Crysis Remastered | Review, always beautiful and very heavy
The game was successful and two sequels were produced, beautiful but not as visually striking as the first chapter. The CryENGINE has since evolved, however, showing itself as always of the highest level, improving more and more on the lighting and effects side and remaining one of the best engines on the square. Thirteen years later, Crytek tries to bring back the spirit of the first chapter through Crysis Remastered, a technical retelling of the first game, which tries to revive the wonderful visual spectacle of 2007, however, without fully succeeding.
War Machine
Crysis Remastered maintains the same gameplay and narrative characteristics of the 2007 original, finding old characters and the same gunplay feel. The game puts us in the shoes of Nomad, a soldier belonging to the Raptor team, an elite of special forces trained to be able to use the nanosuit, an armor that allows you to jump higher, increase your strength and be able to become temporarily invisible to the eyes of enemies.Set in 2020, Nomad, along with his team, must infiltrate a tropical island in the Lingshan archipelago to rescue some American scientists taken hostage by the North Korean army.
After a first exploration and some fighting, we realize that a greater danger is hitting the island. Nomad is therefore forced to face a double enemy and save his companions, while trying to clarify the mysterious events of the island itself.
The story, which has remained untouched, is still enjoyable and amusing, although not particularly exciting or exhilarating. For all those who have never had the opportunity to play it, it could still leave a positive memory.
Regarding the gameplay, however, there are structural problems. First of all, artificial intelligence, which proves to be static and not very reactive to situations, making the enemies seem almost like dummies ready only to be hit. There is a lack of strategy and cunning in the ideas in firefights, placing us in front of a difficulty calibrated downwards.
To provide further criticism of the game model is the gunplay, that is to say the feeling of the whole shooting component, remained identical to 2007 and consequently not very fluid and particularly woody. The general gameplay remains varied, with the possibility of being able to use different skills and weapons to be able to eliminate our opponents in completely different ways. Even the sandbox environment, which allows us to complete side missions and explore the island, remains enjoyable, even if dated in concept.
Is Crysis spinning?
Was Crysis truly a brick in the 2007, no ifs and buts. To tell the truth, over time, its heaviness on modern PCs has also been unjustifiable, due to a very poor optimization. We do not know if Crytek wanted to keep this tradition, but Crysis Remastered remains an extremely heavy title, even with recently released graphics cards.With the maximum settings "We run Crysis" the game struggles to reach 60 FPS in native 4K with a 3080, while for Full HD at 60 FPS a 2060 is almost necessarily required. To tell you, with an RTX 2080Ti, the game does not go beyond 35FPS on average. For complete tests, we are waiting for an official patch that should improve performance, but the results so far testify to a decidedly complex title to run. In the next few hours we will complete the review with the final bench results
Now, is all this justifiable? In fact, while it has actually improved on the original, introducing a number of additional features such as 4K textures, better lighting and ray tracing on reflections, we believe the game is not optimized particularly well. To be honest we do not understand how this is possible, since the Nintendo Switch version is well made and even the console version, despite some problems, do not run with such difficulty.
Obviously, we emphasize once again, that we are talking of a graphically exceptional game still today, with almost total environmental destructibility and a simply extraordinary use of physics. The visual impact, therefore, still remains in step with the times, but with some rather evident criticalities in terms of performance.
Xbox One version
In addition to the game on PC, we have also got to play the Xbox One X version of the title in question. While maintaining a resolution close to native 4K with good graphics details - most likely a near medium preset - the game holds up well, showing the side to some drop in the most agitated situations.We have read critical opinions towards the console version, but to be honest we didn't find ourselves in an “unplayable” situation. Keep in mind, however, that the title doesn't run at 60FPS on consoles, but at 30FPS. Crytek's extraordinary work, however, is a sort of ray tracing implemented on Xbox One X - and PS4 PRO - which once again testifies to the incredible nature of CryENGINE.
