Crysis 2 demo

Today, Crytek did us a solid by releasing a multiplayer demo for Crysis 2. In an age when demos are an almost forgotten luxury with AAA titles, it's nice that Crytek still recognizes the necessity of letting players know ahead of time whether the engine is going to humble their rigs before they buy the game.

That said, prepare to be humbled, and disappointed. There's a "press START to begin" screen once you get past the intro movies, and there's an option for aim-assist. For me, the game was only semi-playable, as my FPS ranged between around 50 while standing still to the low 20's when I had the audacity to press W. Some people are reporting that the game is running smoothly for them, but I'm not alone with my pain. Oddly enough, the game did seem to perform better with each successive load, but I still haven't been able to get an acceptable framerate, even at the lowest graphical settings.

SLI isn't working yet, apparently, as one of my GTX 260's spiked up to 99° C in one 15 minute session, while the other remained at 50° C. That undoubtedly killed my framerate, as my CPU temperatures didn't increase unreasonably. (Note that the r_multiGPU=1 command from the previous games doesn't seem to work.) If Crytek doesn't patch SLI support into the demo, I'm going to have to give up on it.

I've only played the game for about 30 minutes in total, but some of the pros and cons are immediately evident. On the plus side, Crysis 2's MP is fast-paced, and it looks like it might allow players to go beast with some creative flair. On the minus side, the map design (the demo features two) is pretty weak, and the systems ape Call of Duty's to an uncomfortably large degree.

If the full version of Crysis 2 were released tomorrow, I'd take a pass. But, there's still time for Crytek to get its act together for a proper PC release, so I'll reserve decision for now.


[UPDATE] And we have this shit already: