Crysis (PC)

- I've played through the single player demo. There's a good couple of hours of gameplay there and quite a bit more if you just want to goof around (nothing quite like throwing chickens in strength mode)
- The suit really is really a nice gameplay mechanic. It really opens up many options on how you approach a particular battle. My favorite strategy is sneak up on a vehicle in stealth mode, kill the occupants, and then turn the turret on the rest of the remaining guys.
- I really like the destructible structures.
- Driving controls are improved and now you can shoot and drive at the same time in 3rd person view. The only problem is this only works in normal mode. If you increase the difficulty then you are stuck in either driving or shooting modes depending on your seating position.
- Real quick save/save anywhere. Quick loads are FAST!
- On my very average rig I get around 30 fps(under vista) on medium at 1024X768 but it does dip into mid teens. Even on these lowly settings the graphics really blew me away. This is hands down the best looking fps engine I've seen to date by far. I really like being able to cut down trees with gun fire. That pesky enemy squad hiding in the foilage? No problem, just cut those trees down with your turret mounted on the vehicle.
- Latest version of fraps causes really bad keyboard lag so I suggest you don't keep fraps running all the time.
- I didn't care too much for the weapon mod screen. Also, I kind of wanted direct hot keys for switching between suit modes.

Surprisingly I found the game very pretty and playable on my ancient rig. What I really want to do though is spend $2000 and build a brand new quad core rig to really do this game justice. IMO it's actually good enough to make this worth doing. The only thing that's holding me back besides having spent a ton of money lately are the new dx 10.1 parts from ati and nvidia are just around the corner (and so is Penryn). This is one game I'm actually hoping for a delay of a couple of months.

UPDATE: 11/25/07
- Finished the single player game.
- Good length, lots of variety of missions and environments, great pacing.
- Fun and satisfying final boss, craptastic ending (think Halo 2 horrible).
- I didn't like the zero g level too much. I guess it was sort of like playing descent (which I loved btw) but more confusing and disorientating.

Easily my favorite single player fps experience this year (and yes that includes having finished cod 4, halo 3, and bioshock).

Performance:
I'm loving this game so far but it sure is a beast system wise. I picked up an evga 8800GT KO (oc 675,1950)

First some nice tuning/tweak sites:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182806/index.html
http://www.tweakguides.com/Crysis_1.html
http://incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11614&p=1

to display fps in the game hit ~ to bring down the console and type:
r_displayinfo 1

to run the benchmarks find and run these bat files:
Crysis\Bin32\
Benchmark_CPU.bat
Benchmark_GPU.bat

It will use whatever resolution and quality settings you last set in the game. Let it loop and finish at least 2 runs. Take your second run which will be more accurate since the first run is usually slower due to hard drive access.

CPU: opteron 170 (oc from 2.0 -> 2.7ghz)
memory: 2gb
video card: evga 8800GT KO (675/1950)
video driver: 169.04 (169.09 gave me weird performance issues, 169.04 worked better for me)
OS: Vista 32bit

1600X1200
all set to medium settings
no AA

GPU
Play Time: 45.83s, Average FPS: 43.64
Min FPS: 23.86 at frame 1949, Max FPS: 72.06 at frame 131
Average Tri/Sec: 33785088, Tri/Frame: 774150
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 1.18

cpu
Play Time: 36.47s, Average FPS: 41.12
Min FPS: 23.27 at frame 1094, Max FPS: 58.05 at frame 312
Average Tri/Sec: 29974938, Tri/Frame: 728875
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.99

------------------------
1280X1024
all high except shadows, shader, post proc set to medium
no AA

gpu
Play Time: 50.83s, Average FPS: 39.35
Min FPS: 17.54 at frame 154, Max FPS: 67.41 at frame 82
Average Tri/Sec: 35853296, Tri/Frame: 911199
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 1.01

cpu
Play Time: 43.02s, Average FPS: 34.86
Min FPS: 18.38 at frame 196, Max FPS: 50.30 at frame 347
Average Tri/Sec: 31219914, Tri/Frame: 895472
Recorded/Played Tris ratio: 0.80

I think I prefer 1600X1200 at medium b/c of the more even framerate (the min fps is higher).
I think that's what a better cpu will really buy me is a more even framerate. Max or avg might not increase that much but it should help remove those dips.