In 2007, I was doing most of my gaming on the Nintendo Wii, the original Xbox, and a low-end PC (mostly playing Black Hawk Down multiplayer).
My brother built a gaming PC and it did run Crysis, although it didn’t run it on the highest setting (one below that). I played a little bit of Crysis on that PC when the game came out and it was stunning. It looked amazing and the gameplay was fun. In many ways, it was indeed a jaw-dropping experience.
Fast forward to 2020, and Crysis has been remastered. Now the game is available on PS4 and Xbox One (and Nintendo Switch), and yes PC as well with a new “Can It Run Crysis?” graphics mode. I can’t speak to the PC version and that mode, but I can the PS4 version.
Sadly, this remastering is neither stunning nor fun.
Crysis Remastered (PS4 [Reviewed], PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Crytek
Publisher: Crytek
Released: September 18, 2020
ESRB Rating: M – Mature
MSRP: $29.99
I believe there’s still more that Crytek can do with the Crysis franchise, but this remaster of the original game isn’t going to help garner interest in revitalizing the series. That’s because the remastered game still looks and plays in an outdated fashion.
The original PC release was graphically stunning and the gameplay felt good. Now in 2020, the game world itself still looks decent but the textures throughout are dated. Sure the lighting is good and there’s tons of foliage, but outside of that textures everywhere are bad and it just makes the world look dull.
Crysis Remastered has three modes in the graphics settings: Quality, Performance, and RayTracing. The RayTracing mode offers up the first RayTracing seen on the current gen of consoles, and is something that is being highly touted on the coming generation. But its only seen in certain areas and the performance takes a noticeable hit when in this mode, so it’s not worth being in it (reviewing the PS4 Pro version). Likewise, you’ll see performance take a hit when in the Quality mode as well because the frame rate is locked at 31 which doesn’t feel smooth, making the Performance mode really the only way to go.
Unfortunately, even in Performance mode there’s still issues. Performance mode uncaps the frame rate, so you’re bouncing between 40 and 60 though it seems fairly steady most of the time. There are of course dips when there’s a lot going on, but a bigger problem is the jarring stuttering every time the game begins to auto-save or you reach a checkpoint.
I could look past the dated look and the performance issues if the game was fun to play, but sadly even here the game feels dated and clunky.
Shooting is mostly decent, but the enemy AI can be absurdly accurate at all times and combined with the slow feeling of the game even when on a high sensitivity and the occasionally hard to see enemy makes things at times tedious when playing on higher difficulty settings.
The suit mechanics have always been nice, but now feel dated and slow. Your stamina drains ridiculously fast if you run for a couple of seconds, the stealth/invisible mechanic seems to not matter a quarter of the time, and jumping also drains the stamina way too much considering how slow and clunky it is to do.
The game feels like a chore to play, and I didn’t finish it because it’s just not fun to play. The story isn’t remotely compelling enough to see it through to completion either when you already know it.
Crysis Remastered is more a remastering of the poor port to PS3 and X360 than it is the original PC release. And that’s a shame. This is a franchise that could still have lots to offer and could be a graphical benchmark, but this remastering doesn’t help the franchise move forward any.
This remaster is poor and unnecessary. There’s some impressive illumination, and the water particularly, but it feels like a 2007 barebones game given a poor port in 2011 and then that port remastered in 2020.
It would’ve cost Crytek a lot more to develop, and players a lot more than $30, but I feel like 13 years after release this is a game that should’ve been either rebooted or remade from the ground up. This remaster just doesn’t cut it, and sadly won’t do anything to garner interest in a new title in the franchise.
Crysis Remastered gets a two out of five: FORGETTABLE.
* A digital code was provided by the publisher for review.
