I just watched a video that someone recorded of the new Crysis Single Player demo. Oh. My. God.

Even though it was recorded in DX9 mode, the graphics are un-freaking-believeable. The characters in the cutscene are the most realistic I've yet seen in a game. They even beat the ones in the Half-Life 2 series.

Here's a high-quality video (be warned, it's huge and requires a Divx web player plugin):
Crysis Demo video
If that's DX9, then I wonder what DX10 will be like.

I won't be able to try out the demo or full game until late next month or early December. That's when all the new hardware finally comes out, that I've been waiting on.

Wow, I just finished downloading, installing, and playing the demo for a few minutes just to get a feel for it.

It does look awesome, and plays quite smoothly, but man, when let it scan my system to select the optimal graphics settings, it set everything to low, and the resolution to 800x600! This game is a frikin' beast if my system - which, while being far from top-of-the-line, certainly isn't bottom-of-the-heap, or so I had thought - is only good enough for the low-end settings.

I really need to hit the lottery.

You played on 'high'? I'm going to have to try that!