The original Crisis on the low and medium settings looked pretty shabby and was nothing special. On which settings are you comparing Crysis 2 to the original where it looks "HORRIBLE"?
So you played Crysis with bog-standard graphics yet when the same thing happens with it's sequel it is the worst thing in the world.
No, they really aren't screaming anything like that at all.
To be honest the most pathetic thing about all this is people being so concerned about how this new game looks. You admit to playing the original on settings that meant it didn't look very good yet for some reason playing the sequel like that is blasphemy.
The graphics weren't that bad on medium or low settings and I said the game was "playable" at those settings, not a graphics powerhouse at those settings. Since the first time I played the game, I've upgraded my graphics cards a few times and now have a GTX 570. I can run Crysis and Crysis Warhead completely maxed out just fine. Crysis 1, Warhead especially, look beautiful compared to the Crysis 2 MP demo. So the answer to your question is I'm comparing the max settings to max settings. You can't say it looks good compared to Crysis, because it's the obvious truth that it does not - it literally stares you in the face.
I've played and replayed Crysis with different graphics cards, and can currently play it at max settings. Your argument here doesn't make much sense; you seem to imply that I really liked playing Crysis 1/Warhead with standard graphics settings. I love to max the graphics settings in all of the games I play and if I can't, so be it. I might feel a little disappointed that I don't have the hardware yet, but the fact is...the option is there and I CAN set the quality higher so the game looks amazing. It's up to ME to be able to handle that graphics setting and enjoy it. Crytek took this option away from PC gamers by reducing the graphics quality. The game is a graphical step backwards from Crysis, as I've said before. To be quite honest, I think games based on UE3 look better than this. BFBC2 also looks leaps and bounds better than this.
Your argument that implies "I enjoyed playing Crysis 1 on standard graphics settings, so I should be okay with the standard graphics in Crysis 2" is completely invalid as I've pointed out. The only "pathetic" thing here is the fact that Crytek took a leap backwards in the graphics quality of their new engine in order to better accommodate consoles, which in turn shafted the PC market for the game. You assumed too much about what I stated and "over-argued" your point.
When I played Crysis, I was coming from the original CryEngine that powered Far Cry, which was a great achievement in graphics quality of the time. Crysis took that even further with CryEngine2, pushing the envelope. Crysis 2, utilizing CryEngine3, firmly backed off from that envelope.
Most people today can run Crysis with a GTX 460 utilizing graphics settings that make the game look GREAT. With tweaks, you can tune the engine to look even better, without pushing the hardware requirements too high. No amount of graphics tweaking will be able to make this engine look good. You can change the FOV settings, you can tweak small things here and there, but the engine itself is what ultimately fails here. One would need to do quite a lot to make this game, as it stands now, graphically comparable to Crysis 1/Warhead. If they somehow get the game to run DX11, add better lighting enhancements, and boost the texture resolution so they don't look like they're out of Half-Life 1, the gameplay could be quite pleasurable for a PC gamer.
As for the "console look" to the UI, I understand this could just be quickly ported to the PC so they can complete work on the game. So I would expect them to make the final version of the UI look more geared towards a PC audience. But for some reason, I have this nagging thought in the depths of my mind telling me that this is what we'll see in the shipped version of the PC game. It would be quite unfortunate.
You're crazy if you think the game looks horrible compared to the original. You haven't even played the full release, and you've only played the MP, which is certainly streamlined for efficiency. You do realize that the MP was made by a completely different studio in a different country, right?
Face it.. you just don't like Crytek. The only people that are saying the graphics are a deal breaker are the haters. It's a fun game, and the graphics are more than good enough for what it is. I've shown other gamer friends the MP demo, and they all thought it was gorgeous. The Pier 17 map is stunning.
I'm not crazy. Maybe, just maybe, you're a Crytek fanboy or some other sort of fanboy that has aligned himself with the game for some reason or another. Maybe you love CoD? Maybe you love console gaming and think it's the greatest thing since cake? I really don't know. What I do know, and what shines out like a fat kid humping a pillow, is that the graphics in the Crysis 2 MP demo look pretty terrible when compared to Crysis 1/Warhead. Period. There is no getting around that and if you can't see that, then you might have problems with your vision and you might need to see an optometrist.
Nope, I haven't played the full release. But do you think that the studio over there in the UK or wherever it is, is utilizing a different graphics engine for the game? No. Crytek is using the same engine that the MP demo utilizes. Streamlining a game for online efficiency to look as bad as the Crysis 2 MP does only happened back in the days when Valve ported Counter-Strike to it's Source engine. A lot of people still ran dial-up connections then and they wanted the best possible experience for online gameplay. Given the number of people today that have exceedingly fast broadband connections and exceedingly fast computers, this kind of "streamlining" is no longer needed.
I used to love Crytek. Back when I played Far Cry, and then Crysis, Crytek was the absolute pinnacle of graphics design for video games. Yes, there was and still is Source. Yes, there was and still is UE3, but CryEngine2 still outshines them both. I don't hate them now, and I don't really dislike them. But I do strongly disagree with the direction they are going with this game and stand firmly against it.
Any genuine PC gamer would.
You can show as many friends as you like the graphics quality of that demo, and they can all say it looks amazing. The fact here, is that you think it looks pretty good for what it is. And the people you surround yourself with and call friends more than likely share the same feelings and beliefs as you, otherwise you might not be friends with them. You assume I just don't like Crytek? Based on what - assumptions without reason? I don't see anything that I typed that you could base an assumption like that on. As far as I'm concerned, your judgment is null and void.