Crysis Trilogy Remastered – PS4 Review

We reviewed Crysis Remastered  just over a year ago giving it a fair 8, so we were intrigued to receive Crysis Remastered Trilogy. We thought that it might be some kind of unified affair like the Master Chief Collection from those noisy neighbours in Redmond. But no, it turned out to be a bundle with the aforementioned Crysis Remastered plus the two numbered sequels, now with the Remastered suffix. We’ll keep our review focussed rather more on Crysis 2 Remastered and  Crysis 3 Remastered if you’ll forgive us that.

Apparently optimised for 4k displays, oddly Crysis Remastered is the only one of the three to get the RTX treatment. That’s not to say the two sequels are the ugly sisters here. They’re still revelatory if you ever played them on PS3/360. Or in our case ever played them at all to begin with. Unlike, say Rage or Quake from id software, these aren’t engines looking for a game, though Crysis 2 was the debut for CryEngine 3 at the time.

Crysis 2 Remastered then. After the far more free-form Crysis, this is much more a conventional FPS in terms of structure and game flow. Eshewing the actual jungle for the urban jungle of New York, the opening chapter sees you onboard a submarine attempting to infiltrate the city under the watchful eye of private military contractor CELL. They’re under contract to the US Department of Defense, so quite why your group of United States Marine Corps is trying to go in under CELL’s radar isn’t exactly clear to us.

What is clear, is that the plot is a mechanism to get you inside the distinctive nanosuit of an ally from the first game as you’re rescued from the stricken submarine when it comes under attack by the Ceph aliens, the villains of the first game.  The nanosuit saves your life of course and since it belonged to Prophet, everyone assumes you’re him and responds accordingly. With deadly force them. You’re not here for the plot though. You’re here to shoot lots of mercenaries and aliens in the face. The gunplay is on point we’re happy to report, even if the set pieces can come over a bit hackneyed otherwise.

You’re very much guided along a set path here in terms of plot and the enemies you’ll face. There’s high points, sure, but there’s also low points. We’re looking at you office siege. A bit of a throwback from when a horde mode was a new thing, it feels a bit overdone now. Getting attacked by enemies coming from all corners while also trying to deal with the helicopter gunship firing into the building wasn’t fun, even on default difficulty. Eventually you’ll meet up with a resistance cell who see you as the solution to all their problems, so once more unto the breach to see off the Ceph and CELL operatives, all of whom are out to get you.

These anthologies are fantastic value for the player, but when it comes to reviewing them, playing what were full fat releases in their day to completion is a big ask. So it was a little reluctantly that we took a break from our playthrough of Crysis 2 Remastered  to jump straight in to Crysis 3 Remastered, perhaps a little prematurely.

Crysis 3 Remastered is a direct sequel, with events following on directly from those of the second game. To the extent that in the intro, the ending of the second game is laid bare. Very much a refinement of that which came before, Crytek went with a hybrid of the first two games with an actual jungle on the site of New York. Only it’s under a dome and CELL are still running the show.

The Ceph are still about and it’s a very much a case of more of the same in some regards. That being bombastic set pieces at the end of an extended FPS sequence. This time you’ve a bow and arrow with various ordnance, including our favourite pinning enemies to the scenery. It’s very much like the crossbow in Half Life 2 in that regard, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

Both very much games of their time in terms of mechanics, graphically they still look pretty good despite their vintage. Thankfully Crytek haven’t gone with the lazy approach that Rockstar did with their laughable GTA Definitive Edition, sack that off and buy Crysis Trilogy Remastered instead. Proof that decent remasters are possible rather than being a blatant cash grab.