But you have to own a Cyrsis game to have access to the CryEngine and modding tools. This also used to be how you were able to use Epic's engine by buying Unreal Tournament 2008 or Gears of War for the PC. But now Epic is letting you download their full Unreal 3 engine for free and be used for noncommercial purposes from what I have been reading of course. There is a licensing fee that you can pay later on if you actually do decide to sell a game that was made with their engine.
By comparison CryEngine's graphics are better there is no doubt, but like I said you would only be developing modded maps and campaigns for Crysis games only. With the Unreal 3 engine you are free to make fully developed games.
Here is a direct link to the Unreal Development Kit site if anybody is interested:
http://www.udk.com/index.html. I am currently downloading at the moment at can't wait to try it. I am going to be showing this to my professors and see what they think as well. We currently only have Unreal Engine 2.5 at my college and I've heard talks of us being able to have a fully licensed Unreal 3 engine, but with this new development I guess that might change! I would highly recommend anyone considering game developing as a career like I have and people who made Evidyon to take a look at this.