Crysis was released in November 2007, and immediately became the benchmark game for proving that your computer was worth the money you put into it. It wasn’t neccisarily a ground-breaking title, but it looked amazing, and required a monster of a computer to run at full capacity. If I remember correctly, there weren’t even any pre-made computers on the market that were able to run Crysis at maximum settings.

Luckily for PC gamers, Crysis came back in a big way, albeit cheaper and less graphic hog system. Find out how, after the jump.

Now yes, I know that even a mediocre PC could run Crysis at the lower settings, but that’s not the point, is it? Beneath the glamour, Crysis was your average First Person Shooter where you could do some neat things in your cyber suit. The main selling point of the game was the outrageous maximum system requirements, and that is what people will remember for years to come.

“But Crysis was released in 2007!” I hear you cry. Yes, it was, but Crysis: Warhead was released in September 2008. Warhead is a stand-alone expansion of Crysis, but the most interesting thing about it is that lower-end machines can run the game on higher settings.

When you compare the minimum system requirements for Crysis and Crysis: Warhead, they’re almost identical other than Warhead requiring a few more gigs of hard drive space. Take a closer look, because the difference isn’t in the numbers.

If you look at the reviews for Crysis: Warhead, they all mention the game simply running better and more efficiently than its predeccessor. The most interesting bit of information came straight from the horse’s mouth, EA, when they mentioned that the “High” and “Very High” configurations in the game required a less powerful machine than the original. “Very High” in the original Crysis was supposed to be reserved strictly for Direct X 10 machines, though some of those clever internet wizards found a way around that and enabled it for Direct X 9. I suppose that made the announcement of Warhead allowing Direct X 9 systems to use the “Very High” option a bit lukewarm.

In any case, Crysis will always be remembered as the game that people were scared to even install on their PC. I know I never even considered it, and I pass most of the minimum requirements, I’m just worried my computer will cough it out and start laughing at me before fading off into that sweet goodnight. I also know of many other people who didn’t even want to attempt installing the game to their PC, which means the game has quite an aura around it of being the piece of software to show off just how bad-ass your computer is.

So, making a game that people were scared to install a little less scary is why Crysis: Warhead is #58 on our Top 100 Gaming Moments of 2008.

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