I completed Warhead in 4.5hrs myself, so pretty short. The earlier part of the game played much like Crysis - not really a good thing - but picked up towards the end. I much preferred the tunnels and the corridors / indoor locations to the exterior. Obviously the final battle and the train scene were pretty entertaining. Still, it was quite 2-dimensional in comparison to the depth of the character in HL2 and I prefer immersion with the character to lots of cutscenes.

Only 15.5 hrs? Not that it's a bad thing...but compared to Chernobyl, that is short.

Yeah, it did strike me as a bit shorter and the ending wasn't as good as the original... though I did really like the ending to SoC.

If the cut in time is relative to not having to run back and forth across multiple zones fighting the same Bandits over and over just to cross check points...then that's good.

Yeah, travelling didn't seem as tedious. Some of that is because the world is more heavily populated, with groups of stalkers walking through areas independently. I was engaged in a battle with some bandits (I didn't have to but I didn't want them stealing my money) when, about 3-4 minutes in a whole group of friendlies turned up... they helped me out until the whole place was over run with mutants. Then some more came along and setup a base (as in a guide came along, allowing you to skip to different areas for money). It was really dynamic and unpredictable, which I really enjoy in a game.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Founder of the "I Hate Smiley Fitz" society

Remember: Riley has autism. He has trouble communicating, and in an overstimulating
environment, he can get frightened and run away, leaving his parents frantic. - Auburn

It's literally 4 hours long and that's if you don't run n' gun it

It took me a little over 15 hours on Delta, but I like to explore every nook and cranny and I'll happily take 10 minutes to sneak around a group so I can take them all out silently as opposed to blazing in with maximum armor.

It's definitely shorter than the original, though the original kind of stopped being fun after the Mine level anyways.

I absolutely LOVE the final airstrip level. Getting all the vehicles (30+) and all the fuel barrels (50+) together to create a sort of nuclear explosion is rather gigglesome.

Kedyn, the problem you're describing (stuttering) could easily be a sound problem. Have you tried lowering your sound acceleration? (through dxdiag)
Also try a different graphics driver. I'm using the 175.19 and it runs fine with those.

Creston

This comment was edited on Sep 22, 20:44.

I got 15.5hrs on my first run through Clear Sky

Only 15.5 hrs? Not that it's a bad thing...but compared to Chernobyl, that is short.

If the cut in time is relative to not having to run back and forth across multiple zones fighting the same Bandits over and over just to cross check points...then that's good.

----------------------------------------------------
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"Blues News" Steam Community... http://steamcommunity.com/groups/bluesnews/

I much preferred Clear Sky myself - better graphics, better performance (when you tweak it) and better gameplay. I got 15.5hrs on my first run through Clear Sky and am just about to play through it again, as first time I didn't even join any of the factions - obviously it's more buggy and less streamlined but the core gameplay is very enjoyable.

Funny you mention that, I was looking through Circuit City's website to find something to buy with my $10 credit I got for pre-ordering Warhammer. I wanted Crysis but is has that DRM BS in the boxed and steam version.

I was going to buy stalker: Clear sky but after reading up a bit on it I found it has the same thing? I can't spend money on something that is going to dick me around later when I try and play it again. There are too many games i am playing right now that I bought long ago and have installed way more than 5 times.

I've been watching "The Wire" over the past week, first season, and there is something oddly familiar with how the Drug dealers treat their employees and how pc game companies treat their customers.

At one point in the show the dealers were trying to find a snitch and decided to stop paying everyone who worked for them. Someone said maybe they would just shove off and find a job elsewhere and the head dealer made it clear these guys have no where else to go. There is no where else for them, they'll work for no money because they have nothing else.

That is the way I see game companies treating their customers, there is no other way to buy their products, so their attitude is, "fuck em. What can they do? Bitch and moan, but they'll still buy."
This comment was edited on Sep 22, 14:10.

I got about 6.5 hours of play the first time through, and thought it was great.

I much preferred Clear Sky myself - better graphics, better performance (when you tweak it) and better gameplay. I got 15.5hrs on my first run through Clear Sky and am just about to play through it again, as first time I didn't even join any of the factions - obviously it's more buggy and less streamlined but the core gameplay is very enjoyable. The problem with games like Crysis Warhead is they're too linear and don't have much replayability. Only if they're exceptional does it work, like HL2:Ep2. Warhead is definitely better than the original, though.

I had a play with Crysis Wars too - it was alright, though nothing on TF2. It didn't really seem too balanced, as pretty much every encounter ended up with the person that spots the other one first winning - rarely was there running / hiding or any tactics.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Founder of the "I Hate Smiley Fitz" society

Remember: Riley has autism. He has trouble communicating, and in an overstimulating
environment, he can get frightened and run away, leaving his parents frantic. - Auburn

So how is Crysis Wars? I'm scratching my head why anyone cares about the single player side, but I guess people still want to have that experience...

How is the multiplayer? Any Better,worse,different that before in a significant way?

I, personally, would like to see more companies making games like crysis wars or TF2 that are online games to play with others. (And completely remove the singleplayer game.)

I think this goes against what the industry wants though, you tell them you can make a game for less, then sell it for less they will assume that means making less money. So instead they'll build a bigger, bloated game that costs a lot and that they can sell for a lot.

Your game only made 10 million!? It's a failure!

You didn't ask how much it cost to make it though...

FAILURE!!!

It cost 100k to make, that is a 1000% return on investment!

If it doesn't make 50 million it's a failure!!! Should have been smarter and spent 45 million on your game and it might have sold 50 million. Then everyone would be happy!

I'm sick of big budget games that barely measure up. Give me small budget games that are fun and innovative. No more of this big budget bull shit like spore.

I really enjoyed Warhead. It'll take you more than 4 hours to finish if you don't play it on a pussy difficulty.

I got about 6.5 hours of play the first time through, and thought it was great. Very tight game. I prefer 6 plus hours of great action to 20 hours of mediocre action.

The DRM sucks, but there are ways around that...

It's literally 4 hours long and that's if you don't run n' gun it so you're really not missing much by skipping it, just a FYI. It's definitely a technical improvement over Crysis and they refined their storytelling methods more, the music is good and all that but the problem is that it feels like a half baked expansion pack. Thankfully it's cheaper than Crysis but ultimately this is what Crysis should've been in the first place so I'd recommend just waiting for the next game. Hopefully they don't set it on an island too

Fuck EA. I will not buy this game strictly because of the DRM. Crytek can suck my balls too.

As far as it being adware or malware, shrug, I'm sure that by SOME definition it's a form of malware, but it's not downloading trojans on your system or sending your browsing history to some Namibian tribal lord or anything.

LOL

Ok, so to hell with it... I want this game and I'm going out to buy it ASAP, regardless of Securom

I guess I'm the only one, but Warhead runs like shit compared to the original Crysis on my machine. I run an AMD 2.61 ghz dual core w/ 2 gigs of RAM and an 8800. I'm surprised that Crysis would run on High so well but Warhead won't. It just keeps studdering.

Hamst3r:

2. http://www.securom.com/support/SecuROM_Uninstaller.zip

It works. Just run it with admin rights and it'll delete all the files, services and registry keys.

I just installed a game with SecuROM. Played minutes. Uninstalled it. The registry keys are still there.

I run the "uninstaller". It told me this:

The DRM data could not be vacated because the application or other applications require it for proper operation.

Some of the keys are still there. And no, I don't have any other SecuROM games in this computer.

I own retail copies of Mass Effect and Spore, no problems with my burner.

I should probably clarify that the problem is with my burning SOFTWARE (Roxio), rather than with the burner itself. It works fine with ImgBurn, for example. But with Roxio, it never actually gets anywhere. It's worked fine for the four years or so that I've had this burner, and it's stopped working a short while ago. Reinstalled the software, still no go.

I'll put an old ghost pre-SecuROM back and see if that makes any difference.

Creston

There's a huge performance difference between the DX9 and DX10 versions, at least for my Nvidia card(8800GTS-512). At 1680x1050 with 2x AA and settings on "Gamer" I get 30-40 solid fps except in some cutscenes which seem to lag no matter what the resolution. Same settings in DX10 gives 15-25fps and I can't visually see a difference between the two settings so I went with DX9.

Can anyone confirm that SecuROM actually STOPS your CD burner software from working? I've been wondering why my burner stopped working a few months ago. Some of the posts on amazon seem to indicate that it's SecuROM that does that?? It started fairly soon after I installed Mass Effect...

Totally unrelated. The Mass Effect DRM doesn't install any system libraries nor modify any, it's all self contained in the game directory and executable. I own retail copies of Mass Effect and Spore, no problems with my burner. The Amazon stuff is just a case of people really trying to stretch the DRM thing way out past the point of sanity. SecuRom is annoying to be certain but it's not invasive like Starforce, it doesn't modify other programs nor install an emulation driver to intercept calls to your cd/dvd drive. I'm fine with people disliking DRM but a lot of those people are just making stuff up or relating old experiences with Starforce.

This comment was edited on Sep 18, 23:05.

I'm not sure what settings you ran Crysis on, but I could never get a playable framerate on 'High'

I ran Crysis on High and it was smooth all throughout on 1280x1024, and it's smooth on setting 4 with the CUDAATS mod (which does heavily alter the settings) at 1680x1050.

so being able to play Warhead on high is probably where the improvement comes in my case

Right, but it does that by making the game look a little worse, imo.

Also, so far I haven't had any of the blurry textures you speak of yet

I think it's possible these only happen on Enthusiast level.

I am getting a good deal of pop-up, though.

Yeah, same here. Pretty much everything on the ground pops up, which is annoying. I'm hoping the CUDAATS guys make a Warhead mod soon.

Also, is it just me, or does Warhead seem to just run slower than Crysis does? Not so much in FPS, but just the entire game? I've switched everything to low and it still just feels a little sluggish compared to Crysis. Like the internal clock got dropped down to 30hz from 60 or something.

Creston

It doesn't. At least not as far as I can tell. The optimizations are pretty slick, but they do come at a price. Overall texture sharpness is down by quite a bit, and there's a TON of Automatic Quality Control (I'm not sure what it's really called, that's what X used to call it) going on. You'll run up to a shack, and it'll be all blurry and fuzzy like you're playing at 320x200, then suddenly it shifts into the sharp texture in two rather jarring jumps.

I'm not sure what settings you ran Crysis on, but I could never get a playable framerate on 'High', so being able to play Warhead on high is probably where the improvement comes in my case. Also, so far I haven't had any of the blurry textures you speak of yet. I am getting a good deal of pop-up, though.

Can anyone confirm that SecuROM actually STOPS your CD burner software from working? I've been wondering why my burner stopped working a few months ago. Some of the posts on amazon seem to indicate that it's SecuROM that does that?? It started fairly soon after I installed Mass Effect...

Creston

I'm more concerned about Securom being supposed 'malware' and 'infecting' my PC. I haven't bought a game with this Securom bundled with it, so I don't really know how it works.
It's installed onto your PC and apparently can't be deleted or something?

It can be deleted, it just doesn't delete itself when you uninstall the game. While that seems pretty fucktastic at first glance, I can sort of understand the reasoning for it. If you have multiple games with SecuROM installed, it stores the keys in the same registry entry. If it were to uninstall itself when you uninstall one game, you'd also deny access to the other games. (Until you re-run the installer).

Old versions of SecuROM actually warned you about that when you tried to uninstall it. Not sure if the current one still does.

As far as it being adware or malware, shrug, I'm sure that by SOME definition it's a form of malware, but it's not downloading trojans on your system or sending your browsing history to some Namibian tribal lord or anything.

Knock on wood, but I've never had any system issues with SecuROM installed. (that were caused by SecuROM, anyways.)

Edit : Well, apart from it killing my fucking burning software, apparently...


I don't agree with the install limit, but Ghost bypasses it anyways, so oh well.

Creston

This comment was edited on Sep 18, 22:48.

Got there eventually; it seems my DVD drive had spun down so low I couldn't hear it. This is apparantly not an isolated incident; some people had to buy a new DVD drive just to read the disc, so I guess they weren't manufactured very well.

Yeah, EA definitely spent some top dollar on the manufacturer. Probably thyree 12 year old Malaysian kids with a single 4x burner that they found at a garage sale. I had to copy the entire DVD over to my harddisk and install it from there.

EA - We Care About You!

Creston