Crysis 2 DirectX 11 Patch Analysis

Crysis 2 DirectX 11 Patch - Conclusion

While Crysis 2 has definitely benefited from the enhancements contained in the DirectX 11 and high resolution texture packs, we couldn't help but notice over the course of our analysis that many of the individual improvements are hard to pick out.

However, it can't be overlooked that Crysis 2 looks amazing when it's viewed as a whole. There may be some areas which have more dramatic improvements than others, but certainly no area of the game looks at all ugly.

Of the DirectX 11 features on show in Crysis 2 v1.9, we were most impressed with the impact of DirectX 11 tessellation and displacement mapping. There are plenty of games out there which claim to feature tessallation, of course, but most of these are only using it for simple procedural effects, according to Nvidia. Crysis 2 is one of the first games to feature hardware tessellation for all mesh types.


While this potentially means that Crysis 2 is capable of using hardware tesselation on all in-game assets, this isn't actually the case. Instead, because most current hardware is still incapable of processing an entire tessellated world, Crytek applies tessellation only to those assets which show the effect best. This ensures a balance between performance and aesthetic which still looks very impressive and was clearly visible in many screenshots.

Where tessellation isn't feasible within the Crysis 2's performance window, Crytek has used parallax occlusion mapping instead. This is a technique which, according to Nvidia's Ultra upgrade guide, 'efficiently approximates surface displacement in tangent space'. In essence, this means it gives an illusion of depth on certain textures, as well as adding self-shadowing. The level geometry remains unchanged, however.


That last point is worth bearing in mind if you're asking yourself the inevitable question of whether this new flotilla of aesthetic upgrades (or: patches) makes it worth replaying Crysis 2 in its entirety. While the patches offer substantial, if incremental graphics updates (as well as a few token bugfixes), the core gameplay is left unchanged. Crysis 2 is still Crysis 2 and no amount of parallax occlusion mapping changes that. It's why we can continue to stand by our review so resolutely.

Is Crysis 2 worth replaying purely so you can back and see the same sights done more prettily? Only if you really enjoyed the first one - a fact which doesn't reflect on the improvements to the graphics as much as it reflects on the linearity of the game.