysis fan, this game is a must have! I will be tearing up this campaign many times through.
You can find Frank on YouTube as well: http://www.youtube.com/user/FrankNSteinPC?feature=mhee
