This week 10 years ago one of the Greatest FPS of all time, Crysis was released

This week marks the week where 10 years ago Crysis was released.

This self-proclaimed Crysis fanboy actually pre-ordered Crysis (which I have never done for any game) and probably never will for any game. I actually got the pre-ordered box and the original box from 10 years ago.

I was totally blown away by the trailers and the in game screenshots that they released. The graphics totally awed everybody. I don't think I ever saw a jump in Graphics in a game ever since the original Unreal back in 1998 (which was very similar as it provided an open world sandbox type of game play). Not only was the graphics revolutionary but the gameplay was top notch. You had a vast environment where you could approach your targets and complete the missions the way you want. There was none of this hand holding, corridor, dumb downed gameplay that we see in today's games.

It's unfortunate that Crytek decided to dumb down it's sequels to fit the consoles and focused on the consoles first with Crysis 2 and then ported to the PC, it should have been the other way around. While they elevated the graphics in Crysis 3 but the gameplay was mediocre. I played Crysis 3 earlier this year and wasn't impressed by it's game play. That's saying a lot from the guy who pre-ordered the original and loved every minute of it along with it's follow up Crysis Warhead.

As for those who are wondering about 'Can it play Crysis'? There wouldn't be any Crysis talk without bringing up graphics cards. I remember on the forums people were overclocking and trying to exact every last juice our of their PC's to run Crysis. A $600 8800 GTX couldn't max this game out, that's like a GTX 1080 not being able to max out a game.

Tom's hardware actually benched AMD's and nVidia's top end cards from every generation from the last 10 years.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-10-year-anniversary-benchmarks,5329.html

The results pretty much mirror what has been going on in the GPU industry over the past 10 years. Which is surprisingly very accurate to be displayed in a 10 year old game. The HD 3870 still loses to the 8800 GTX just like it did 10 years ago, which is not a surprise as it was going against the 8800 GT. 2007 was one of the worst years post-ATI merger with AMD. But AMD recovered with HD 4870 which is going toe-to-toe with the GTX 280 but costs less. The HD 5870 bested the GTX 480 which is not a surprise as the GTX 480 was the worst card in that generation. Things are very close the between HD 6970 and the GTX 580, with the 580 having the edge (but again it cost's more). The HD 7970 beats the GTX 680, which is not a surprise as the HD 7970 was the better card and it still is. The R9 290X also beats the GTX 780 Ti which is not a surprise as R9 290X has shown to be the better card and those who spent $700 getting the 780 Ti made a bone headed decision. Starting with the R9 Fury X is when nVidia get's back on top with the 980 Ti beating the R9 Fury X although it's not far behind. And now with the 1080 Ti we see the biggest difference between Vega 64 and 1080 Ti.

This kind of goes to show what former AMD GPU architect Carrell Killebrew stated that AMD was competing head-to-head with nVidia till 2011. And I would add that it extended to the R9 290X as this was one of the last GPU's where the old ATI engineers worked on it before the mass exodus of talent and layoffs of AMD's GPU division. And since it takes 3 years to design a GPU from the ground up we started to see AMD falling behind with R9 Fury X which comes almost 3 years after all the graphics talent was laid off or left in 2011 and 2012. And now AMD is far, far behind nVidia (maybe with the exception of the Vega 56).

Lastly, there is only one high end card that can do 4K 60 FPS and that is the 1080Ti, which goes to show how demanding Crysis was and how it was way ahead of it's time.

Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever see a PC centric game developed for the PC first and pushing PC graphics ever gain. That era from PC first development for Gaming going hand in hand with the first generation of GPU's for PC gaming in 1997/1998 all the way through 2007 ended with Crysis.

One of the best FPS of all time. kinda shame crytek ruined sequels. otherwise could have been legendary gaming franchise.

even after 10 years. game still looks as good as most of todays games.

@Xtasy26: I agree that Crysis marked the end of the PC exclusive graphics engine era. We have been console bound ever since.

a great game that got too much attention for its visuals and not enough attention for its fun gameplay.

"Bu bu bu bu bu it only has the grafix!". I just wish they'd ditched the Matrix squids and other aliens, didn't care about the monsters in the OG FarCry either.

One of the most overrated games of all times. Jungle, jungle, jungle, random camp, jungle, random camp, jungle, jungle, random camp... so much fun!

I remember some people back in the day complaining about this game. They used to call it "a way too expensive tech-demo" XD

And yes, Crysis certainly marked the end of the PC exclusive graphics era: A time where you were forced to upgrade your PC quite often in order to play the hottest games around. It's totally different now... Ever wonder why new Doom runs so smooth on most PCs? It's a console game! (Duh!) :D

Definitely one of the biggest landmarks in gaming history and I completely agree. It was the greatest fps of its time. I actually went into this game thinking it was going to be all graphics but it was a lot more than that.

I tried to run it on an overclocked pentium 4 the first time and it shut down my pc lol 10/10.

I loved Crysis and Warhead, definite one of the most memorable FPS I have played in the last 32 years of PC gaming and not just for the graphics, it is a good game that I played through about four or five times. Its such a shame that the sequels ruined the franchises future.

Never saw this as a game that's only pretty. Played the hell out of it, and had a good time to boot.

This is the game that got back back into PC gaming. One of my favourite FPS. Enjoyed some mods too.

Remember when Gametrailers tried to make out Modern Warfare was not only a better game, but a better looking game.

Played and finished it about 5 times and it's huge sandbox levels, coupled with the powers you got in that game meant every playthrough was different.

a yardstick for good taste in gaming. a landmark game, such a shame they f*cked up the sequels

Ahem, ummmm, you spelled Halo CE wrong and it's 16 years old. Sheeeesh, kids these dayzzzz, Sculls full of mush. :P

Lol you graphics whores still saying this games was good hahaha 10 years of denial

It looked fantastic and it even aged great. Gameplay did have interessting elements with the stuff the suit could do and while I had fun with it, it just wasn't as fun as other titles. Certainly above average, but not on a legendary level.

From my perspective, It would rank 6th after FC 4 and 3, modded Call of Pripyat, Doom 2016, and Doom 1. This is based on sheer hours spent playing and replaying.

Great game it was ahead of it's time, I actually liked the sequels.

yea OP..it was a great tech demo that nobody could play because of its horrible coding..not be optimized for ANY pc..lol..

Meh, I prefer Warhead to be honest. Crysis vanilla put me to sleep at certain points.

It's a good game but not my among my favorites for sure.

Agreed. Although we have better lighting and better effects, implementation of things like tessellation to make things look for natural around the edges and many more, I think the tropical environment and how great it looks with the water and the trees and the sun shining through the trees makes the game hold up much better than other games.

Uh no. You had changes in the environments where it turned everything turned to ice, there was a cave level, and later you go up to space to the Alien mother ship. Look at today's games like Destiny it's pretty much the same environment.

It was. It got a 9.5 on Gamespot and I think it thoroughly deserved it.

Agreed, not many games aged as well as Crysis.

While I agree that it could have been optimized better as I played Crysis Warhead on the same machine and it ran better it was still demanding. Goes to show how high Crytek raised the bar in terms of graphics with the Crysis and Crysis Warhead.

It is pretty sad how despite being 10 years old Crysis can still easily hold its own against AAA games of today. We truly have started getting diminishing returns in graphics. Hopefully Star Citizen can take the torch from Crysis.

It sucks what has become of Crytek. They dumbed down Crysis 2 and 3 in an attempt to get popular with the console crowd specifically the CoD crowd on consoles which never happened. They were even hired to make a console exclusive and it still bombed. It seems only now they comeback to PC which it seems too late as most of their fans have moved on and a lot of the things in the industry have changed. Now what is keeping them afloat is a F2P shooter and their Battle Royale cash grab.

I hate that EA never patched out Gamespy for Crysis 1 and Crysis Wars multiplayer. It was one one of the few large scale multiplayer shooters that could compete with battlefield plus factoring in nanosuits it was a very unique multiplayer experience. People would do things like go into maximum speed and dash jump at you and in an instant switch to maximum strength to kill you with a punch if you didn't evade or switch to armor in time. Power Struggle was a really fun game mode and there were a couple of cool custom maps people made.

They really tried to pander to the console crowd by making Crysis 2 and 3s multiplayer basically Call Of Duty but with nanosuits. No vehicles, no large scale maps/battles and no power struggle.

It's a great FPS, but not one of the greatest ever. It abandons the open world jungle and cunning human patrols for corridor blasting one-note AI aliens, which I hated. It was like a preview of what 2 was going to be.

Surprised people lump 2 and 3 together. 3 learned it's lesson at least somewhat and made things at least a bit more open.

For all it's faults, the aleins in Crysis 2 were actually great, smarter than the humans in Crysis 1. It's about the only objectively superior content in the game.

The Ceph in Crysis and Crysis 2 can't be more different. I liked the Ceph in Crysis 2 better although it would have been nice to have flying Cephs (not spacecraft) as well.

People who say it's not optimised need to get a clue.

Unfortunately for this game Goldeneye 64 was released ten years earlier giving it the 20 year anniversary, not to mention being insurmountably better in every respect.

Yes. Really good game. How they just threw all they had out the window like they did still makes me angry.

@Xtasy26: Crysis was the soul reason why I join PC gaming in the first place. If it wasn't for Crysis hype, I would never been the PC gamer! It's been 10 years for me by joining "The Master Race"

Goldeneye was a really fun game on the console and can you believe I still play that game on my N64 from time to time when I'm in a good mood lol.

Goldeneye was Call of Duty of it's time. Anyone who had a PC in the late 90's had already played Quake 2 or Duke Nukem 3D, those games which completely out-shined Goldeneye but if they didn't have PC, then yeah, Goldeneye was the coolest shooter on the N64 but Perfect Dark felt like a true revolution to it's predecessor Goldeneye and the difference was truly day/night.

Ah yes, good old Crysis. It feels like yesterday when I was getting wow'd by its screenshots and gameplay. I spent many hours/days trying to find out if my still relatively new laptop at the time could run the game, only to find out that I couldn't. The feelsbad was real at the time. Eventually I did buy and beat the game in june 2015. Better late than never I suppose. I rarely get hyped for games anymore these days but despite that I still enjoyed the game and completed it, as well as Warhead. It's unfortunate that I couldn't play the game when I was really hyped for it, oh well. I played Crysis 2 before the first one but to this day I still haven't completed it. >_>

@davillain-:

There wasn't really a Call of Duty back then as the market was only just coming out of its niche and into a whole new demographic with psx. Goldeneye was more along the lines of Mario 64, except for the fps genre. It completely redefined expectations in terms of hit detection and enemy ai, not too mention it is very open ended in structure.

That really is the sad part. The fact that it can hold it's own compared to today's AAA games with Crysis' vast environments truly shows how FPS hasn't progressed much over the past 10 years. The pandering to consoles starting with Crysis 2 really damaged the Crysis brand. I don't have a problem with Console gaming but they should have focused on PC first and then dumb it down for the console not the other way around.

LOL..what? Goldeneye was legendary game on the Nintendo 64 but us PC Gamers had Quake and Duke Nukem 3D and later Quake 2 which surpassed Goldeneye in every aspect. Those games especially looked far better than Goldeneye when you played it with a graphics card.

Yeah I read that in Big whoopedy doo magazine

Not what I'd consider the greatest of all time, it's definitely a great game that was somehow denounced as a 'tech demo' on account of its graphics. It also holds up really well, so I'll eventually go back to it.

Didn't like what they did to the second one, though.

You misspelled GoldenEye 007.

You misspelled butter smooth 14fps

One of my favorite pics of Crysis, granted this was modded. But wow, it's still looks better than most FPS's from today.

And oh yeah Crysis in 4K 10 years later. It still looks amazing.

Here's the unmodded version. ;)

I'm still partial towards Doom II: Hell on Earth being the best FPS of all time.

Don't forget the blurry game image quality and flickery (plus visible scan lines) TV picture of the time. At least, PC monitor refresh rates can go up to 85 Hz by that time and have much higher dot pitch.

We actually compared Quake 2 and Goldeneye 007 gameplay side by side back in 1998. We all went back to playing Quake 2.

I personally think they got too greedy and started to focus more on engine development more than making games. Their sequels didn't suck because the graphics weren't as good. Their sequels sucked because the gameplay didn't evolve and story was weak.

Their first mistake was selling off Far Cry's intellectual property. People forget that the first Far Cry was a completely different game than the jokes which followed it and had nothing to do with the original story. Throwing away valuable brand recognition. Crysis is what Crytek had become known for, and should've been more diligent at maintaining interest but nope, catering to console gamers and backfired.

Crysis fucked my gaming laptop. I bought a new one naive thinking it could run it at max and it overheated the CPU, lol. Then got a PC $1,200 at the time, almost ultra but not quite. I f*** hated Crysis made me feel poor.