I don’t like Crysis series. I don’t know what is it about this type of an FPS that doesn’t quite click with me, but that’s how it is. Back when Crysis was melting PCs and Microsoft made their silly comparison of how DirectX 10 looks better than 9, I didn’t find the game actually fun to play. Visually stunning, truly an example of technology yet to come and very open-ended in its gameplay. But not fun. I did like Warhead a tiny bit more. Was bored throughout 2 and liked 3 a tiny bit as well. Now, with the Crysis Remastered announced (even if we lack details on the re-release), I decided that it was a good time to revisit the original and it’s spin-off. And now I understand these games a bit better than back 12 years ago.
Let’s start with the technological side of things, because that’s what people associate Crysis the most with. The game doesn’t look as groundbreaking as it used to today, of course. The most modern AAA titles and even more budget games running on newer versions of Unreal Engine, Unity and, yes, CryEngine as well, tend to have assets and vfx on par and better than what you got in Crysis titles in 2007 and 2008. But… That’s to be expected – those games introduced a lot of techniques and ideas that has since evolved and changed into better variations of themselves. Besides, it’s only the case today in 2020, but for many years since Crysis, there was nothing catching up to its quality in terms of pure technology, even if in terms of art design there have been games before or after that have a far more interesting and memorable look to them.
What’s more important is that despite the hardware enhancements, due to the limitations of that version of CryEngine, Crysis and Warhead aren’t running as well today as you’d expect them to. They weren’t well designed for multi-threaded performance, hell original Crysis isn’t even running that well with its x64 executable without additional tweaking. I decided to get into both games “raw”, without tweaks, mods or any changes. So I had the pure experience that you get with the current version of the games on GOG (which is the only way to get them without DRM, to this day). And that experience isn’t that smooth. Crysis can exhibit some visual glitches – some alpha effects not always work (shields on enemies, fire, some lighting), the game is very prone to crashing, especially if you have any sort of overlay running anywhere, the cutscenes are supper choppy on a 144Hz screen, seemingly because they’re hard locked to 30 and it doesn’t work well all the time or they just employ some effects that aren’t as optimized as what you get in gameplay. Warhead is a much more pleasant experience, but even there I’ve experienced crashing and one of the levels has a distracting visual bug with one of the shaders that was never properly officially fixed. So, even though we don’t know about Remastered much, I’d bet it would be a much smoother playing experience than replaying the original games.
But what are they? Both original Crysis titles are essentially an expansion on the ideas that Crytek first tried in Far Cry. Huge open levels populated with AI (mostly enemy, but some friendly), main objectives that you need to reach in a variety of ways and occasional secondary objectives (that can expand a story a bit but otherwise don’t change much) and a set of abilities that the players have access to. In Crysis the main gimmick was the nanosuit, a special futuristic but relatively “realistic” exoskeleton that allows the main characters of the story perform special feats not available to a human. In the original 2 titles, the suit has several separate modes. The default Armor mode works as a shield – first the suit energy is depleted, then your health. Both regenerate, but energy regenerates faster, so armor is the most efficient thing to have on when being shot at, though you are slower in this mode. Strength mode allows you to hit hard (effective against both enemies and even some destructible structures), have less recoil when firing guns and jump much higher than normal (also land from higher falls safer). Speed mode makes your run really fast and also speeds up all animations, which can help during reloading in a firefight. Interestingly the speed you reach here can even confuse enemy AI occasionally, as they can’t keep up with you. And finally, the Cloak mode makes you near-invisible, but your energy is constantly drained and is drained even faster when you move (the speed of movement defines how fast the drain happens). You also move slightly faster than normal, but any attacks or interactions momentarily drain your energy and bring you out of the cloak.
With this approach to the game and really open levels, you can see what Crysis was going for. Just imagine – you have a gigantic level and your goal is to grab important documents in a military base somewhere on that level. You can approach the base from any angle, you can stealth through it, you can shoot and kick through it, you can run in and out or you can do the combination of all that. Oh yeah, and you can also use all of the vehicles that are available on the map and a really wide variety of guns that can be customized with attachments at any point. And use night vision in darker places or binoculars to mark enemies on your mini-map and assess the situation. And then, closer to the end of the game, it introduces aliens and you have to adapt to reaching your goals while also knowing the strengths and weaknesses of non-human enemies. The possibilities are breathtaking. In theory.
In reality, this isn’t that exciting unless you really love sandbox games and can invent your own narratives to make these incredibly simple goals more fun than they really are. And your abilities aren’t as varied or crazy as they sound at first too. Speed drains almost immediately. Strength can destroy some primitive structures, but there are very few of those and less as the game goes on, so it’s rarely a cool thing to use unlike, say, what Red Faction was going for with a far more destructible environment or even Deus Ex: Human Revolution where you could punch through certain walls. Cloak is very efficient, but the AI of the game or the openness of the levels doesn’t make it for a fun stealth experience. I mostly used that, but that’s because I found most of the action tedious, and in the end it wasn’t he cool stealth action experience, rather it felt like I skipped most parts of the game and didn’t feel like it was truly rewarding.
And additionally, an elephant in the room is that – the game becomes far more fun when it gets linear. Warhead is in general a far more linear, far more “cinematic” experience and it’s a far more fun game to go through because of it. The game always knows what enemies and weapons you may have access too and sets up the goals in such a way to funnel you through specific experiences and as a result it feels like a more exciting game to play. Crysis feels so open-ended I personally found it hard to ever care about anything non-essential, stealth all the way through to the goal, then go for the next level. Warhead had me going through action sequences I would’ve avoided in Crysis, yet it felt kinda fun. Simpler, less ambitious, less grand than what Crysis was going for. But more fun.
So, in 2020 I’d say that I can better understand why there are actual fans of Crysis, people that love how open it is. I’m still not among them and doubt that I will ever be, as I’m not a fan of these rather aimless sandbox experiences in general. But I’ve gotten more respect for Crysis and Warhead than I’ve had 13 and 12 years ago. Should you play them today? Now with Remastered being announced, I’d say that you should wait and see how that remaster turns out. Perhaps it’s going to be a straight up better and more polished experience than what you get now out of the original versions of the game. If you are someone who likes fiddling with games and making them work, however, and you somehow never really tried Crysis out but it sounds interesting to you – give it a go. I would probably still rather take Crysis 3 over the originals, but there are lots of ambitious ideas in those games that have been fun to look at again.