Graphics: First things first, as noted in our Bios page, a few of our staff members have first hand experience developing for the CryEngine 3 SDK on a daily bases, so we’re completely aware of the full power behind Crysis 2’s graphical capabilities when powered by a high end PC. So the question remains, how do the supposedly inferior consoles harness the power to run Crysis 2? And the answer so far is impressive. Having said that, we thought the best way to bench mark Crysis 2’s graphical progress thus far was to compare it against one of the best looking games this generation has to offer, Killzone 2. Again, we are fully aware that Crytek is still hard at work tweaking Crysis 2 for the console so doing a full analysis at this point seemed mute. Instead we decided to focus our Lens on the graphical differences between the Crysis 2 demo, and Killzone 2 Multiplayer modes.
Lets start off with some similarities, Killzone 2 and Crysis 2 both utilize deferred rendering techniques as their primary rendering pipeline. Traditional deferred rendering is drawing all needed surface and material attributes to a deep framebuffer called the G-buffer. For each light seen, the light geometry can be drawn to the screen with a shader that reads from the G buffer and can add up the light interaction to the color buffer. The most noticeable enhancement when using deferred rendering is how it handles lighting and post processing effects. As seen in our images below, Killzone 2 and Crysis 2 have some killer lighting effects that can only be appreciated in real-time, but there are some differences we noticed. We felt that Killzone 2’s lighting seemed more aggressive throughout, for example, when we tossed a grenade and watched it explode the light that was created from the explosion also emitted a slew of different lighting and soft particles effects that left you in awe. Where not saying that Crysis 2 explosions looked bad, its just that Killzone 2’s explosions and soft particle effects looked more fluid and robust. Moving onto native resolutions.
Graphics Continued: Kilzone 2’s multiplayer native resolution is 1280 x 720 (QAA), while the Crysis 2 multiplayer demo’s resolution appears to be running sub HD 1152 x 720 (selective AA), which ironically is the same resolution as Halo: Reach. With that said, this is still a demo build and the retail single player campaign is still yet to be examined, so nothing is set in stone. Furthermore, Killzone 2 and Crysis 2 have strived to keep players immersed with over the top action and realistic physics. One such way to achieve this goal was having objects in the environment totally destructible. Killzone 2 did have some degree of destructibility on select objects, such as pillars and miscellaneous objects, but not everything in the environment was destructible. On the other hand, one of CryEngine 3’s key features is the introduction of “Procedural Breaking”. If implemented correctly, virtually any object in an environment could be destroyed, and never the same way twice. Unfortunately the Crysis 2 Multiplayer demo had very few objects that were totally destructible. Actually, except for windows and some in door assets nothing else we noticed was destructible. Hopefully we’ll see more ”Procedural Breaking” in the game’s retail single player campaign.
Our Thoughts: Based on this early Crysis 2 multiplayer demo we feel that Killzone 2 still has a slight graphical advantage, keep in mind that this is only our opinion. Although Crysis 2 definitely has the potential to dethrone Killzone 2 as the FPS graphical champ, until its’ retail release on March 22nd all we can do is speculate. Then again, Crysis 2 still has Killzone 3 right around the corner to deal with. One things for sure, 2011 is shaping up to be one of the best years the gaming community has seen in quite a long time, and we’ll be right here with you going along for the ride.
Lastly, both Killzone 2 MP and the Crysis 2 MP demo utilized a Real Time Soft Particle System. This system simplifies the creation of extremely complex explosions, fire, smoke, and other special effects using next generation soft particles. This in turn can be affected by: collisions with any other objects, forces such as wind or gravity, and can also interact with lights and shadows. This effect was easily seen when engaged in a heated fire fight with the enemy. For example, when an incoming bullet or explosion would interact with the environment,pieces of scrap metal and debris would bounce off and around objects creating some intense altercations. Killzone 2 and Crysis 2 handled these effects about the same.
