10 Video Games That Pushed Consoles To The Limit

1. Crysis

Metal gear solid 3
Crytek

"Can it run Crysis?"

This question dominated the graphic benchmark scene for YEARS. Crytek and Saber Interactive's graphical magnum opus, due to a combination of experimental new tech and just really bad optimization, led Crysis to be the measuring stick for new graphics cards for almost a decade.

Literally, nothing ran Crysis for much of its original shelf life. Sure, these days you can run it pretty easily on High settings on most standard PC setups. Back then however you were lucky (or very wealthy) if you got that baby to purr consistently at 20 fps.

This game is chock full of FPS tropes that we currently take for granted, and it did them long before anyone else. Destructible environments, an open world with enemies moving independently of your action, zero-gravity sections, and more were found in this trailblazer of a game that basically no one could play. Whoops.

Maybe next time Crytek, before you make your revolutionary graphics powerhouse of a game, check with Nvidia and make sure that most people might be able to actually enjoy it.

Watch Next


Contributor
Contributor

John Tibbetts is a novelist in theory, a Whatculture contributor in practice, and a nerd all around who loves talking about movies, TV, anime, and video games more than he loves breathing. Which might be a problem in the long term, but eh, who can think that far ahead?