I’ll always remember that as a teen, the Crysis series was a benchmark in how games could look and perform on hardware that may not have been ready for such beauty. The running joke of “can it run Crysis?” was being thrown around because that’s just how big the game’s series was at perpetuating that train of thought.

Fast-forward 8 years following the third game’s release and now we have the Crysis Remastered Trilogy. This trilogy promised some big things for higher-end PCs and next-gen consoles such as up to 4k resolution and a 60fps cap for the smoothest Crysis experience yet.

There was obviously a lot riding on this trilogy because of the original games’ reputation. So the real answer is; does this remastered trilogy continue the benchmark of if something can run Crysis? Unfortunately, and with great disappointment, no.

Gameplay

I’d only played the multiplayer portions of 2 and 3 in the past so getting my hands a bit more dirty in its gameplay and refreshing myself on it was one of the things I look forward to in replaying these games. The latter two games in the series offer some pretty unique mechanics that helped evolve the FPS genre a bit with most being a normal thing we see in games today.

The nano-suit upgrades are pretty interesting to dig into and don’t seem to run the course of being overexuberant at all. Each has its definite useful touches that offer something worth using. Aside from the abilities though, my favorite aspect of gameplay is the fact that gun attachments can be toggled on the fly.

As I stated though, these games are first and foremost first-person shooters. So, how well do they stack up against modern shooters? Well, it’s a heavily mixed bag for me. All of the games have pretty open levels or worlds that offer a nice bit of exploration. This has been a staple of more shooters currently with titles like Far Cry 6 and Deathloop showing that ideas like that are still prevalent to this day.

Where the games show their age though is in the actual gunplay mechanics. The best experience is in the third title with each getting slowly worse as you make your way backward. 2 is serviceable enough but I’d say that the first is near unplayable.

The camera no matter how sensitive you make it is just a stiff mess. To add insult to injury, frames will drop heavily as you try just to turn the camera left and right. talk about motion sickness. It makes combat excruciating and downright insulting. I can’t imagine how the devs tested this game and said to themselves “this seems like players would enjoy it”. It’s probably the worst shooter I’ve played since the Xbox 360/PS3 generation.

Visuals

Just like its gameplay, the original Crysis continues to display the fact that it’s aged like milk that’s been left out for 14 years. I’ve seen remastered captures of how this game looks on PC and compared to consoles, it’s pretty horrid. I’m sure that there’s a visible difference between this version and the original but I still wouldn’t say that this is the definitive way to play Crysis.

Whereas the first is hard on the eyes, its predecessors aren’t. Crysis 2 is a much better-looking game even if not really looking like a next-gen title. Lighting and textures are much better than in its original version and that goes for Crysis 3 as well. It’s a more fleshed-out visual experience, even if not perfect.

The third is hands-down the best looking but still doesn’t blow you away by its visuals. Comparing this version to the original, it’s evident that there’s an improvement. But that game already looked amazing back then so I had expected this one to blow me away as well, which it really didn’t.

What It Could Have Done Better

In all honesty, for the price of Crysis Remastered Trilogy, I would’ve hoped that the games looked and played a lot better than they did. It’s a shame that Crytek and Saber Interactive took the easy and lazy route of just doing the bare minimum needed in order to even consider these remasters.

Some remasters do way more in terms of what’s offered to players, beyond even just visuals or performance. I recently reviewed the new Alan Wake Remastered and loved that the game included the extra DLC and multiple commentaries to sweeten the pot even more. That’s the right way to do it. This trilogy of remasters offers nothing more than a slight facelift if that.

Verdict

Crysis Remastered Trilogy offers players some of gaming’s most revolution titles from 14 years ago, showing how much further we’ve come and that we shouldn’t set our expectations too high for remasters. Though 2 and 3 offer better visuals and gameplay overall, $49.99 is sort of a steep price when other modern open-world FPS titles offer that and then some. I’d say that on console at least, you should wait to get this on a Black Friday sale.