Crysis Remastered Review

Crysis is back again. Long-time gamers will know the long-dead but legendary meme of “Can it run Crysis?” Now in 2020, however, it seems everything can run Crysis to varying degrees of success. As a benchmark title, the original Crysis was a game known to be mechanically demanding and known for its high graphical fidelity. Crysis Remastered was made to take that one step further with new graphical properties, a fresh coat of paint, and a higher price tag, while also bringing the beloved title to current-gen consoles and this generation’s PC gamers.

A Legacy Re-lived?

For those who have never played the original Crysis, it is a first-person military stealth shooter. You play as a super-soldier codenamed Nomad on a hostage rescue mission on a paradise island against an army of North Koreans, until an alien entity appears and his whole mission gets thrown off. The plot is still nothing remarkable and quite plain. The narrative cuts between gameplay feel like they’re just there to provide an excuse to move on to the next stage and kill more soldiers, then rinse, and repeat.

Like most first-person shooter protagonists, Nomad lacks a personality but is equipped with a super-suit that arms him with extraordinary capabilities such as super-speed and strength, a synthetic bulletproof armor, and a stealth cloak.

These elements make Crysis stand above other plain first-person shooters, making the gameplay incredibly fun while also simultaneously tedious. Using your cool Nano suit to dispatch hordes of Korean soldiers, is still very cool and sometimes even thrilling. You can jump impossible heights, run as fast as a car, and throwing enemies into the ocean is still as fun as it used to be. It’s just too bad that these skills have a very limited window of use before going into cool down, which often takes the fun out of using them, especially as there is no way of upgrading them.

What’s worse is the inconsistent AI that hasn’t changed much since the original game. One minute, a solider can pick you off from a mile away; the next, you’ll be at point-blank range, and they won’t even notice you. Additionally, the enemies will take multiple rounds of ammunition just to take down, and the enemy AI considerably gets worse during the later levels as most fans of the original game can attest to.

Tools of the Trade

When not using your artificial superpowers, you’ll be gunning down enemies with the multiple albeit limited variety of weapons in the game. These are your standard pistols and machine guns you’ll find in other shooters. However, in Crysis, there’s this cool option of modifying your weapon with an enhancer or scope with just a push of a button. You can also quickly switch to firing mode to gun down multiple enemies at point-bank range. These options admittedly often come in handy and take the stress out of managing gun upgrades, which of course can either be a good or bad thing depending on the player.

Now in terms of the game’s magnum opus, which are the graphics, Crysis Remastered no doubt kicks things into high gear by upscaling the environmental visuals, adding ray tracing, and unsurprisingly, full 8K support. While I didn’t play this on a monster rig of a PC (like most players) and instead, a PS4 Pro, the difference in graphical fidelity between the original is still very much noticeable. The island’s greenery is lush and vibrant, the ocean is much more reflective, and dare I say, looks pretty, and the game overall looks better than it’s ever has.

The only part of the visuals that’s barely seen any change are the highly dated character models, which will make you remember that you’re, in fact, playing a retouched game from 2007. Other than that, I’d say the game is pretty much unchanged in every other department, especially with the aged UI, which received no change whatsoever.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Crysis Remastered lives up to be an adequate remaster, at least in terms of graphics and nothing more. If you’re a fan of shooters, you will no doubt find a better experience in another game, but if you’re a hardcore Crysis fan, you can buy the remastered version to test how good your rig is or just to keep the meme alive. It’s not a full priced game, and there’s always a worse way to spend your money.

This review is based on an early copy provided by the publisher

Have you played the original Crysis game? What do you think of my Crysis Remastered review? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.