PROPHET MARGIN

The real cost of running CRYSIS in 2007, upgrade by upgrade

- PHIL IWANIUK

A futuristic chopper passing over the Lingshan Islands by moonlight. Gruff men in nanosuits prepare to drop into the combat zone below. After quoting half of Predator at each other, they jump. You jump with them. You reach the sands after a speedier descent than planned, turn your flashlight on, and press W. Then-then I don't know. Nobody does.

At least, nobody did in 2007 when Crysis first came out, because this moment in the opening level was about as far as we could stand to endure at 7fps. The entire rest of Crytek's innovative sandbox shooter was a complete mystery. We'd been told to expect high system requirements and a rough ride for our GPUs but truthfully, we didn't really believe that running Crysis on even the lowest settings would be such a struggle. Or that attempting to do so on max settings would be impossible. All the stern talk about its technical demands was probably just cautionary bluster, many of us thought, intended for students who thought they could run it on their Lenovo Thinkpads during lectures. And then we ran to the shops, bought a boxed copy on release day, ran home again, entered our CD keys in the install menu like overgrown, far less cute children on Christmas morn, whacked the graphics up to max, and cried into our hands at the slide show on our monitors.