PC of course - Grab it here:
http://static.cdn.ea.com/crytek/u/f/crysis2/Crysis_2_Multiplayer_Demo.exe
Played it for the 360. If it’s anything like it was for the 360, it’ll be laggy as hell. EA said they knew that when they were releasing it, which begs the question, doesn’t it?
In any case, I liked it. It wasn’t too bad at all, especially if the connections are better. I think the melee is overpowered, though. You’ll be meeting up with a lot of cloaked jerks that run up and shank you.
I’d love to play it, but I’m afraid my PC will take one look at the system requirements and kick me in the nuts. Twice.
But I’m downloading it anyways and bracing for the pain. 
I’ve been dreading this game because it’s probably going to be the first time a big budget sequel to a cutting edge game will be technically inferior to the original, sort of putting the nail in the coffin to technical advancement in gaming.
Only played a little bit - mixed feelings so far. They didn’t put much effort into the interface. It’s not a big deal, but if you’re spending tens of millions on a game, can you not put “press start button” on the main menu of the fucking pc version? Worse, though, the entire graphical options screen consists of resolution and 3 presets - gamer, advanced, hardcore. What the fuck is that? A game that’s sold on its cutting edge nature and you can’t even fucking tweak things? I don’t even know for sure which if those presets is supposed to be better than the others.
Two modes on the nanosuit now? Why did we need that particular kind of dumbing down? You could do it through a radial menu if there aren’t enough buttons on the gamepad. Takes away a lot of the fun you could have with the nanosuit and the style of play you could do.
The actual graphics aren’t as bad as I feared. The lighting system actually is quite excellent and may be the best ever made. I was worried they’d totally wall in the player more than they have so your view distance never goes too far, but on the skyline map they have that doesn’t seem to be the case. I hate the crazy amount of motion blur they put in the game (and no fucking way to shut it off in the graphics menu). The world geometry/number of objects/level of detail doesn’t match Crysis, but it’s better than I was expecting. I guess it’s easier to render a city with flat walls and rectangular objects compared to hundreds of trees all blowing in the wind.
Even given the limitations, it isn’t running that smoothly on my system. The frame rate is fine but there’s a nasty input lag, and I have no idea how to try to nail it down. Input lag is about the worst thing you can have in an FPS game so if there’s no way to fix it, or if the full version doesn’t fix it, I don’t see how it’ll be playable for me.
Aside from the input lag issues, so far it seems pretty vastly superior to the unreal engine, so hopefully multiplat games start using this engine more.
I guess I’ll fiddle with it more later.
I’m disappointed in the MP demo.
The Crysis 1 demo was all about benchmarking the game on our rigs AND show off some gameplay.
This demo feature NO seperate graphic options, just the baked in settings AND it’s all DX 9, no DX 10 or DX 11, and it shows. The lighting is just ugly bloom.
The multiplayer gameplay is good. I’m liking it, though I agree about the melee being overpowered. Feels a little bit too much like COD in that respect.
The lighting isn’t bloom. Are you running at the max settings? The soft shadowing is amongst the best I’ve ever seen and while they exaggerate the look of bright light that’s not falling on your eyes it’s an HDR thing rather than bloom. I think the lighting is really good actually, possibly the only thing that’s as good or better than the original.
A one hit kill melee makes more sense if you have no shields of anything like Call of Duty. If shields absorb some of the damage, it makes no sense from a balance standpoint. And the problem isn’t just the one hit melee, it’s someone cloaked, hiding around a corner, just waiting for someone to come by for a cheap kill. Yes, I understand that the nano-vision shows the cloaked folks and that you have to communicate, but, still, I think it throws off the balance.
I’m really on the fence about this game. There were some things to like about it, but if I wanted to play a laggy game, I could find other offerings out there without spending more money.
Also, on the PC version, do grenades seem to take a while to come out of your hand? It seems like the developers, in some balancing scheme, wanted to make the grenades more thoughtful, so you can’t just spam them.
Oh, I forgot to mention there’s an aim assistance on/off option in the menu. What the flying fuck? Does autoaim actually work in multiplayer?
Honestly, with as laggy as it was for the 360, and with as seemingly short of a beta as it was, I couldn’t tell one way or another. I sat in a lobby for 10 minutes waiting for a game, and there was nothing out there. I really don’t understand why EA released that piece of crap, when, clearly, they acknowledged it was borked.
Yep, I’m sorry, but It’s HDR lighting with excessive bloom. And there’s some sort of blur filter happening too that I just don’t like.
This is why we need graphics options Crytek! And quit prompting me to “press enter” when I start the game!
This plus them having NEVER shown PC game footage ANYWHERE (it’s always PC playign at “console settings” - Who the hells wants to see that? The console gamers want to see it running on a CONSOLE, and the PC gamers want to see it in it’s full glory on the PC!!) is pissing me off.
Next they’ll say something really stupid like “We made sure it looks the same on all platforms”.
::Kills a kitten::
Sigh. I was so looking forward to another genre-busting graphical masterpiece. Guess I’ll just save my ducats for Bad Company 3…a recent issue of Game Informer is just drooling all over this with its new Frostbite engine, and the screenshots from the demo look pretty amazing.
So…does this demo have single player at all or is it strictly multiplayer?
Strictly multi — and Bad Company 3 or Battlefield 3?
Are you just against any sort of HDR or bloom effect no matter what the context?
Yes, it was overused when it first appeared and often gets done badly. But to simulate the way the iris reacts to bright light, you need something beyond simple light shading. In certain conditions this ends up looking like bloom - or better yet, simply the high range of HDR. It’s not being used to cover up a lack of lighting system, it’s just the best way you can express the highest contrast of lighting in certain circumstances.
Maybe I’ll find stuff to rub me the wrong way with more experience but at first glance this game has the second best lighting of any game ever made - second only to the original crysis.
Edit: He means battlefield 3. It’s designed to be a native dx11 game, so I’m confident they’re putting the PC version first and there’s a good chance it’s going to look and run pretty great.
I don’t mind HDR when done right, but I really do think they over did it on the Bloom. The sky is a big white blob 1/2 the time.
And this bloom overdrive is not present in the leaked beta, which is weirder.
Huh. Apparently, the demo that came out today was re-released on the 360 as well. They nerfed the shotgun’s range, too. That’s a good thing.
Yeah, Battlefield 3…looks really cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb-mzhCTznQ
There’s what looks like a proper PC game. 64 player multi, Larger maps, DX 11, 64 bit engine.
64-player is too big.
It depends on your definition of “cutting edge” and “big budget,” but Supreme Commander 2 fits that bill as well. I’m not sure whether that means the end of technical achievement in gaming or whether it means that the advances have become incremental enough that developers feel they can’t really set themselves apart as easily as they used to on technical advances alone.
For consoles.