Right now, your PC can probably – probably – run Crysis. But even as recently as 2015, anyone incanting PC gaming’s most famous meme in response to a new hardware release wasn’t asking an entirely redundant question. What Crytek created in 2007 was a technological spectacle so advanced, and so astonishingly different to the look of its contemporaries, that it took mainstream PCs almost a full decade to accommodate its demands. On launch day back in November 2007, anyone who hoped to enjoy the sandbox shooter (whose scarcely believable screenshots had been ubiquitous in the gaming press for months) at anything like a smooth framerate was about to get their paradigm shifted.
This was mid-noughties PC gaming in a nutshell. A new release would come along and dictate a higher bar for hardware than your current machine could manage, and its allure was strong enough that you’d invest the requisite hundreds into those specs to play it. Then a couple of years later the next Half-Life 2, Oblivion or Arkham Asylum would arrive and you’d either invest in more cutting-edge PC parts or declare insolvency.
But nowhere was it more true than with Crysis. In many ways, the primary activity in the game was simply getting it to run. It was a sort of preliminary puzzle which involved finding the correct combination of dropdown menu options to unlock a path forward, beyond the flip-book drawings of a jungle that arrived on your monitor every half-second or so, and into a full-motion interactive experience. This was a puzzle which might have taken months to reach a satisfying solution.
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Denne historien er fra July 2020-utgaven av Edge.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
NO MORE ROOM IN HELL 2
You're not alone in the dark
WINDBLOWN
Life after Dead Cells
COLLECTED WORKS - JOSH SAWYER
Journeying to the Forgotten Realms, Infinity and beyond with the RPG veteran
SCREENBOUND
Going deep in a mind-bending hybrid of perspectives
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
Grand strategist
Paradox's Mattias Lilja addresses the publisher's recent difficulties - and the plan to right the ship
Diablo IV
A progress report on the games we just can't quit
Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
In Capcom's diabolical tribute, evil goes far deeper than the demons on the screen
SERENITY FORGE
How a near-death experience lit a fire in the Colorado-based developer and publisher
THE MAKING OF...ALIEN: ISOLATION
How a strategy-led studio built a survival horror masterpiece in Ridley Scott's image