WOW !
I just finished the Demo on the Normal difficulty and it was a BLAST ! I've never, ever experienced any first-person-shooter game like Crysis. It must be the very epitome of FPS gaming. I mean that game encompasses everything that developers have learned in FPS gaming throughout the years into a single game. The Demo alone, in my opinion, already beat the heck out of known FPS games.
The physics puts the Source engine to shame, and that's not saying little. The graphics are certainly the very best PC gaming has to offer to this day, even in DX9. The sounds are totally real, the textures (on High) are of near-reality looking (photo-realistic), the controls feel fluid, very precise at the same time, responding and to the point. The interface (suit/hud) is just what you need, it's not annoying to the eye, it has a very high-tech feeling. And the water guys ... the freakin' water in Crysis makes Bioshock's look ten years-old. The atmosphere of a breathing, living environment isn't equaled by any other games ...
I could go on and on and on ...
You can physically BEAT buildings down to shreds, you can shoot them too, you can grenade them, but in the end they're almost all destroyable (only the ones with tick concrete weren't destroyable, but the furniture inside is all destroyable). You can pick up barrels, sand sacks, chairs, tables, cans of food, you can pick up the roaming live animals around, you can even pick up the debris resulting of a destroyed object. I am still quite shocked by the quality of this product. To be honest I expected to be disappointed, because the multi-player mode did not impress me (expect for the graphics, but then I was wondering how would the game-play be like in single-player). But now, I am even more than merely impressed. I don't have much words to describe how rich and complex Crysis really is, but I believe that we've indeed reached a completely new generation of video-gaming.
All that was on my system below, in my signature, using the 163.76's (I've tried 169.01's, but I reverted back because they were causing issues to some of my other games, some of them quite old, but I still like them). I played at 1280x960, no AA, no AF, everything in-game set to "High", everything single option to that setting without exception. I could run constantly at around 35 to 45 frames-per-second, so I was quite satisfied by the performance too. The game seems to be quite optimized.
To conclude my reaction to this amazing game I'd like to point out at something I really thought would literally suck, which is the A.I. But, once more, Crysis delivers even within the A.I department. I played on the Normal difficulty, and already the Korean soldiers used cover very efficiently, they NEVER ever got stuck anywhere, even though they walked and crouched, and even ran on very difficult terrains. I even noticed and heard a group suddenly gathering up to one point after spotting me for a brief moment before I went back cloaked, and then one of them started to issue orders, such as "move to the right", and I clearly saw one of them responding to his orders and moving exactly as the higher ranked officer ordered him to, and the guy who was responding to his order said "cover me", and then another guy started to crouch behind him and they both "explored" the place slowly, crouched, searching for me. It was an amazing moment for A.I in FPS I think.
Overall, I can't think of anything else to say right now, other than perhaps that the story seems better than I first thought. It has some horror feeling to it, after the Demo's ending. It feels like the Alien threat is more serious than it looks to be at first glance. I just can't wait to play the final game, and even more importantly I can't wait to create my own levels with the amazing tools CryTek developed for it.
Personally, I give the Demo a 9.7 / 10 score. It's just almost perfect, almost, because nothing is ever actually perfect, I can't give it a perfect score. And who knows, perhaps later in the game something disappointing will occur, but I honestly doubt it. Right now I can look at my other FPS games on my desk, and now I look at them all very differently thinking "you guys are now inferior, sorry".
CryTek, you guys are genius, seriously.