Crysis 2 Multi-Player On PSN Today

For a while now, Crysis 2 has been live on Xbox LIVE! Marketplace. In fact, the Xbox 360 has seen two different version's of the demo. Shortly thereafter and about the time of the Xbox 360's second demoing of the Crysis 2 Multi-player, the PC Multi-player was up and going as well. The Xbox 360 version was suffering from screen tearing and texture pop-in that had turned me off. But, I remembered two things distinctly from the time that Crysis 2 was announced.

What Can We Expect? 

The first thing that I remember was Crytek showing off its Crytek Engine 3 and explaining how in ran on both consoles. It was mentioned that the PS3 seemed to house the code better and its performance they found was slightly better on the PlayStation 3. That seemed promising for the console. Or so I'd thought. The second thing I remember was at Electorinic Arts Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) last year. Majority of the demo's that EA had shown were on the PlayStation 3 hardware and EA even showed up at Sony's E3 Press Conference to announce their interest and love for the direction the PS3 was going and how they wanted to support the PlayStation 3 more showing games like Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 and announcing the exclusive content for them. However, at their (EA's) Press Conference, Crysis 2, other than maybe EA Active, was shown being run on the Xbox 360.

It was then that I began to really worry. Not a sniff of the PS3 version had even surfaced at E3. An EA spokesman came out and talked of how Crysis was the game that was really pushing the two current generation consoles and maxing them out. That the two teams were in constant competition with each other trying to outdo one other. But this is where the fairytale ended.

IGN PS3 Editor Arthur Gies had stated that at GDC he was able to see some gameplay or Crysis 2 Multi-player running on the PlayStation 3 finally. He had then written an article that you can read about at the link provided at the bottom. It's entitled "GDC: Crysis 2 - The Rock, A Hard Place, and the PS3. " Either this Editor was extremely bias, or somethings wrong.

 "The verdict? Not so great, unfortunately. The performance of the PS3 version is pretty underwhelming. The framerate is frequently low and choppy. There are jagged lines everywhere, and shadows are especially messy. There's a muddiness to the graphics that's hard to stomach in the wake of the PS3's other flagship showpieces, and worse the variable framerate really hurts the controller response."

                                                                    - Arthur Gies (IGN Editor)

 

PlayStation 3 Screenshot 

That really doesn't sound so comforting. If the Multi-player is struggling, the campaign itself must be having issues then. I'll be the first to admit that this makes me pretty nervous and also makes you wonder what sort of things Crytek are spilling out of their blow-hole to make a deal and sell the product while cutting corners or porting the game from the 360 build to do whatever necessary to make the game, but slack a little. The demo will reveal it all later on today when the PSN Update goes live. This is not only the make or break for Crysis 2 for me, but also my interest in investing money into any game that uses the Crytek Engine 3. Especially after seeing the Frostbite Engine that will power Battlefield 3. From the video feed and screenshot's that I saw of Crysis 2, I can already think of several PS3 Exclusives that look better than Crysis 2.

Ladies & Gentleman, Meet Frostbite Engine 2.0

But, we'll find out in just a few short hours. I've got my fingers crossed, but I'm expecting the worse on this one having learned from Bayonetta. Games seldom, from my experience, look much different after their final release from the demo build. Unless Crytek can pull a rabbit out of their butt, PlayStation 3 gamers may be better off sticking to Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm and wait it out for Battlefield 3 that has shown its strength more on their console than the competition not to mention had been tweeted by the Dice Engine Coder Christina Ann Coffin:

“Not done until we ship, a bit early to make fair comparisons between the two but ps3 has a lead by offloading gpu w/ SPUs”

Believable as its been seen as done so maybe we can look forward to it. But, best of luck to us all.

GDC: Crysis 2 - The Rock, the Hard Place, and the PS3