Crysis 2 'DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade' pack coming June 27

While the original Crysis has long represented the benchmark of PC gaming, its successor hasn't garnered quite the same reputation. Crysis 2 shipped without support for DirectX 11, making the initial launch of the game not quite as cutting-edge as PC enthusiasts would have liked.. It appears that Crytek is nearly ready to release an updated version of the game, targeted specifically for DX11 cards.

On June 27, Crytek will release a patch (1.9) and a few downloadable add-ons that take advantage of some of DirectX 11's more advanced graphical tweaks. The free "DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade" pack adds "hardware tessellation, parallax occlusion mapping, and several upgrades for shadows, water, particles, depth of field, and motion blur." An optional "High Res Textures" pack will also be made available for both DX9 and DX11 users. (It should be pretty obvious what that add-on will do!)

Many of the improvements are subtle in nature, but NeoGAF's Markao created some helpful GIFs that demonstrate the differences between the DX9 and DX11 versions of the game.