While it was surely not even remotely necessary I actually did buy nVIDIA's 8800GTX board about three months ago with no special title in mind - unlike my hardware-buying rampage back when Oblivion came out.
I was quite impressed trying Bioshock a few weeks ago as it not only ran smoothly, it also looked pretty. Properly drawn fog effects and realistic water ripples are really a neat sensation but that's about it from the DX10 side. So obviously that's not what makes Bioshock exceptional. Fact is that the guys at 2K Boston did a great job at bringing Rapture to life, in all its glory and decay. You constantly get the impression of being in a city under the ocean with water flowing down walls subtly, pressure noise on the structure and humidity everywhere. Of course character animation is stunning as well, not to mention the story-telling.
After sneaking through the countless corridors of Systemshock's universe not even too long ago, I couldn't resist to feel right at home. Sure, Shodan was far more attractive than Atlas/Fontaine and just thinking about her voice still gives me the creeps, but I expected *shock - and that's what I got.
Of course the DX10 hype isn't what many people expected and luckily I'm not one of them. After Bioshock I went out to see what more the market was offering, full of hope that developers might have drained every last bit out of modern hardware to gain even more visual firework. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition surely was there before Bioshock and was meant as a tech demo or at least only get attention for being the first DX10 title for the desperate. Thus I can understand that it just isn't more than a beautifully bloated arcade shooter.
Then Hellgate: London got released which I was reading about every now and then since almost three years. Hearing that it also supports DX10 renderers made the waiting sweeter. But bummer - it was just a large-scale Hack 'n Slash RPG with the collect/upgrade/sell mechanisms that made you love (aka get addicted to) Diablo half a decade ago.
So I sorta didn't have high hopes for Crysis. Luckily I was wrong about that. But why? Because the best possible approach is not expecting much? Or was it just because other First Person Shooters didn't evolve beyond the F.E.A.R - Half Life 2 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R core (with all due respect to these titles)?
I assume it's simply due to the fact that Crysis is good and more bang for the buck than many titles to come, even across several genres. That's what was high time for a potentially endangered PC games market in my opinion. Usually companies are run by money and money is time which in turn lets the world experience some of the most awful console to PC conversions ever (where the hell does my PC happen to have its triangle button?). But it wouldn't matter anyway as the PC version appear weeks or months afterward and some late bad critiques won't scratch the sale numbers on the console market.
For example, I totally adore the Gothic world and never complained about the serious flaws in the latest and last Piranha Bytes (R.I.P) title but I see those as being the reason for frustrated buyers. The need to fix hardware bugs after a release usually is a pure PC phenomenon not to mention the extra work needed to make the engine run on/with all kind of hardware during development.
So why isn't the PC games market not dying out? Or is it actually in the process? The only apparent advantage that I could think of so far is the availability of upgrades which give the PC a technological ledge but in turn makes it difficult to support all the different components. It's clear, just by looking at the numbers, that consoles can never offer such amounts of raw power in respect of CPU/GPU/RAM. For a PC player the only reason to invest into a new console is the release of a [put in your favourite system]-only title (e.g. Final Fantasy, or The Darkness in my case).
With Crysis the PC markets gets a refreshing reference title in all respects. After trying the demo I decided to order the full version and have since not encountered any drawback at all. Even if one might turn up, the good points are simply too overwhelming already. Clearly, DX10 doesn't make a huge difference except for the insane hardware requirements, but they're as nice-to-have as in Bioshock. What really caught my attention is the way the environment is designed to be completely natural and interactive. That starts with the expected vegetation, animals, leafes falling down the trees and sun rays getting lost in the top of trees. You can either pick everything up or alter it's shape in order to be able to:
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When you lob a grenade in one of those shacks they get torn apart while bullets barely scratch them.
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Apart from dozens of surprises, one of the most fascinating details was the way the CryENGINE2 handles filled barrels.
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Crysis demands power and my card can barely catch up. But that's totally fine by me because now it's finally busy, at least during those times when it doesn't have to display my E17 desktop.
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