First-person shooter Crysis is now ready for you on Nintendo Switch with a revamped and improved take on this classic. Learn more in our Crysis Remastered review!
“But can it run Crysis?” has been part of gaming culture for a while now. Crysis was originally released back in 2007, and due to the new ways it was handling things as a PC game. Many PC out there –to this day – have a hard time running Crysis. It’s now 2020, and Crysis is making another go at a console release by way of Crysis Remastered, which aims to fix some of the things that went wrong when Crysis was brought to consoles on the PlayStation 3 during the previous console generation. Crytek has teamed up with Saber Interactive, a studio that has worked on bringing many games to Nintendo’s hybrid console, including the excellent port of The Witcher 3.
Remastered is right there in the name of this new version, which means that it has been improved and revamped when compared to the original version, right? That would be a yes and a no. Overall, the game certainly looks different, and some of the design choices made make a handful of spots look better in the original version when compared to Crysis Remastered. But, overall? This new version improves on everything, with revamped textures, motion blur, dynamic lighting, and Voxel-Based Global Illumination (SVOGI) for better lighting and shadows, denser vegetation, depth of field, and, best of all, gyro aiming!
You’ll control your elite soldier with the left analog stick, looking around and aiming with the right analog stick. You can fire your weapon with the ZR button and can change between the different weapons in your arsenal by pressing the X button. You should pick up as much ammo as possible, and get an extra weapon or two from the enemies you defeat, by pressing the Y button when near these items. The Y button is also used for reloading your weapon so that you’re not caught automatically reloading at a bad time. If you’re near an opponent, you can press down on the right analog stick to use a melee attack, which will sometimes be good enough to deal the damage needed to defeat an enemy you’ve already shot a couple of times.
Your nanosuit is a very powerful smart suit, which will allow you to sprint at great speed by pressing down on the left analog stick, in exchange for some of the suit’s energy charge. If you press the B button, you’ll be able to jump, but if you press and hold down the button, you’ll use some of the suit’s energy for a boosted jump that will be twice as high. You can also activate Armor Mode by pressing the L button, which will lower the damage you receive from enemy attacks. But if you want to get the jump on your enemies, you should activate Cloak Mode by pressing the R button, which will make you invisible to enemies, until you attack them.
You can also enter vehicles with the Y button to use them to travel through larger sections at a faster rate, as well as to use their weapons to attack enemies. You’ll steer the vehicle with the left analog stick, moving the camera with the right one. You can drive either from a first-person perspective or change things up and drive from a third-person perspective. Accelerate with the ZR button, brake and go in reverse with the ZL button, attack with the L button, or use a vehicle’s alternate fire mode with the R button.
And now, let’s talk about the stuff that takes a hit on the Nintendo Switch. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Crysis Remastered have been delayed, so there’s no way of knowing how they will look, other than, presumably, better than on Nintendo Switch- one might presume with a 1080p resolution and, ideally, 60 frames per second. On Nintendo Switch, either when playing in Portable or Handheld Mode or in Docked Mode, the resolution usually hovers around the 720p mark, with a dynamic resolution that can bring things down to 540p – something that is less of an issue when not playing in Docked Mode – or as low as 400p-ish for some heavy areas.
Crysis had something very important that changed how first-person shooters were played: destructible environments. Shoot at a palm tree, and you can break it. Throw a grenade inside of a building, and the whole thing will indeed go boom, with pieces of that building flying outwards. This is still present on the Nintendo Switch version of Crysis Remastered, but there’s a slight hiccup on the game’s framerate when a big explosion is happening, and a building is being blown into pieces by it. It’s not a dealbreaker since it lasts for a second or so, but it’s something that needs to be mentioned.
Going back to that initial question, the Nintendo Switch can most certainly run Crysis, and it runs Crysis Remastered good. There are some framerate and resolution hits here and there, but considering the overall processing power of Nintendo’s excellent hybrid console, this was to be expected. In the end, Crysis is a fun first-person shooter that has been improved for its debut on a Nintendo console, offering a solid campaign that will keep you busy for several hours. Crysis Remastered is out now on Nintendo Switch with a $29.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Crysis Remastered review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Crytek.
