Crysis 2: PC vs. Xbox 360 Showdown

If nothing else I can now report that Crysis 2 is quite a bit longer than Homefront. I’m still churning through it, even after a good four hours last night. Hopefully I can finish it tonight or tomorrow. So at least the game has a decent length campaign going going for it. What it may not have going for it is, how shall I put this… the PC version looks too similar to the console versions. If you’re playing on an Xbox 360 and all you’re used to is, say, Dragon Age 2, then sure, the game looks pretty great. But PC gamers expect more. The jump from Far Cry to Crysis was pretty much insane. The jump from Crysis to Crysis 2 was less insane.

Up top is the PC version running on “extreme” graphics mode (whatever that means, since we’re not able to change AA, filtering, shadow detail, etc.) and the bottom is the Xbox 360 version.

The top version, says Bit-tech (a fine site, by the way), is running at 2560×1600 (it’s powered by a new Nvidia GTX 590) while the Xbox 360 has to upscale from 1440×720.

Yes: the PC version clearly looks better, but if there’s one thing I’ve noticed it’s some of the uneven texture work. I didn’t take the following screenshot, but it’s about what I’m talking about:

The low-res textures are easy to spot on things like vending machines. It’s just weird seeing perfectly good textures one minute, then the next you’re like, “Whoa, what happened here?”

Also for PC Crysis 2 players is this handy application that does, in fact, let you edit some of the game’s graphics settings, but I’ve read here and there that it’s prone to causing glitches every so often.