Crysis screenshot header image
News

Crysis is 9 years old and still looks really beautiful

56 Comments

In November 13th, Electronic Arts released Crytek’s masterpiece, Crysis. Powered by CryEngine 2, Crysis featured unparalleled visuals and environmental interactivity. Players could bend the grass, cut down tress and destroy a lot of buildings. And even to this date, Crysis looks surprisingly great.

Let’s overlook the fact that the game’s DX10 version was not really that different from its DX9 one, despite being advertised as something that would ‘wow’ gamers. To put it simple; its DX10 path was simply a PR gimmick and nothing more. After all, all of the DX10 features were unlocked in DX9 via various cvar tweaks.

It’s really pretty impressive for a 9-year old title to look as good as Crysis.

Those interested can go ahead and download this Texture Pack for Crysis. This pack features new textures, right out of the CryEngine 3.5.8, therefore we strongly suggest giving them a go.

We also suggest using the POM with AF mod for Crysis in order to enable Parallax Occlusion Mapping with Anisotropic Filtering. All you have to do is follow this guide:

  • Download this file -> http://www.cryengine.com/community/download/file.php?id=97888
  • Copy zz_GlobalAmbientLighting_pom_Af.pak to Crysis\Game
  • Force anisotropic filtering in your graphics card control panel.

Below you can find some modded screenshots, showcasing what Crysis can look today with mods.

Enjoy!

14169165266_1927fcc20c_o14005656839_c46af1f008_o
Rubber-De-Flubber


jim2point0


Spuzaw (do note that these are images created with the CryEngine Editor and not how Crysis currently looks with mods

56 thoughts on “Crysis is 9 years old and still looks really beautiful”

    2. I unlike many liked all 3 (4) games and I’m sad series died. 3rd game was a bit sad because it was much shorter than other 2 games.

      Reply

  3. A phenomenal game came once in a decade, witcher 3 easily could have earn this title in kind of visualilty if not they’ve lean towards the consoles (still a great game though)

    Reply

    1. Yeap, The Witcher 3 could’ve been a huge achievement graphically but CDPR needed to go mainstream hence the downscaled graphics. The game underneath is pretty good but nothing groundbreaking IMHO.

      Reply

      1. The groundbreaking part is how a smallish independent studio completely did a bigger and better open world game than the AAA’s. The sheer amount of content at the level of quality that Witcher 3 has is what’s groundbreaking.

        Reply

          2. Be that as it may but you can’t seriously claim that TW3’s open world is the best open world game ever or the best thing since sliced bread. TW3 is not even an open world game to begin with not to mention the fact that it is lifeless after you’ve completed the main quest. It’s as if it resets to its original state. But I guess CDPR in the eys of its zealots can do no wrong. Hell The Witcher (2007) was a way better game than both 2 and 3 combined.

          3. Whereas, in the eyes of the Cult of Rockstar, Rockstar [& Take-Two] can do no wrong, & Grand Theft Auto is the most glorious creation mankind has ever aspired to. Your point being?

            I ascribe to neither ideology, for the record, I just refuse to see any GTA entry beyond San Andreas as anything other than inferior. Also, that’s really not saying that much, considering how Witcher 2 is arguably the worst entry in the trilogy, although, regardless, agreed.

            “Be that as it may but you can’t seriously claim that TW3’s open world is the best open world game ever or the best thing since sliced bread.”

            Nope, but it’s definitely a must-play trilogy, something which GTAV is really just not in my book. As for the open-world aspect, eh. Honestly, only a handful of IP’s can even compare to a GTA-grade open world anyway, & for that matter, Crysis isn’t one of them either.

            Witcher 3 is more of a truly massive hub, which in turn, in a way, constitutes a massive, “open” world. Crysis likewise has that “pick a direction, get into some trouble” thing, but it also has invisible walls, etc. etc. etc. so, in the strictest sense of the definition, neither IP is exactly open-world, but if we ascribed to that particularly stringent definition, hardly anything would actually qualify as “open world”, even counting GTA.

          4. Touche. I’m not a Rockstar cultist either, damn San Andreas burned my old GPU back in 2007. Haven’t played GTAIV either. But judging only an open world aspect, GTA V is clearly superiour to TW3. Don’t get me wrong about TW3, back in 2014 when that E3 footage hit I thought this game would wow me and be a return to its roots of sorts, I was expecting TW1 level of detail, story, decision making, choice&consequence system in a huge open world with truly next-gen graphics. Needless to say CDPR in my eye did not deliver on all of those fronts.

            You can get close to E3 2014 lighting (not even counting VGX 2013 graphics which is as the experts say is beyond th realm of possibility) with STLM, the latest iteration (version 2.3) which is not out yet is the best in that regard. But the story, “lather,rinse,repeat” contract and question mark formula – you just can’t make it interesting. Not to mention the lamest villain, a lesbo chick destroyng global winter with a sword, WTF??! TW3 in my opinion turned out a very consolized game for lack of a better word. Kids that want to see boobs in their games will of course worship it no matter what arguments you use to counter. And judging strictly an open world aspect of it, it’s nowhere near GTA V.

            Here’s to hoping that Kingdom Come Deliverance turns out a great game.

          5. For the record; the CDPR Sycophants League saved them considerable levels of grief in regards to [both] Witcher [2 &] 3 – I agree with you there completely, & personally, I continue find it especially irritating how they didn’t even make the demo’d lighting system available solely on the PC version, if nothing else even (especially considering what STLM, as you mentioned, has/is achieving, even as we speak), & there are a few others around here that still grumble about the Witcher 3’s visual downgrades as well (though I’m not fully aware of how many people truly realise exactly how consolised Witcher 2 really was).

            Also, I’ve said this before, & I stand by it; the moment an IP goes multi-platform &/or ceases to be PC-first, it ends up dropping in quality – either intentionally, or just as a by-product of the different design decisions, methods, approaches, etc. used, which unfortunately makes Witcher merely the latest example in a long, long line of IP’s to have suffered this ridiculous fate. In this particular occasion, I’m not sure if this is a result of Microsoft &/or Sony pressure, CDPR merely not wanting to go the extra mile (read: sheer utter laziness), &/or just bad design decision byproducts (as they themselves claim, though I highly doubt this), but regardless the cause & results both are sadly, indisputable.

            In regards to the open-world, I agree, though like I said, very few IP’s compare to GTA in terms of open-world, Witcher not amongst them.

            Content-wise, to a degree, I can agree that they didn’t fully deliver in comparison to Witcher OG (here’s another example; ModKit is a f*cking joke compared to REDKit, something which even the GOTY didn’t change, unfortunately), & it does have some seriously major irritations in comparison to Witcher OG (since, in my opinion, Witcher 2 is the worst of the 3) making it, as a result, without a doubt, both a superior, & an inferior experience in comparison to its predecessors (needless to say, it depends on the predecessor in question).

            On its own, however, it still manages to be an excellent game, in its own way (in some ways, it even improves on both its predecessors, in my opinion), which I suppose speaks volumes of just how great Witcher OG was, that even inferior sequels to it can still be so highly [over-]praised.

  4. Perhaps for its 10th anniversary, Crytek will finally grace us with a full-power remaster featuring the latest & greatest of CryEngine V? Not that I’m holding my breath over it personally, though, unfortunately…..

    In the meantime, however;
    Hello there, what a fascinating facelift, which even includes its own new water textures! Excellent 😀

    Has anyone had the chance to try this out alongside BlackFire’s Ultimate &/or Natural Lighting Mod yet, btw? Are they compatible?

    Also, how does this compare to the Crysis Expanded + Chicken Texture + Starwaster Shaders collection? Visually, at least, since obviously this doesn’t feature Crysis Expanded’s extra content. (What? I’m not lazy, I’m traveling! >.>)

    P.S. If this temps anyone into [re-]playing the entire trilogy through, MaldoHD + BlackFire 2 is still the ultimate combo pack for Crysis 2 as far as I’m aware.

    Reply

    1. or they will announce crysis 4 where the ultra graphics will be like the ones that guy showed us some weeks ago from tech demo and be played on 4k max settings only on gtx 1180 core i7 7800k(cannonlake) or better!!!! And it will be a open world game like the first crysis! I realy hope they make this annoucment on November 13 2017!!!

      Reply

    1. Why? They are trying to stop me for so manyy years. But now i fianly mutated into a monster and beat them a lot. I put mutagen into my body!

      Reply

          1. “More polished”? So they ran better, great! So what.

            Crysis 2 was literally Call of Duty: Crysis, & Crysis 3 was “uh, well, we f*cked up, so….. let’s compromise, yeah? Here, have some overkill weaponry, & wanna-be open-world levels!”

            Ever since post-Warhead it’s literally been an endless stream of “f*ck you, we know better than you what you want, so we’re not going to give you what you think you want, we’re going to give you what we know you want, because we know better, so shut the f*ck up, look at DESE SHAINY GRAFEEX & give us your money already :D”

            “Oh, & if you’d be so kind as to forget that we promised you all those extra features that we didn’t actually implement, we’d very much appreciate that, since we’re too busy counting all these stacks of money we just made off of you.”

          2. the crysis still has so many bugs, i remember playing a while ago so many times thigns were just stuck somewhere, never seen any bugs in crysis 2

            also just because it’s different doesnt mean it’s bad

          3. Yeah, Crysis is buggy, but “polish” means a smoother experience, not necessarily a “better” one.

            I agree, Crysis 2 isn’t bad because it’s different, it’s bad because it’s not what it’s supposed to be; you just don’t take an open-world shooter & turn it into a linear corridor sh*tfest. If you really want to do that, then call it Crysis: New York, or, Crysis: Something Different, or, Crysis: Appealing to the Console Plebeians, or Crysis: Whatever-the-F*ck.

            If you want to make something different, a spinoff on the established Crysis IP &/or concept, then go right ahead & f*cking do it – as a spinoff, not as a main entry.

            It’s funny, I literally just had this conversation with someone last week, & once again I have to make this exact same point abundantly clear, so that there’s no confusion; different takes on something aren’t the root of the issue, here. Battlefield: Bad Company isn’t bad, it’s just different. It’s not “Battlefield Classic” per-se, but it does retain many elements of it – no, the problem is greedy assh*les tagging what should rightfully be tagged as spinoff productions as main entry sequel titles instead, because they believe they’ll sell more that way (not to mention, of course, the whole “mainstream the sh*t out of this because that way we’ll make more money” mindset that Crysis 2 features so well, though that’s a separate issue to this),

            In short; I have nothing against Call of Duty: Crysis per-se, I just find it abhorrent that Crytek had the balls to put the number “2” at the end of that, thus denominating it a f*cking sequel to Crysis, rather than the spinoff it ought to have been all because of their disgusting greed.

  9. Dude, when you land on the beach the 1st thing you see is a tortoise. So…. technically no, that is not a turtle from the game.

    /pedant award

    Reply

  10. I spent something like $400 on an XFX Alpha Dog 8800GT back in the day for this game. But even that wasn’t top notch enough. Still, it was a mind-blowing game, even if I was on medium haha

    Reply

  11. JOHN PAPADOPOULOS seems you dont have new stuff to write about so you dug up Crysis so that we can wallow in nostalgia. Good move man

    Reply

  14. Of course the final game didn’t look good as the E3 tech demo. Still it looked good enough to give a hard time to 99% of gaming PCs when it was released.

    Reply

  15. “Many gamers bought Vista”

    Ohohohohoho, oh, that’s funny. People – actually, gamers specifically, even, buying Vista.

    Also, since you’re doing this whole “hint hint” comparison thing to DX12 & Windows 10, I feel rather compelled point out the two major differences in this particular case; DX10 didn’t have console support, & DX10 didn’t have any real competition (read: Vulkan). The first being the primary reason why it never actually took off.

    Well, that, & DX11 coming along soon after, which needless to say, completely cut both it, & Vista’s legs right off.

    Reply

    1. “DX11 coming along soon after cut… Vista’s legs right off”

      API always will be improved by time. MS already work on next DX which is planned for mid 2017. New DX will drop support of old GPU such as Nvidia Kepler. Only GPU with feature level 12 or above will be supported. With fewer GPU to support new DX can be simpler and faster. But some gamers with older GPU such as GTX 660 or 780 will be unhappy
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/64758c6bcf48e2cbeccde09e4a90cbd25b152c07329dcd0976e78e9f1a511739.jpg
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae449db54d564a2a34d6ccfe14cee8362eb2b7882f842f171dfc0eaac52a721d.jpg

      Reply

      1. What?

        Aside from the fact that I can’t find a single source, article, image, or otherwise stating anything at all in regards to DX12.1, &/or DX13, you can’t seriously believe that?

        Engines are barely supporting DX12 as it is, most of them only partially, even (since, as you like to remind us so much, multiGPU is a DX12 feature), & developers have yet to properly learn how to use the new low-level API portion of it, so why in the f*ck would Microsoft throw a wrench into all that?

        Actually, another point; why in the f*ck would Microsoft make the Xbox One obsolete even before the Scorpio has even launched, & the Xbox One S six months after it launched?

        Also, Direct3D & OpenGL support isn’t a software-side thing. It’s not Microsoft’s or Khronos’ call who &/or what supports their newest API iterations, that’s Nvidia, AMD’s, Intel’s, etc. call. DX12.1 may or may not be Kepler-compatible, depending on how much has changed, whereas DX13 won’t be Kepler-compatible not because “Microsoft has decreed such”, but because it simply won’t be hardware-compatible.

        This is like saying Nvidia has performance issues with DX12 “because Microsoft told them to go f*ck themselves.” No. They have problems because their Pascal Architecture is sh*t with Async Compute, & they need to fix that – on a hardware-level.

        *Googles “Scorpio next DX”. Results; absolutely f*ck all*

        ??????????

        Reply

          1. Oh, that. If you mean the new Shader Model, then just say so from the beginning. The term “next DX” isn’t even an unofficial designation for that, ffs.

            So, this “DX update” (which isn’t even officially called DX12.1 yet), which is introducing a new shader language, is, by your logic, going to drop support for the Fermi-Kepler generations, based on this;

            “Currently targeting Feature Level 12.0+ hardware”, right?

            I mean, yes, obviously, support for Fermi is going down the toilet, & support for Kepler is going to end soon regardless, as they are aging architectures, but what that has to do with Microsoft’s new Shader model is completely beyond me, considering how Kepler is technically designated as “DX12-capable”, meaning it does, technically, fit the requirements for Shader Model 6.0 support, no?

            Like, I get where you’re coming from here, but “currently targeting Feature Level 12.0+ hardware” is vague enough that it could really mean either “all DX12.0-&-beyond-compatible hardware” or “all DX12.0-native hardware.”

          2. 1. “If you mean the new Shader Model, then just say so from the beginning”

            Every shader model is always base of new DirectX. MS choose some minimal requirements in hardware and mark them as “required in shader model X”. On that hardware base they create new version of DirectX. That they do in last 20 years

            2. “Feature Level 12.0+ hardware is vague enough that it could really mean either all DX12.0-compatible hardware”

            No. MS said that they will support hardware with “feature level 12+”, Old cards like Kepler support SDK DX12 but limited to hardware feature level 11. Only AMD GCN support feature level 12.0 and Nvidia Maxwell support feature level 12.1. They decided to drop support of Kepler to cleanup API. It’s good choice. If you want improve your API then you must focus on current hardware not that old one.

            3. “which isn’t even officially called DX12.1”

            It probably wont be called DX12.1. This is too big change for minor version upgrade. They can’t drop support of GTX 6xx, 7xx and still name new libraries “DX12.x”. If you want drop support of old hardware then you change major number. We will know new name after next Game Developers Conference in april 2017. New DirectX is planned to mid 2017 as part of Project Helix (new SDK), right before Xbox Scorpio

          3. – Except, Microsoft themselves have yet to say the actual words “new [major] Direct3D release”, or “next DX” or [insert]. So far all I’ve seen them say is “new Shader Model”, or, to be more specific; “Shader Model 6 is coming”. Sure, traditionally it means the obvious, but again, Microsoft has yet to state that themselves.

            – Seems more like they dropping support for Shader Model 5.1 & older, rather than Kepler specifically, but regardless, minor detail.

            – Which brings me back to my original post; DX13, as early as next year, when developers have barely even begun to adjust to DX12 yet? When DX12 isn’t even fully implemented in most engines yet? I get that they’re doing this whole “faster refresh cycle” with consoles, but even so, that’s extremely fast for a new major API release.

            Not to mention, while abandoning legacy GPU’s is great, there’s already more than enough API fragmentation going on without throwing in yet another major iteration of Direct3D for developers to have to deal with.

            Indeed, if this really is DX13, GDC 2017 will be host to quite a few interesting revelations, as for this new shader model to really be part of a new, major D3D API iteration, [DX13] will need to be about more than just Shader Model 6, of course.

  17. False, as always. Crysis didn’t have any visible DX10 features. All effects are present in DX9 and in fact the DX9 version runs better. You just have to unlock the “very high” settings via config file.

    The DX10 version of Crysis was PURELY a marketing tool for Vista.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *