Stepping on the Beach
Crysis Remastered is a remaster of the console version of Crysis released in 2007 and features new visual features such as improved textures and the inclusion of depth of field, global illumination, ray tracing, and 8k compatibility. Crysis is a physics based first person shooter A player will take control of Nomad, a special forces operative in Raptor team that has been assigned to go to the Lingshan Islands after North Korean forces took over the island. On the island are archeologists who have sent a distress call detailing an amazing discovery. Nomad and Raptor team equipped with Nanosuits are being sent to drive out the North Korean forces and to retrieve the archeologists on the Island.
Raptor Team are all equipped with Nanosuits, a set of armor that allows its wearers to gain superhuman strength, massive boosts in speed, armor that reduces the damage of bullets, and a cloaking ability allowing the user to become invisible. With this culmination of powers, Nomad and his squad mates Psycho, Aztec, Jester, and Prophet must comb through the jungle to find the archeologists and rid the island of North Korean troops. But things soon go sideways for the player as what the archeologists have discovered become alive once again.
Archeologists on the island had been studying the remains of a race of aliens known as the Ceph. While scanning the numerous artifacts and pieces of alien technology, the alien race started to become sentient. While fighting through the jungle equipped with the best weaponry that the United States military can provide, a new, more devastating enemy begins to reveal itself. Thus, it is up to the player to stop not only the North Korean forces but also forces from light years away.
The slow build of anticipation and confusion continues to grow as Nomad’s team slowly gets picked off in the jungle in more horrific ways. Leaving the player to become a lone gunman to eliminate the threat as other members of the team are separated or eliminated. With bullets, bombs, superhuman powers, and stealth the player will be tasked to eliminate anything in their way to saving the planet.
Nice Suit! Where Did You Get It?
The Nanosuit is going to be the player’s lifeline, their best tool for any situation due to the adaptability of the suit’s functions. Armor mode will enable the player to take more of a beating and survive situations otherwise deadly. Strength enables the player to hit harder, jump higher, control their weapons with more accuracy, and be able to pick up enemies with their bare hands, using them for a human shield before tossing them to their death. Speed mode makes the player run faster, swim faster, reload faster, and even aim down sights faster. Finally, Cloak mode turns the player character invisible and difficult to see while also lowering the sound that they emit.
These multitude of modes creates a great breadth of player options for them to choose from. Each of these options are available to the player with a single keystroke, allowing them to switch between modes with ease and be able to adapt to the situation at hand. Going from taking an onslaught of lead bullets in armor mode then sprinting away in speed mode, feels natural and easily done. There are plenty of scenarios where the player is able to engage with this adaptation such as going from cloaking behind the enemy to picking them up in strength mode. There are plenty of situations that will require the player to play with the nanosuit’s numerous functions, and often they are rewarded for their creativity with life, liberty, and a lot of bodies and rubble.
Walk Softly and Carry a Better Gun
There are 11 different weapons that are available to the player. Being a first-person shooter, gunplay and feel are vital for the player experience, and in Crysis Remastered the gunplay does feel decent but not perfect. Guns range from the simple pistol to the mini-gun style Alien Loar but for the most part a player is going to be using the two assault rifles, scar & FY71, along with the shotgun, submachine gun, pistol, and sniper rifle. All of these different guns are then able to be further customized such as adding a sight to the guns, flashlights, or even equipping an under-barrel grenade launcher. Players as they trudge through the island will be able to make each gun tailored to their needs.
The act of firing a gun in game will have noticeable weight and a good visual “kick” that makes the guns feel powerful. But they’re not. I played through the entirety of the campaign on normal difficulty. If a player were to follow in my footsteps, they may be confused by the sheer number of bullets that it may require to take down a single human or alien enemy. A player is going to have a moment of severe confusion when they realize that they have fired 15 bullets at an enemy only for them to fire right back littered with bullet holes.
While guns may feel like they pack a punch, it’s more of a slap in reality. The only guns that seemingly avoid this problem are the sniper rifle, explosive charges, and the gauss rifle. These few weapons feel like they do damage and in turn deal damage. It’s strange to fire a missile launcher only for it to go poof. It’s jarring to see and more jarring to experience at times.
This brings up the lack of ammunition that a player is going to deal with. Crysis has already been known for the foraging that players will need to engage in to stay stocked up on ammo and grenades. Players will pick up their starting gun, the scar, and will soon find that keeping that weapon will be close to impossible. Players will toss that gun into a bush once they realize that the most readily accessible ammo is just whatever guns are left around after killing everyone on sight. The player will get used to looking at the ground, mashing the “F” key near any dead bodies to scavenge for lead.
The loop still works perfectly well though. Each fight becomes a battle not only of accuracy and destruction but of resources as well. As you clear out enemy encampments the available guns and ammunition become your tools for the next enemy encampment. This loop unfortunately isn’t perfect. As stated, before the actual damage that the players will deal seems a bit low, but the AI enemies are the ones throwing a monkey wrench into the process.
Best Gunman This Side of the Mississippi
Enemies are sharpshooters, the kind that can shoot a fly’s wings off while in midair and every soldier has 25/25 vision that can spot you from a mile away. They are insanely accurate and are a better shot than you by a country mile. Guns will not be as accurate from far away for the player. The player’s sight may be lined up right on a sniper’s head, but the bullet won’t hit its target if they’re far away. Enemies don’t have such a constraint.
The enemy are monstrous warriors, but they have the intellect of AI designed in 2007. This makes for strange scenarios, such as being stuck in a hut with low ammo and not wanting to leave the building out of fear of getting annihilated by the 5 enemies outside. The player would think that maybe it’s time to bolt for the tree line or go out fists blazing ready to take on the world bare handed. But the player won’t have to. Wait a long enough time, the enemies will gladly just walk through the hut door, place their throat right in the players hands, and wait to die. It makes for some great instances of slapstick comedy, but doesn’t make the player really be the nanosuited, super soldier that we are playing as.
Stealth is also greatly hindered by the AI. The game has a litany of options for stealthy gameplay and silent ways to deal with the enemy, but players will have a difficult time using these tools. Being spotted is dirt easy, but being an unseen assassin is harder than steel. Which might sound particularly odd because players are able to turn invisible! But even invisibility isn’t infallible to the amazing vision insurance that North Korea apparently provides.
Cloaking or turning invisible becomes a near useless tool. Many times, enemies will be at random spots in the jungle so by the time you have figured out their location, enemies will already be aware of your presence. The only time I was personally able to do a stealthy run through a base without getting spotted immediately after 2 or 3 kills, was when I refused to ever be visible for the entirety of the base. It was challenging and fun to do, but not because it seemed like an intentional level of skill required to be stealthy, but because I felt like I was cheating the game.
That’s ultimately the problem, enemies are not challenging to the player, they are just better. They can see better, shoot better, and apparently have x-ray vision. This isn’t a deal breaker as much as it is a hindrance upon the gameplay loop that the game is wishing to enrapture the player in. They are the massive potholes on a smooth highway.
Life May Be a Highway, But Mine’s The 305
Crysis Remastered also features different vehicles for the players to use for their mission. Trucks, Humvees, boats, and even VTOL jets. Players will most often though use the Humvee or gun boat. These are tough machines that are used every now and then by the player, and most often will have a machine gun that is operable by the player while they drive (unless you play on a difficulty higher than normal). These vehicles were a fun inclusion to the game and also showed some of the physics engine’s capabilities such as destroying huts by driving into them.
These are often just scattered around the map at different points. Players won’t be able to drive these vehicles for too long. Humvees and gun boats are useful to the player, but often they will just have to hoof it on foot. There are bigger vehicles that you can use such as the VTOL jet or Tank, but these were often for small sections of the game and not a freely accessible vehicle that you find throughout the game. In the case of the VTOL jet, it lasted all but part of a mission, but it was still fun to pilot. So, while the vehicles are not used often, players will enjoy the short time that they have with them.
An Object in Motion, Stays in Motion
Many of the huts and shacks that you encounter are fully destructible. All enemies ragdoll once killed and are impacted by explosive blasts, leading to soldiers being blasted into the stratosphere. It’s a great use of physics and does add a good level of destruction to the action. Nothing is more nerve racking than a helicopter shooting down a player’s roof and it lands on top of them. The extra level of destructibility adds an appropriate level of chaos to a fight and in turn makes more diverse scenarios for the player to fight in.
Bugbears, Glitches, And Programming Errors, Oh My!
It’s unfortunate to experience, but I had numerous bugs that began to appear as I played through the game. They were consistent and often put a damper on the fun of being a super soldier. The glitch that reared its ugly head the most was one that wouldn’t allow the player to switch their weapons. Instead, the player will be stuck with whatever weapon that they happened to have out. Often this would happen after a player has died and then must respawn, so whatever gun the player had out at that time they were stuck with. This was infuriating to deal with at times. It happens seemingly randomly and yet consistently. It happened to me when my pistol had no ammo, so I had to keep running into battle pistol whipping people until I died enough times for the glitch to pass.
Players may also experience some crashes along the way, particularly between loading in new levels between missions. Past these two big errors, there are a bunch of little bugbears that show up occasionally. Things such as being cloaked and sneaking behind an enemy only for them to instantly turn around and pelt you with pullets though you’re invisible to the naked eye and made no sound. A player may also have some weird bugs involving picking up guns for ammo, as they may see the gun on the ground and press “F” to pick it up, but Nomad will stare at that weapon and do nothing.
Mission Accomplished… Well Close Enough
In conclusion, Crysis Remastered is a good time, but unfortunately it does suffer from not only having some disruptive glitches, but also in the gameplay itself. The game, while still enjoyable, shows a lot of age in its design. The core gameplay loop of fighting, then looting, then fighting some more still works, but since then many games have come out that takes this loop and makes it much more enjoyable. The old timey story of the super soldier vs. the world also suffers as plenty of players have heard of such a story so many times by this point in the history of video games.
Crysis Remastered is a good bit of nostalgia that can appeal to players who want to reminisce about the early days of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Those that are looking for a fun and quick shooter game will also find a lot of enjoyment from Crysis Remastered, but don’t expect the reinvention of the wheel because Crysis invented the wheel in the first place.
