Crysis... wow...

I will begin with a side note - I built a computer recently to get back into pc gaming. I went and bought very high end parts such as a GeForce 8800 GT and hoped that games like Bioshock and FEAR could bring me back to pc gaming and justify the fact that I had spent nearly $1000 on a computer. And while both games were great entertainment, I still had the lingering thought that I could have had a nearly equal experience on the Xbox 360 that I already owned. I mean the difficulty of patching, updating, and installing games onto a pc is always slightly frustrating - whereas on the Xbox 360 it is just a simple matter of inserting the game disk and you are instantly playing. Also a lack of (oddly satisfying) achievements instantly made me feel like I was playing on an inferior system in the past. And I still believe that a much better experience with Bioshock can be had on the Xbox 360, but, Crysis has most definitely justified my recent spending spree and Reinvigorated my passion for PC gaming.

Crysis has the most interesting new feature of any game I have played in recent memory. It introduces the Nano-suit, a powered armor suit (think halo's mjolnir armor) that can enhance the performance/abilities of the player in a few key categories. The suit supports Maximum Speed, maximum strength, maximum armor, and a cloaking system. You can switch between each one at the press of a button but you can only use one at a time and each one depletes power from the suits main energy reserves. So, while sneaking around completely invisible is very fun it does not last for forever and you must find a place to hide and recharge before you run out of power. the same goes for things like maximum armor and speed, you are invincible for a couple of hits or fast for a short burst, but afterwards you are very vulnerable until you suit has time to recharge. This system makes you feel like an unstoppable force, but if you don't think smart and fast a few KPA soldiers can take you down in a matter of seconds, so while you may be the ultimate force you are not unstoppable.

The story revolves around an alien invasion, but I won't say much more to avoid ruining it for people who haven't played it yet, but you play as a US Special Forces squad member who is parachuted onto a remote island in the middle of the ocean to rescue a few scientific hostages. The North Korean Army invades the island to try to take over the unearthing of a mysterious power source buried under the island, but the Koreans seem to have run into some trouble and it is your job to figure out what is happening on the island as well as rescue the prisoners. You guys can play the game and figure out the rest.

Crysis also has some of the most beautiful graphics I have ever seen. The jungle looks absolutely fantastic with swaying tree limbs, realistic shadows, and awesome lighting in general. But the jungle is not the only thing that looks great; the alien ships and the aircraft carrier you board look absolutely fantastic and really blew my mind. For example, when I escaped from the alien ship for the first time a cut scene kicked in and the graphics were so amazing that I didn't believe that it was running real-time and I actually thought that it was a high quality prerendered video until all of the sudden the framerate stuttered momentarily and brought me back to the realization that "yes, this was running on my machine!".

My system specs are as follows:

Core 2 Duo E4500 - 2.2 GHz, 2mb L2 cache, 800 MHz fsb;

2 GB PNY DDR2 677 MHz;

BFG GeForce 8800GT OC 512Mb;

160 GB 7200 rpm HDD;

Integrated sound

BFG 650 watt SLI certified Power supply

Intel 945GCCR main board ( HAHA I know, it was $25 so shut up!)

I was able to run the game on my desktop with all settings turned to medium, with the exception of textures, shaders and motion blur being turned to Very High at 1024x768 with 4xAA. I found that the framerate could be much higher at 1024x768 with 4xAA than 1280x1024 with no AA and looked about the same on my pretty lame 17" Samsung monitor. Also, on my hp laptop I was able to run the game on low settings around 20 fps at 800x600 (dv9207us – GeForce go 7600 256mb, core duo 1.73 GHz, 2 GB ddr2 667) but with overclocking I was able to achieve about an average of around 31 fps. So, crysis seems to like my overclocked settings more than any other game and probably showed the highest performance increases of any game on my laptop

Also the multiplayer is very fun and also quite strange to get used to. All of the nanosuit powers are available to each player and it is interesting to see how each person tries to use a different method to win. Also each level is carefully constructed and very pretty. My favorite level being the fully rendered aircraft carrier, complete with a full flight deck and very expansive interior network of chambers.

So, to sum this all up, crysis is innovative, very fun, has great graphics and is a game that cannot be missed. And I really can't wait for the sequel. So this is a message to crytek - PLEASE MAKE THE SEQUEL!

All Right, so I havent written anything since I got my laptop, but I thought I'd mention a little about Vista's progress and my new Desktop.

I just Built a new destop using a piece of crap Emachines for parts. Its got a Pentium 4 HT 3.2 Ghz, 2 Gb DDR2 PC5300 Ram running at 667 Mhz, An Intel 945GCCR1 MotherBoard, A seagate 160 Gb HDD at 7200 RPM, An EVGA 256Mb Geforce 7900 GS KO Graphics Card, And a BFG 650 watt SLI certified powersupply. So, Its obviously not a bad rig, just not near where I want it to be, so in the next couple of weeks I am going to Purchase an Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 (2 ghz) to replace my current Pentium 4 and that should alleviate some of the problems I am getting in lost planet and the World in Conflict Beta.

Vista has improved slightly since the last time I spoke of it and I am beginning to appreciate some of the new features it Provides. Nvidia has done an exemplary job releasing new drivers almost weekly for my graphics cards and the performance is beginning to near what it was on Windows XP. Also, I have never had vista crash on me once and after finally giving in and purchasing 2 gigs of ram for my laptop I see how Vista can actually improve over XP (given youre willing to learn and spend a little money). Vista now seems to work with every device I plug in now and that is truly outstanding. So, I believe that Once Vista receives its first Service pack from Microsoft that it will be Something most users will enjoy and Appreciate more than XP. So My congrats to Microsoft and Nvidia for hanging in there and realeasing patches, fixes, and new drivers constantly and consistently.

Another thought I have Is how Pointless and almost irritating In-Game advertising is. I mean if you look at Crackdown there were 2 in game ads and both of them were retarded. One was for a Dodge Nitro, which was kind of silly because half of the game revolves around driving and if you cant actually drive a nitro in the game who cares. The other ad may have been even more Pointless, It was an add for intels new Quad-core Proccessors which I think makes no sense at all because Crackdown was only released on the xbox 360 and not for the pc, so If someone who only has a 360 sees the add, why would they care about a proccessor for the gaming computer they dont have? Other games (especially EA games) have ingame ads but are only there so ea can make more money. I dont think EA deserves anymore money, unless they actually pass the savings down to us consumers. I would appreciate it if Ea gave up entirely and let games be what they were originally intended to be -- An escape from reality for casual gamers and nerds alike.

Alright thats enough ranting About Ea, so Cya guys later.

Ryan

Alright, so I just bought a new vista laptop (core 2 duo 2ghz, 1gb ram, 512mb geforce go 7600, 120gb hdd) and it was running okay until I tried running Disk defragmenter. I ran defrag (which now has absolutely no visual interface and just tells you when its done) and my computer almost had a heart attack. It just started freezing and the hardrive wouldnt load half of the stuff I opened. So then I did a system restore which did absolutely nothing besides erase all of my stuff. So now I sitting here with a laptop that took 2 min to boot and now takes 15 min. It just pisses me off. Also DX 10 doesnt include direct x 9 support so if you have older games like BF2 and Bf2142 they wont work until you find a patch on microsofts website that vista doesnt downlaod itself (huge pain in the ass). also vista doesnt fully support the geforce 7 series of graphics cards because the drivers arent complete so the performance is crap. Vista also is a major performance hog in the sense that it uses 512 mb of ram sitting idle. So great Job Microsoft.

And fellow gamespot members heed my warning and do not purchase vista.

other than that my new dv9000us is the prettiest laptop I have ever seen. (17" widescreen is amazing!)

I'm going to San Diego this Sunday and that means I will Have to leave my Precious 360 and my HDTV here :cry: . But I did manage to pick up some of the PSP greatest hits like Battlefront and Wipeout to help with the plane ride. I'm so addicted to battlefront though, that I think that I might beat it before I even step foot on the plane.My parents bought Brain Age for the Ds so  guess I could play that too.

So, Ill be back a day before school starts and get right back to Owning all you noobs on LIVE.