Crysis 2 has only been on shelves for about a week, and PC players have already turned Crytek’s ruined New York into a photography studio. A fresh batch of high definition screenshots from the PC version has been doing the rounds, and some of them are close enough to real photographs that you have to look twice to spot the game underneath.
It is easy to see why the game photographs so well. Crytek’s New York is packed with the kind of material CryEngine 3 was built to show off: sunlight filtering between skyscrapers, drifting smoke and dust, shattered concrete, abandoned cars and the intricate surface of the Nanosuit itself. Captured as stills at high resolution, without the compression of a video stream, that detail has room to breathe.
Crytek’s New York Keeps Turning Heads
It is not the first time the game has drawn this kind of reaction. Earlier this month, GamingBolt grabbed 720p shots from the PC demo using a fairly modest setup and came away calling them breathtaking, and the same site later lined up Crysis 2 against the original Crysis at 1080p to see how far Crytek’s art had moved.
Crysis 2 is out now on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, published by EA. Set in 2023, it follows a soldier codenamed Alcatraz who inherits the Nanosuit and fights through a Manhattan ravaged by both the alien Ceph and the private military company CELL. The multiplayer, built in part by Crytek UK, adds Nanosuit abilities to familiar modes and has been a big part of the game’s pitch to console players.
The PC Version Still Lacks DirectX 11
GamingBolt’s comparison with the original Crysis touches on a sore point for PC owners. The first Crysis became the benchmark that PC owners measured their hardware against, and some fans have worried that Crytek’s move to consoles would mean a step back on PC. The launch version does have gaps. As one detailed PC review published today points out, Crysis 2 lacks DirectX 11 features at launch, and the menus only offer High, Very High and Extreme presets. Players who want more control have been turning to console commands, and nothing has been confirmed about a patch adding DirectX 11 support, though fans are clearly pushing for one.
Even so, screens like these show that the game can still look remarkable on a capable PC. The Extreme preset adds sharper distant textures and extra detail on the ground, and the PC version runs with anti aliasing and more objects on screen than the Xbox 360 release, which that review suggests may render below 720p before being upscaled. The console versions have their own fans, but this is the version that best shows off Crytek’s lighting work.
Take a look through the screens and tell us whether you would have guessed they were from a game. If you have captured your own shots, now is the time to show them off.