CRYSIS REMASTERED
More like ‘Should it run Crysis?’ at this point
Crytek used to be one of the most impressive development studios around when it came to tech. ‘Can it run Crysis?’ is a 13-year-old meme at this point, and for good reason. Once upon a time, Crytek’s semi-open world shooter was at the top of the pile, the sort of game you could play for hours just to ogle the scenery.
Time can be cruel, though. Even reprogrammed and dressed up with a fancy ‘Remastered’ moniker, Crysis can’t shake off the harrowing creases of time. Whether it’s in questionable, jingoistic setup of the game’s trigger-happy narrative, the predictable level design, the primitive AI, or the outdated gunplay, Crysis certainly doesn’t look as good once you take those rose-tinted glasses off.
STEALTH CHECK
In fact, it looks bad. And it plays worse. Despite promises to fix pre-release performance issues in a Day One patch, the game – at times – is practically unplayable. It doesn’t matter which mode you choose to run it in (Quality, Performance, or the PS4-Pro-exclusive RayTracing), you’re going to encounter bugs, glitches, and even hardware crashes at some point. This isn’t a well-optimised game. And even if you do get it working – the developer recommends a full reinstall to iron out some bugs! – you end up questioning if it’s worth it.
Considering this is a game that’s entering its adolescence, you’d expect a remaster to get the simple things right. But even with HDR turned off, you can cycle through all three modes and still end up playing a game beset by visual bugs: screen-tearing, frame-skipping, HUD errors, texture popin, shimmering red artifacts rendering into mountains and landscapes… the game runs the gamut of glitches and is practically migraine-inducing after a session of extended play. All of this is with the game running at just 30fps, too.
Worse yet, we stumbled across a selection of progression-affecting errors during our playthroughs, crashes that caused the game to close part-way through a cutscene and jumped us back to a checkpoint some ten minutes prior. If asking you to wade through this quagmire of dodgy programming once is irritating, asking you to do it twice is insulting.
If you can just about bear this almost Impressionist take on what Crysis should be, there’s a perfectly adequate story in store for you. A US Special Forces crew – an elite and utterly humourless crew of British, Mexican, and US stereotypes – drops into North Korea to investigate some archaeological anomalies and rescue a suspicious crew
“DOESN’T LOOK AS GOOD ONCE YOU TAKE THOSE ROSE-TINTED GLASSES OFF.”
of scientists. What follows is a checklist of mid-noughties FPS tropes set against a lush East Asian jungle environment and punctuated with a series of predictable narrative beats, subpar voice acting, and a jarring, weird score.
CRISIS INDEED
The freedom of choice you’re offered in how you approach your various objectives remains the game’s biggest selling point: are you going to armour up and go into a skirmish like a titanium-tough human wrecking ball? Or would you prefer to slip quietly into stealth mode and pop your targets one by one with a silencer and some brutal melee? The freedom you’re given to change up your gameplan on the fly and respond in realtime still lies at the heart of Crysis – it’s just a shame that some bizarre AI and flimsy weapon handling offsets that strategic freedom so harshly.
The game’s pacing picks up about halfway into the campaign, and the various tools you’re given to fend off the aliens and North Korean militia (yes, really) all start to work in tandem in the latter half of the game. The final few hours and the eventual payoff almost makes you forget about the gruelling slog it’s taken you to get there. Almost.
Compared to some of the other remasters we’ve seen landing on PlayStation over the last few years, which have been excellent, this product is downright insulting. To call it a remaster feels inauthentic; in many ways, it feels and runs worse than the original game.