I got the game to perform a "little" better, 25-30 fps, but it still would dip down into stop motion stuttering once in a great while. The graphics of this game are not good enough compared to the horsepower required. I ran in 1024x768 with no AA, mostly medium (highly tweaked via .cfg to be more like high) settings. For comparison, Bioshock and Half Life 2 both run at 1280x1024 with 6xAA and 2xAF on maximum detail settings at 45fps or so.
I finished the game, and even discarding the fps for a moment, I found it to be a good, not great game. It was better than Far Cry, and WAYYYY better than F.E.A.R. and Prey. But it was not even close to as good as Half Life 2.
*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS ***
It seems like roughly 3/4 or more of the game is just you taking out koreans who have random outposts. It's really strange how you see a couple aliens early on then you have to go fight koreans for 5 more hours before you even see mention of them, and no one except the archaeologist seems to think anything unusual is happening. Worse, like many B horror films, the game suffers from anti-climactic aliens. By the time you get around to fighting them, they seem ludicrously underpowered compared to the alien that swooped up half your team. The best battle was with the spider bot on the aircraft carrier. That is the one truly "epic-like" moment in the game.
Unfortunately, as soon as you finish your epic battle, it seems like the developers must have run out of ideas or wanted to wrap up the game, because you immediately fight the mother ship, which is pathetically easy. You can just stand in one spot and click a few times to beat that one.
The storyline and execution were just off for me. A really flawed game. You get the alien gun for a short while only, then it's gone. You get the tactical nuke weapon but only get to use it one battle. The gauss gun comes at a totally random point in the game, and then you don't get any ammo for it again until you are on the carrier. The koreans suddenly have nanosuits and there is a brief mention that they aren't supposed to have them, then the fact that they do is ignored the rest of the game.
As much as I am harping on it, it still is among the better FPS I suppose. As tedious as the koreans were, they don't come close to the totally inane drek in F.E.A.R.
Still, count me as disappointed. After finishing crysis earlier than expected, I re-installed bioshock and half life 2 orange box. The latter completely obliterates crysis in terms of execution and fun. Crysis might as well be tic tac toe compared to that. I just started playing episode 2 for the first time and have had special feelings in special places playing it. Bioshock is a bit frustrating but still far more rewarding than crysis, and I am probably only a third of the way through (if that).
In short, Crysis is the 3rd best first person PC game from 2007, with technology that underperforms given its hardware requirements.