Stolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1

By Shamus Posted Friday May 22, 2009

Filed under: Column 20 comments

Your demands for more comics about the demo for a two-year old game have at last been answered.

I aim to please.

 


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20 thoughts on “Stolen Pixels #92: Crysis Demo, Part 1

  1. food4worms says:

    “They should put these adds in Commander Keen because that’s someone who needs to upgrade”. Out my nose. ‘Nuf said.

  2. SolkaTruesilver says:

    Often, I notice that you cannot skip those introduction in the 1st time you enter the game. The next times, it’s (usualy) fine.

    But Titan Quest requires me to hammer both my spacebar and my escape switch…

  3. Broc says:

    Can’t help but agree on this! Crysis takes a loooong time to start. Loading levels is also long.

    Can’t wait to find out if you liked the game. I know you start with a negative bias (hehe) but still this will be fun to read!

  4. Angie says:

    ROFL! I’ve never played Crysis (or its demo) but this made me laugh anyway. :) You really have to wonder what some people in this industry are thinking…. [wry smile]

    A particularly good point about the stupidity of advertising a processor in a game which requires that processor. o_O Wow, great use of marketing budget!

    Angie

  5. Ben says:

    It’s no excuse at all, but you can deal with this issue. Pretty much any game with that type of intro also has a method to disable them entirely, either with a command-line switch of by removing the relevant files. In Crysis, it’s by removing the files:

    http://www.overclock.net/pc-games/252507-how-remove-crysis-intro-screens.html

    Like I said, no excuse at all. There should be a checkbox to achieve the same thing, but at least you can do something about it.

  6. Martin says:

    Interesting. I always assumed the nVidia splash would only show up if you had a nVidia card.

    Looking back, how naive of me!

    The game sucks anyway. I borrowed my dad’s copy, played for about an hour, and got rid of it. Completely un-fun. Your graphics vs gameplay cartoon is especially appropriate in this circumstance.

  7. JKjoker says:

    Shamus, you are years too late

    there are a lot more things to kick Crysis around for …

  8. Yar Kramer says:

    *Francis voice* I hate splash screens.

    I was tricked into buying EA’s version of Tetris for my cell phone. I didn’t realize it was made by EA until I started playing it and got hit by their unskippable splash screen. :(

    (Seriously, by the time they’re done with the frelling splash screens, I’ve lost interest in playing.)

  9. Magnus says:

    I thought Intel didn’t have to advertise, because they spent their money bribing people to only stock their chips…

    I expect games may follow the way of the DVD film, and have irritating “do not pirate” unskippables soon enough.

    Makes me want to bash my head into my desk.

  10. smIsle says:

    @Magnus

    I totally agree – when did the FBI warning ever stop anyone from making a copy of a good VHS?

    also, When did the opening advertisements get so boring? I remember when most companies actually *tried* to make them awesome. Now it’s just stickers plastered on the screen. bleh.

  11. wildweasel says:

    That’s not even the worst of it – after all the ads, and when you start a new game, it forces you to watch a minute-and-a-half long introduction movie that doesn’t even have bearing on the plot, it’s just demonstrating all the different modes of your awesome suit. Something that would have probably been better demonstrated in an interactive tutorial.

    Oh, and I hope “Hardeware Minded” doesn’t mind me linking to my Blaugh again for an article that I don’t recall linking here before:

    http://weaselsblaugh.blogspot.com/2008/08/requirements-not-met-crysis.html

  12. Ell Jay says:

    Reminds me of my experience playing Battle for Middle-Earth.

  13. Joe Cool says:

    I have always hated EA for the plain and simple reason that you cannot skip the splash screens on any game they’ve ever made. Ever. And I hate it.

    Are they really so afraid that I might not know who made the game I’m playing? Or do they want to remind me who to hate for not letting me skip the splash screens.

    Honestly, they should put their competitor’s logos in the splash screens, because maybe then they’ll direct my ire elsewhere.

  14. Mentalepsy says:

    I played the demo, but I wasn’t impressed. It was basically just like any other generic shooter with the cheat codes turned on.

  15. Blackbird71 says:

    @Joe Cool (13)

    Hmm… maybe EA really didn’t make the game, and some other company is one step ahead of you…

  16. Mari says:

    @Magnus – Heaven forfend they should insert that Casablanca “Bogie Hates Ilsa Because She Pirates” ad into games, too. They’ve single-handedly ruined my favorite movie for me with that stupid ad. I think about half the movies I’ve picked up lately have it.

  17. Nick says:

    Yeah, the Battlefield series (under EA, of course) always had unskippable screens, EXCEPT the intro. Sometimes, when I feel like watching it, I spam the escape key out of habit, and when the logo fades I find I skipped the one thing I wanted…

    Usually you can just delete the offending files. Glad they don’t content-check those puppies.

  18. floopyboo says:

    You should try playing TS2 some time.

  19. toasty says:

    I never understood why people liked crysis. I bought it, and ya, it had good graphics (not that I could run them on high or anything…) but I felt that it was rather boring. Half-Life 2 is still the best shooter on PC ever IMO.

  20. Ranneko says:

    @toasty Crysis, especially in the first half of the game has a quite different style available to the player than HL2 did. I really enjoy it when I can manage to get an “invisible stalker” approach going. It’s exactly how I played through Fallout 3. Crysis allowed the same kind of play, which you never really got much of in HL2.

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