Crysis Remastered Trilogy Review – Yes, I Could Run It

Given that I previously reviewed Crysis Remastered, my feelings toward that entry still stand. However, when paired with Crysis Remastered 2 and Crysis Remastered 3, the offering becomes a bit more appetizing. Crysis Remastered Trilogy brings together the complete package and offers what is arguably a compelling first-person shooter experience that may be considered dated. No, not because of its graphics, but because of its single-player-only campaign.

Crysis Remastered gave players a semi-open world to get lost in and destroy; Crysis Remastered 2 delivered a more structured experience. Capitalizing on the narrative, we learn of the return of the alien threat, with New York acting as the battleground. A plague is also of concern, but the shady corporation of CELL uses this chaos to enact their control over the government and alien technology. Players take on the role of Prophet equipped with the Nanosuit, which allows the wearer superhuman strength and abilities.

The ability of armor and camouflage play a significant role during gameplay, but mission structure and levels are far more linear this time around. Sure, there’s intel to collect and a few different ways to get through situations, but you’re fully equipped to go in guns blazing if you want. Unfortunately, this design has been lost in current games that either force stealth on the player or create moments of chaos with little in between.

The in-game tools of the Nanosuit allows players to scope out the scenes, tag enemies, and approach the objective the way they want. I will say that the enemies are unforgiving, which is a trend throughout the series. Once an enemy spots you, there is no “huh, what was that?” they just start shooting, and every enemy in the area comes rushing.

Enemy AI is most formidable on the highest difficulty setting. They tend to hold back on the lower settings, which makes them do some dumb things, but you’ll likely catch them slipping at one point or another. The alien enemies are also pretty intimidating as they move around the levels at a fast pace inching closer to your location. Throughout the game, I enjoyed the shift in enemy design, but it boils down to simply reaching a checkpoint destination to progress.

Crysis Remastered 3 takes all the advancements of the sequel and delivers a genuinely great FPS experience. I don’t think this game is talked about enough today, but if you’ve followed the narrative up to this entry, it really builds on the characters and their struggle with the state of the world. CELL has taken over New York, and the world nears destruction as the Prophet tries to change the future.

Crysis Remastered 3 feels like it’s inspired by Predator as you literally hunt these operatives. Here, stealth gameplay is encouraged, but it’s still not the way you have to play if you don’t want to. Additionally, the environments and level designs have been expanded to include many lush areas that offer exploration moments for additional data logs and ways to approach enemy encounters.

I do think each entry of this trilogy deserves to be played in order. The narrative changes from a macho soldier adventure to an emotional and character-driven experience with memorable set pieces and deep systems. This collection delivers this to players in every aspect, save for a few hiccups during gameplay, such as getting stuck in the environment.

Crysis Remastered Trilogy features additional graphical updates. While the first entry in the series is a little rough around the edges, the sequels are stunning. It’d be difficult for those who haven’t played these games to guess that they came out years ago, with the only indicator being the lack of an online account level progression, microtransactions, and multiplayer. So it’s nostalgic in that sense to play a complete game from beginning to end and receive the entire experience.

It’s important to note that improved graphics seem to be the highlight of this remastered effort. However, significant features found in today’s FPS games were a part of Crysis, stealth kills, sliding, and weapon customization are present, but I couldn’t really tell if these systems had been tweaked for this release. Regardless, they work in execution.

Crysis Remastered Trilogy offers a memorable single-player FPS experience that every fan of the genre should play. Although modern gamers may only recognize the name from a meme shared by older PC nerds, it gives everyone a chance to play these games on modern hardware with optimized visuals. I feel like this was a needed release from developer Crytek. I hope they can muster up a follow-up that retains this single-player experience because this gaming generation needs it.