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Crysis Remastered Review


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169691079_CrysisRemasteredboxart.jpg.121adbda97ced9e56eba36cffc492cde.jpgIf you're a developer known for porting high-end games to the Switch, what better title to bring over than the legendarily visually intense FPS of 2007? Crysis makes its Nintendo console debut with Crysis Remastered via port developer Saber Interactive, bringing its mix of fast-paced shooting action, stealth mechanics, and detailed jungle island environments. Getting the game to run smoothly on the Switch is itself quite an accomplishment, but maybe the so-so gameplay wasn't worth porting over in the first place.
 
You play as an elite soldier equipped with a special nano suit that can be toggled to increase your speed, camouflage you, or give you armor. Your squad is dropped onto a North Korean island where you're tasked with rescuing a group of American archeologists, and suffice it to say things take a turn for the weird fairly quickly. The story really isn't anything special and I doubt many players were looking for a deep narrative in an FPS that was entirely marketed around its high quality graphics, but it still would have been nice to have something more engaging in the writing than "go here, flip a switch" or "go here, fight some enemies" over and over. Even when the real plot kicks in the storytelling simply lacks oomph.
 
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It's probably worth jumping right into the visual design, since that was always the hook with Crysis. And yeah, the game looks pretty slick on the Switch, though it comes with some caveats. The huge environments are rendered nicely and the destructible environments are fun to mess with. The game's art style is a bit bland, but there's only so much you can do with realistic jungles, guns, and soldiers. You'll probably run into some frame rate dips when there's a lot happening, and objects in the distance can look like they're stuttering sometimes, but overall it doesn't interrupt the gameplay much. There are also long loading screens at the beginning of each mission, but on the flip side there are no load screens when you're just running around, and even dying/reloading is super quick. Overall though, it's impressive how the game runs on Switch hardware.
 
Crysis is an extremely open FPS, meaning you can choose to run around and get into big gun fights with groups of enemies, or you can take a stealthy approach using your suit's camouflage abilities, dipping in and out of the jungle foliage like the Predator. The environments are destructible and you can pick up small objects and hurl them at enemies, and you can jump into basically any vehicle—including tanks—and go for a joy ride while taking out every enemy you run across. In principle, this level of freedom is great and allows you to shape your experience with the game however you want.
 
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In practice though, neither approach feels great. The gunplay isn't all that satisfying due to some finicky controls and an overall lack of gun variety. Shooting doesn't have the snappy feedback that makes FPS games fun, and even the gyro controls are a bit lacking (you'll probably want to spend a lot of time adjusting the sensitivity of the controls, but even after a lot of experimentation I just wasn't satisfied with what the game offered). Enemies are also so quick to react to you and so accurate that you kind of feel underpowered throughout most of the game, hardly the super-suit-powered soldier that you're made out to be.
 
Stealth isn't much better. Again enemies will spot you from a mile away so you kind of have to overcompensate by strictly sticking to crouching or crawling through bushes. Your stealth suit ability is super useful but the power runs out quickly, so you'll need to duck into a bush and wait for it to recharge. Every weapon can be equipped with a suppressor but you don't actually have many ways of isolating enemies to take them out without anyone noticing. Weirdly enough the most effective strategy tends to be simply sprinting to the objective, completing whatever you need, and running away instead of actually engaging with enemies. A game with a lot of freedom in how you approach problems needs to make sure that every approach is fun and interesting, but that's just not really the case with Crysis.
 
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The weirdest part is that all that freedom you've been playing with abruptly stops about halfway through the game as the story pushes you into a more structured, linear path. There's nothing wrong with a linear FPS, but it's a bit jarring to go from a more open-world structure to a corridor shooter. Crysis will only take you around eight or ten hours to finish, and unless you want to challenge yourself on higher difficulty modes or really try to experiment with different approaches there aren't many replay incentives here.
 
Crysis Remastered is an impressive feat on the Switch from a technical perspective, but the actual gameplay leaves something to be desired. The mix of stealth and all-out combat in destructible environments feels like a jack of all trades, master of none situation where neither the stealth nor the gunplay is as polished and satisfying as it should be. Playing Crysis on a Switch, especially in handheld mode, is a neat entry in gaming history, but as an actual game it's maybe not worth the time.
 
Rating: 6 out of 10 Crises
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