Crysis was launched in 2007, making it a teenager now. During her day, Crysis was the pageant princess, making PC’s fall over her. Running Crysis at high graphics was an honour for gamers and overclockers. Everybody fought to prove that they had the highest FPS in Crysis. Crysis became a kingmaker: this is the game that made many of the YouTube channels that we love, it is the game that got tons of people that we love into overclocking. There is very little to say about Crysis that hasn’t been said before.

Now that Crysis is a teenager, her pageant daddy Crytek put makeup on her and sent her back out into the world. While we are happy to see Crysis again we have to ask the question of does she still hold up to her legend? Not only the question of how pretty she looks but also is she as much as fun as we remember to play. Here GenericGamingBlog we care more about the gameplay than how the graphics compare in the modern-day.

Story:

North Korean forces have taken control of an island where Dr Rosenthal and his team of archaeologists are working. The archaeologists send out a distress signal that is picked up by the United States of AMURICA who deploy a special forces team wearing highly experimental Nano suits to track down the archaeologists and bring them back home.

The story follows one member of this team: Nomad as he finds his squad losing men, finds himself losing ground to the enemy while trying to stay alive on an island he doesn’t know while facing the opposing forces of man and the unknown.

The story is cookie-cutter, to say the least, and really forgettable while being delivered in the Half-Life style of always being in first person. Unlike Half-Life, however; Nomad is not a silent protagonist and while not the most aggressive of soldiers, he has no problem calling out bullshit when he sees it. The story doesn’t connect you to Nomad in the least but it doesn’t make him feel worthless at the same time. It’s just that he is not as likeable as his colleague Psycho or his leader Prophet.

The story ends on a cliff hanger which is kind of sad because I can’t remember if Crysis Warhead finished the story.

Sound:

The music score in-game sounds crisp, while silent when wandering around the world it changes according to the level of chaos going on around Nomad. In heavy combat it ups the tempo and noise but in stealthy combat it’s more relaxed and adds a feeling of intensity. In neither case is it too loud or too soft, it is always just about right.

The world makes it’s fair share of noise too. There is always the sound of trees rustling in the wind, the water rippling or more active things like grass being crushed under feet and the sound of machine gun or artillery fire going on somewhere close by. In the alien hive there is always the sound of the tons of machinery that makes up that level causing a constant stir somewhere or the other. All these little things really show an attention to detail by the sound design team.

When designing the guns the team just went ‘PUMP IT! LOUDER!’ all the weapons have barks much worse than their bites. All the weapons seem loud and I love it. The grenades and explosives pack such huge vocal punches that their effects look like nothing in comparison. Same can be said for the shotgun which just goes bang so loudly you think someone fired an artillery shell nearby. The weapon sounds are really good and add to the overall game.

Finally is the voice acting which sounds decent but the writing makes it really cringe-worthy. You can tell that the voice actors thought the same about the writing because it doesn’t feel like they have put their heart into it. Thankfully the story that is delivered by the voice acting doesn’t improve the game but I appreciate that it is there.

Graphics:

Crysis was graphically unbelievable when it launched in 2007. 13 years later the core game still looks better than some modern-day shooters that get released in 2020. Since Crytek was mad enough to set standards for 2007 they should have some equally mad standards for the remaster of the game that defined the graphics of a generation. They said there would be ray tracing in the remaster, they said that tons of stuff would be upgraded and that Crysis would look better than ever.

Welp! they lied, Crysis Remastered looks amazing on initial inspection but once you get to the nitty-gritty there are problems. The lighting and draw distance are definitely upgraded and do deserve praise but the textures don’t do the game justice, when you get up close to the foliage, they look like something out of the last generation of video games. They are dull, pixelated and blurry. Rocks, roads and mountains have been upgraded a bit but not enough to make them look like a modern Crysis which is sad. The main growth that Crysis Remastered has over the original is that the world as a whole seems a lot more vibrant, the brown is long gone making other colours pack more of a punch.

The special effects have been upgraded as well. It’s just that they haven’t been upgraded enough. Cloak mode for example looks fantastic but it looked fantastic in 2007 as well, it has definitely been upgraded but it is not a big enough upgrade to make me go wow. Except for lighting and water that is true for all the special effects: they are upgrades but not upgraded enough for the title of Crysis. That is not to say they don’t look great, everything from smoke to explosions look really good but with Crysis you expect more.

Crytek knew that they had made amazing graphics and effects way back when so when it came time to make a remaster, they didn’t need to go all out to re-produce everything and were able to reuse a lot of what they had made in the past. The problem with remastering a game while reusing old material is finding the perfect balance which Crytek didn’t and reused more assets than they should have. A lot of effects that aren’t on the nose should have been redone from scratch instead of being reused which wasn’t done. Instead only the overwhelming effects like god rays were upgraded so that the marketing guys had something to show off which is always a stupid move since the people actually playing the game would notice this lack of work. The most obvious of these is the really low textures on the grass and bushes.

Gameplay:

Crysis puts you in the shoes of a soldier, codenamed Nomad with only a nano suit to his name. The suite can absorb bullets normally but can go into an armour mode to deflect bullets, run faster in speed mode, jump higher and do more melee damage in strength mode or cloak in stealth mode. In the original game, each ability had to be specifically called but the abilities have been made passive in the remaster. ‘Shift’ which is the standard run key in most games puts Nomad into a high-speed sprint. Holding down the melee key is a strong punch and holding space to jump makes a strong high jump. The only abilities that have a unique key are the armour and cloak. I would have preferred the armour being the default mode like it was in the original Crysis but I guess this works too.

The catch with the abilities is that they all need energy. Since cloak and armour are abilities that need to be toggled, they constantly drain energy when activated. Armour saps more energy as it absorbs bullets while cloak drains energy faster the faster Nomad moves, this causes the player to decide if they want to move short distances fast or go prone and cover a longer distance much slower when cloaked. Cloak also exhausts energy when Nomad fires his weapon so it makes sense to aim, turn off the cloak, fire and go back into cloak mode if you need to sneak through enemy bases.

Weapons are run of the mill. That isn’t to say they aren’t fun but we know all of them from games past. There are the standard assault rifles, shotguns, pistols and rocket launchers. While nothing new in terms of types of weapons each of them does feel heavy and moves like a beast. The shotgun especially packs quite a punch, you don’t even need to fire at an enemy to feel the force that it has. There are two exotic weapons like the gauss rifle which fires slowly but does a ton of damage and an alien minigun with infinite ammo that can take out just about anything with enough bullets. While on the topic of weapons, the nano suit has a HUD that lets you quickly swap weapon mods from scopes, lasers and even grenade launcher addons. You can also cycle through firing modes with a quick key tap.

The nano suit wouldn’t be fun without a place to use it, thankfully Crysis has some great places to go nuts. The initial levels take place on an island with rickety shacks, dirt roads, trees and beaches to explore, though they might sound boring these are some of the most fun levels I’ve played in a really long time. The reason that they are so much fun is because they let players choose their own paths: the player can either follow the dirt road and go head-on into the enemy using armour and strength or go off the beaten path via the beaches using cloak and speed or they can find their own way using all of the abilities. It makes for some really organic gameplay since all the paths seem to have been designed well by the Crytek of old. There are multiple routes to take and once you choose a path you can always change your mind and go back to another. The last thing I would like to say about the earlier levels is that they have optional objectives which when carried out give you additional benefits that help the level later on like displaying enemies on radar or carrying out airstrikes against enemy bases.

The later levels on the other hand are a weak point because they are extremely linear, the exploration and routes from the earlier levels are gone. These levels are pure hardcore action resulting in the only suit ability getting a work out is armour. While these levels are unique going from inside an alien hive to a US navy ship, they feel too much like they belong in Call of Duty, there is creativity in these levels but there is no creativity in their flow making them linear shooters really quick. The optional objectives are gone as well killing any sense of player control.

The actual gameplay of Crysis is it’s selling point. The original game might have been sold on its graphics but since the upgrade isn’t enough of a graphical upgrade, we can safely turn to the gameplay to make sure Crysis Remastered is worth its asking price. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the gameplay in Crysis Remastered is solid and it should be since it is the same as the original. The original levels keep a complete fear of paranoia going when you are trying to pass the levels in a stealthy approach. The stealth approach is great fun since you find yourself sneaking past patrols on the roads and through enemy bases when you need to grab objectives. The cloak is really good when you need enemies to lose you as well giving you a chance to sneak up on them from behind before peppering them full of holes.

Even if you go on an assault route there is fun to be had. Initially in gunfights, you will find yourself taking cover quite often while you wait for your suit to recharge but once you get the hang of the controls there are few things as much fun as surprising an enemy patrol, killing the forward guard before running at a soldier while dodging bullets just to grab him before throwing him at his unsuspecting allies. You feel like a badass when you pull off these assaults that could only have been done by a super-soldier off. The sad thing is that in later levels you are so outnumbered and outgunned your main plan of attack becomes hit and run tactics. This is especially true in a boss fight against Koreans in nano suits where you have to pop up so that the enemies attack before going back into cover to take them out, this mission should have been really annoying but did one hell of a job of keeping the suspense going as you needed to think and take risks to beat it.

Conclusion:

Crysis Remastered has some decent graphical improvements going for it over the original that while stunning to look at aren’t enough to be the modern-day Crysis. Too many graphic effects are reused rather than upgraded but the core of Crysis: the gameplay has gotten some much-needed quality of life upgrades that make the game more friendly to play while at the same time not reducing the difficulty to serve the lowest common denominator. It’s still a fun, fast, exhilarating and occasionally tactical game that still shows modern games that linear corridors aren’t everything.

Pros	Cons
Fun initial missions	Average later missions
Insane graphics	Too many reused textures
Great sound and music	Poor dialogue
Weapons are fun to use	Too few weapons
Optimized Control Scheme	NA
Alright story	Story ends on a cliff-hanger