Crysis Remastered Review

Crysis, now infamous for destroying many a PC and spawning the “can it run Crysis?” meme, has now officially been rereleased by developers Crytek – but how does Crysis Remastered hold up to today’s standards?

The mission

The opening of the game introduces players to Raptor team; a squad of Nanosuit wearing bad-asses lead by stoic solider Prophet. Though the explanation of the mission is intentionally murky, the game would have benefitted from some more information at this point, or at least more story content later on during exploration.

When North Korean forces take control of the Lingshan Islands, a team of American civilian architects sends out a distress call, revealing that they have made a discovery that could change the world. A discovery that can’t fall into enemy hands. Raptor Team is dispatched to evacuate them. But what begins as a routine rescue mission transforms into an all-out war against a new alien invasion, as the islands become a battleground for the future of humanity itself.

Crysis.com

After landing on the island the team is quickly separated, introducing the threat that Raptor team might not be just up against North Korean forces. This is as good as the story really gets, though is a criticism of the 2007 game as the remaster doesn’t add anything new. Non of the plot points, except for brief moments including Prophet and the wise-cracking Psycho hit, as a lot of characters that the player is supposed to care about get wiped out before any real emotional connection can be forged, due to a lack of screen time and again, story content. This is something that was drastically improved on in the sequels, as Crytek pivoted away from the sandbox, and focused more on story-driven, linear first person shooters.

The sandbox

As a fan of Crysis 2 and Crysis 3, this was something that stuck out to me after about 30 minutes of playing, and not in a good way. Though it appears as though there is much to discover the island sandbox is pretty empty, consisting of a few buildings scattered around with only a couple of differing areas, such as the dock and alien hive.

This makes mission objectives tedious as it is basically go to place, kill lots of enemies, collect the intel – rinse and repeat. There are quite a few weapons to choose from to get the job done however. That being said, there is next to no story explanation, and game events just unfold as the player is playing. This makes for one cool scene as the alien race reveal themselves (later known as the Ceph).

The player goes through the events of Crysis Remastered as Nomad, and though there is weapon customisation and Nanosuit abilities at his disposal, most engagements go the same way. Activating armour mode (with L1 on PlayStation) and hoping to sponge bullets.

Taking fire whilst returning a hailstorm back towards your foes with random guns you pick up along the way, is the only way. The game forces you to do this for every encounter as the other three suit abilities and weapon modifications do next to nothing when it comes to gameplay. Pushing in the left stick grants Nomad a speed boost that lasts for about 3 seconds then he’s back to sluggishly heaving himself across the map, and “cloak engaged” might as well be “cloak, you’re going to be enraged” when the broken AI catches Nomad’s scent from 200 miles away, locks on, and blasts him to smithereens. The final ‘mode’ is maximum strength and is used exclusively for launching turtles to the moon.

Can it run Crysis (Remastered)?

On PS4, yes and no. The visuals, while better on PC with max settings, are dated on console (Psycho can look hilariously bad, thankfully they updated his look in Crysis 3), and the controls are clunky to say the least.

If you are planning on playing, I would recommend instantly pausing the game and doing two things; cranking the sensitivity to the highest in order to be able to acquire targets, and turning down the difficulty to easy (trust me). Don’t bother messing with the visual settings, as for me at least, HDR on made the game look super ugly for some reason.

That’s not all, as I encountered bad stuttering during every checkpoint in the game, as well as some blue-screen crashes during fights. This, combined with the inconsistent AI and wonky controls make the game frustrating to play, even when ignoring the story and trying to get a pure sandbox experience. I did however, find it amusing that the Korean soldiers were harder to kill than the technologically advanced alien race (which also look much better/more interesting in the sequels).

Final thoughts

Crysis Remastered is ultimately disappointing. The game just feels lazy and clearly needed more development time (the reveal trailer leak was the warning sign). This would have allowed the developers to realise what Crysis is all about; stunning visual fidelity and open-world, alien-killing, Nanosuit combat.

The game was seriously impressive when it released over a decade ago, earning its place in many PC enthusiasts’ hearts with it’s ridiculous running requirements and scope. I expected more from Crytek here, both in terms of graphical improvements to the original on all platforms, and in gameplay to mirror that of the polished Crysis 2 & 3. Hopefully Crytek use this as a stepping stone and once again start to put out great games, but Crysis Remastered might be one remaster to miss.

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