Crytek made a name for itself in the early 2000s, ultimatley losing the game engine war to Epics Unreal Engine 3. Whilst Ryse: Son of Rome still shines as its best technical achievement, Crysis is back. Presumingly testing the waters for a franchise reboot, Crysis: Remastered comes with a new Ray Tracing mode to bring it into the current generation.
Crysis: Remastered
Crysis: Remastered comes with three visual modes baked in. Firstly, performance mode rids the game of frame drops and screen tear alongside a drop in graphical fidelity. Secondly, the quality mode is littered with fluctuating frame rates and frequent screen tearing.
Lastly, ray-tracing mode is beautiful. Shadows and lighting bleed through Crysis: Remastered‘s flora and environments like nothing else. No frame rate or screen tearing instances were noted during our playthrough. Please note, this is based on Xbox One X performance, Results may differ on vanilla Xbox One hardware.
Crytek have given more options to players that were needed. Crysis: Remastered has graphical choice to make players see the difference in their ray tracing efforts. A Halo Anniversary treatment of switching presentations may have been a better route?
Who Is This Ray?
Ray-tracing makes me forget how good the original Crysis on max setting looked. It’s great to see thirteen-year-old game mechanics stand up in today’s industry.
There are few games that manipulate physics to display true realism. I spent a good ten minutes chopping down a jungle’s worth of palm trees with a turret just to test performance. The result was a clear field of view with zero performance issues.
Crysis: Remastered control layout is tight. The usual ‘Call of Duty’ aim and fire mechanics with suit power-ups mapped to the shoulder buttons works well. It’s a bit awkward using the menu button to access gun add ons however. A long press of facial buttons would have been a cleaner option.
An Inspiration to Spartans
The CrySuit abilities make me feel sorry for a Spartans’ limited range of capabilities. Bungie clearly took from inspiration from Crysis for 2010s Halo: Reach. Cloaking into an enemy encampment, picking off troops with a silenced rifle then using body armour to finish off what remains is priceless.
Crysis: Remastered doesn’t come with the amazing multiplayer the original had. Its understandable that servers cost money to maintain, but it was a really solid offering with well laid out maps. Even suit abilities worked well in death match settings.
Character animations hold up well, especially facial expressions. Whilst there are a few tells in regards to dating the game, once again some newer releases don’t hold up to the original Crysis. Character mapping is spot on in what is essentially a Jungle-based Guerrilla warfare gameplay focus, players won’t find any movement glitching or asset clipping here.
It’s a Sound Remaster
The sound engineering in Crysis: Remastered is beautiful. Players should take a moment to stand still and appreciate the palm trees swaying in the wind, wildlife sounds and environmental inclusions. Also, weapons pack a punch. Each bullet was felt thanks to the perfect sound engineering and use of feedback from the Xbox One Controller.
Crysis: Remastered is (probably) the easiest game to re-release in recent memory. It was such a solid title to kick off with, alls it needed was a next-gen feature to make it shine once again. What’s your opinion on remastering titles? Should the industry just stick to remaking titles instead of re-releasing classics? Let us know in the comments below.
