I saw this recently and thought it looked worse than the original.
If Crytek states it runs 2 times as fast as Crysis on the same machines then it's obvious they downgraded SOMETHING SOMEWHERE. Maybe it will be hard to see but you don't get a 100% performance gain without disabling/ scaling down some graphical elements.
Other than that it looks like same old, same old Crysis gameplay.
No cities = no buy.
Crysis 1 was the definition of poorly optimized game though. Even using extra high end hardware doesn't help all that much in some levels.
It only scales well up to 2xGPUS or 2 PC cores. With an extra year of development, it's not hard to believe that they can squeeze much more out of that engine.
I don't really believe it was poorly optimized, though. They simply chose to do EVERYTHING at an incredibly high level of precision. Most games fake a lot of things while CryTek allowed their engine to run wild. Every visual features present in the engine can be executed at a higher level of precision than any other engine I can think of. All of that running together results in a demanding game.
Thus far, the Warhead shots have been lacking just that. A lot of the more advanced effects seem to be cheapened. Perhaps it is simply their screenshot selection that sucks. I'm hoping that you can tweak Warhead to offer the same level of visuals as Crysis.
I mean, compare. The first is a promo shot and the second is a shot taken from my PC. Both shots were downscaled from their original resolutions (to avoid excessive scrolling). The lighting (in Warhead) seems so flat in comparison. Again, hopefully this can be adjusted.
