- Mar 6, 2002
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DX8.1 vs. DX9x and Chrome vs. Far Cry
I would like to talk further about graphics performance, eye candy and game play by looking at some of the differences between DX8.1 vs. DX9x and Chrome vs. Far Cry.
But first, a little bit of history. When I bought my X-box on the day it hit the stores I also got a copy of <font color=green>Halo</font color=green>. Halo impressed me then. It was gorgeous. It was fun even though after the first dozen of missions it became repetitive and almost boring.
I am not very good with console controllers and I found aiming in Halo X-box rather tough. Nevertheless, I finished the game. I have not touched it since. (Talk about replay value.) Anyway, I hold no grudge.
When Halo PC was released I was not in a hurry to buy it because I had already played the game. I wanted to see the reviews and find out whether Halo PC was a direct port or it included new content and improvements.
It turned out that Halo PC was a direct port. Moreover, not only it contained no improvements but it also looked worse than the X-box version. All the reviews I read agreed that Halo PC was a disappointment especially because being inferior to the X-box version it also had insane PC system requirements. Naturally, I chose not to buy it.
At the same time my favorite Computer Gaming World magazine (CGW) whose reviews I trust after more than 10 years of subscription said some nice things about <font color=green>Chrome</font color=green>. Specifically, they said something like this: "Next to Chrome Halo looks hollow."
Nevertheless, if memory serves Chrome was not given 5 or even 4.5 stars. I think it was 4 stars. So I was not in a hurry to buy it since I try not to waste time and money on anything less than 8.9 (PC gamer) or 4.5 stars (CGW).
However, last week when I was buying Far Cry I thought: what the hell? How bad can Chrome be if it is definitely better than Halo? And I bought it too. I am glad I did.
Now, let’s get down to business.
Chrome is a DX8.1 game. I am not sure what graphics engine it uses. But having played it yesterday for 4 hours I can tell you with all certainty:
<font color=red>it looks very much like Far Cry.</font color=red>
Please note that I did not say "exactly" like Far Cry. But I promise you that it looks at least 90% as good. The butterflies are alive, grass moves with the wind, you wanna pick those flowers, you can almost smell the plants – so real they look, you see the bottom through clear water, oh, and you wanna drink that water BTW, you can see grains of sand on the ground, boulders look real, vehicles look incredibly detailed and very cool, people are life-like and move very naturally, etc. At the same time I am able get a steady 80+ FPS in this game at 1152x864 with 4xAA, 4XAF, Trilinear Filtering, and everything (except V-sync) turned up to maximum.
(NOTE: by the way, about tweaking for performance. I said it before and I will say it again: pay attention when you change settings. I mistakenly set my nVIDIA driver to Force mipmaps/Trilinear AND I enabled Trilinear filtering in the game’s Video options too. Boy, did that mess up my frame rate! Solely by disabling driver V-sync and Trilinear filter I increased frame rate from 28-34 to 80+FPS! And the game looks exactly the same. Well, I have a kick-ass monitor so I don’t get image tearing even though V-sync is disabled.)
The truth is that Far Cry does look better in certain respects. For example, there is no bubbling in Chrome when the waves hit the shore. Well, actually there are no waves to speak of: you can hear them but you cannot see them, the vegetation is less dense (and I think we could play Far Cry with better FPS and higher quality if its jungle were just a little bit less dense). Facial animations in Chrome are slightly inferior to those in Far Cry but it does not really matter since you don't get to see that many people up close...
<font color=green>In short, it is my opinion that while DX9x and CryENGINE titles promise some noticeable improvements in visual quality, this time is not really here yet because 95% of us are unable to run titles like Far Cry at their maximum settings with AA and AF and most of us will not be able/willing to spend all that money on all the hardware needed for this for quite some time. Meanwhile, most of us can run DX8.1 titles at their maximum settings and we can get pretty much the same level of eye candy as we do with medium settings in DX9x Far Cry.</font color=green>
At first I wanted to write a long, detailed review of Chrome and compare it with Far Cry directly analyzing every aspect of game play, enemy AI etc. But not today.
I will say this however:
If you have not bought Chrome, get it. It is great.
1. AI is 95% as good as in Far Cry. Enemies will duck, crouch, hit the deck, use terrain and vegetation for cover circle your position, etc. I said 95% because once in a while (rarely) enemies goof. Like you can shoot one guy and the other one next to him will not react in any discernable way.
2. At max graphics settings it looks <font color=red>at least 90% as good</font color=red> as Far Cry.
3. The plot and the story so far seem very cool, dialogues are interesting, it does not seem to follow a primitive standardized Hollywood model the way Far Cry does, and generally, it does not suffer from any of the gameplay drawbacks I outlined in Far Crying out loud post.
4. At medium/normal difficulty you can get killed but you can also avoid getting killed with relative ease if you don’t run around with guns blazing all the time. If you like to reload a lot and you want your enemies to be as deadly as in Far Cry just up Chrome’s difficulty setting. But if you want to enjoy the game, you can do that too. In the four hours I played the game yesterday I only reloaded once (*not exactly true – see below). Ha-ha! And in this time I only managed to accomplish two missions. So the game does seem big/long enough.
* I did reload the first mission 5-6 times primarily because I was not familiar with the way the game works and some of its controls. For example, I once ran too far away from the mission commander and he yelled at me to return but as I was looking for him I got more lost and he cancelled the mission due to my insubordination, so I had to restart. Another example, at some point I ran out of ammo and failed to find more in time and could not provide cover fire so the commander was killed and the mission was reset. But once I figured out a few things and remapped the controls I did not have to reload any more, not until I ran into the enemy camp with guns blazing, got caught in a crossfire and quickly died . . .
Sound suffers from some of the same problems as in Far Cry but I found that overall sound implementation in Chrome to be better. It is more useful in helping you maintain situational awareness which is essential for a shooter.
Bottom line: If you have gotten over the exterior beauty of Far Cry and are now tired of its lacking personality and frustrating gameplay, get Chrome. You will not regret it.
<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig that will go strong for three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green> 😎
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Slava on 04/28/04 08:50 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
I would like to talk further about graphics performance, eye candy and game play by looking at some of the differences between DX8.1 vs. DX9x and Chrome vs. Far Cry.
But first, a little bit of history. When I bought my X-box on the day it hit the stores I also got a copy of <font color=green>Halo</font color=green>. Halo impressed me then. It was gorgeous. It was fun even though after the first dozen of missions it became repetitive and almost boring.
I am not very good with console controllers and I found aiming in Halo X-box rather tough. Nevertheless, I finished the game. I have not touched it since. (Talk about replay value.) Anyway, I hold no grudge.
When Halo PC was released I was not in a hurry to buy it because I had already played the game. I wanted to see the reviews and find out whether Halo PC was a direct port or it included new content and improvements.
It turned out that Halo PC was a direct port. Moreover, not only it contained no improvements but it also looked worse than the X-box version. All the reviews I read agreed that Halo PC was a disappointment especially because being inferior to the X-box version it also had insane PC system requirements. Naturally, I chose not to buy it.
At the same time my favorite Computer Gaming World magazine (CGW) whose reviews I trust after more than 10 years of subscription said some nice things about <font color=green>Chrome</font color=green>. Specifically, they said something like this: "Next to Chrome Halo looks hollow."
Nevertheless, if memory serves Chrome was not given 5 or even 4.5 stars. I think it was 4 stars. So I was not in a hurry to buy it since I try not to waste time and money on anything less than 8.9 (PC gamer) or 4.5 stars (CGW).
However, last week when I was buying Far Cry I thought: what the hell? How bad can Chrome be if it is definitely better than Halo? And I bought it too. I am glad I did.
Now, let’s get down to business.
Chrome is a DX8.1 game. I am not sure what graphics engine it uses. But having played it yesterday for 4 hours I can tell you with all certainty:
<font color=red>it looks very much like Far Cry.</font color=red>
Please note that I did not say "exactly" like Far Cry. But I promise you that it looks at least 90% as good. The butterflies are alive, grass moves with the wind, you wanna pick those flowers, you can almost smell the plants – so real they look, you see the bottom through clear water, oh, and you wanna drink that water BTW, you can see grains of sand on the ground, boulders look real, vehicles look incredibly detailed and very cool, people are life-like and move very naturally, etc. At the same time I am able get a steady 80+ FPS in this game at 1152x864 with 4xAA, 4XAF, Trilinear Filtering, and everything (except V-sync) turned up to maximum.
(NOTE: by the way, about tweaking for performance. I said it before and I will say it again: pay attention when you change settings. I mistakenly set my nVIDIA driver to Force mipmaps/Trilinear AND I enabled Trilinear filtering in the game’s Video options too. Boy, did that mess up my frame rate! Solely by disabling driver V-sync and Trilinear filter I increased frame rate from 28-34 to 80+FPS! And the game looks exactly the same. Well, I have a kick-ass monitor so I don’t get image tearing even though V-sync is disabled.)
The truth is that Far Cry does look better in certain respects. For example, there is no bubbling in Chrome when the waves hit the shore. Well, actually there are no waves to speak of: you can hear them but you cannot see them, the vegetation is less dense (and I think we could play Far Cry with better FPS and higher quality if its jungle were just a little bit less dense). Facial animations in Chrome are slightly inferior to those in Far Cry but it does not really matter since you don't get to see that many people up close...
<font color=green>In short, it is my opinion that while DX9x and CryENGINE titles promise some noticeable improvements in visual quality, this time is not really here yet because 95% of us are unable to run titles like Far Cry at their maximum settings with AA and AF and most of us will not be able/willing to spend all that money on all the hardware needed for this for quite some time. Meanwhile, most of us can run DX8.1 titles at their maximum settings and we can get pretty much the same level of eye candy as we do with medium settings in DX9x Far Cry.</font color=green>
At first I wanted to write a long, detailed review of Chrome and compare it with Far Cry directly analyzing every aspect of game play, enemy AI etc. But not today.
I will say this however:
If you have not bought Chrome, get it. It is great.
1. AI is 95% as good as in Far Cry. Enemies will duck, crouch, hit the deck, use terrain and vegetation for cover circle your position, etc. I said 95% because once in a while (rarely) enemies goof. Like you can shoot one guy and the other one next to him will not react in any discernable way.
2. At max graphics settings it looks <font color=red>at least 90% as good</font color=red> as Far Cry.
3. The plot and the story so far seem very cool, dialogues are interesting, it does not seem to follow a primitive standardized Hollywood model the way Far Cry does, and generally, it does not suffer from any of the gameplay drawbacks I outlined in Far Crying out loud post.
4. At medium/normal difficulty you can get killed but you can also avoid getting killed with relative ease if you don’t run around with guns blazing all the time. If you like to reload a lot and you want your enemies to be as deadly as in Far Cry just up Chrome’s difficulty setting. But if you want to enjoy the game, you can do that too. In the four hours I played the game yesterday I only reloaded once (*not exactly true – see below). Ha-ha! And in this time I only managed to accomplish two missions. So the game does seem big/long enough.
* I did reload the first mission 5-6 times primarily because I was not familiar with the way the game works and some of its controls. For example, I once ran too far away from the mission commander and he yelled at me to return but as I was looking for him I got more lost and he cancelled the mission due to my insubordination, so I had to restart. Another example, at some point I ran out of ammo and failed to find more in time and could not provide cover fire so the commander was killed and the mission was reset. But once I figured out a few things and remapped the controls I did not have to reload any more, not until I ran into the enemy camp with guns blazing, got caught in a crossfire and quickly died . . .
Sound suffers from some of the same problems as in Far Cry but I found that overall sound implementation in Chrome to be better. It is more useful in helping you maintain situational awareness which is essential for a shooter.
Bottom line: If you have gotten over the exterior beauty of Far Cry and are now tired of its lacking personality and frustrating gameplay, get Chrome. You will not regret it.
<font color=green>Stingy people end up paying double. One kick-ass rig that will go strong for three years or one half-decent one every year?</font color=green> 😎
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Slava on 04/28/04 08:50 AM.</EM></FONT></P>
I was waiting for a comment like this! AND I have MY answer: At first, I was, like WTF? She sounds BaaaD! But then I figured . . . this is actually refreshing. She sounds more like a person than the traditional sweet’n’sexy collection of bouncing polygons. I actually got to appreciate the designer’s choice of voice over for this character.
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