Crysis Remastered

Crysis Remastered is a 2020 remaster of Crytek’s 2007 first-person shooter Crysis, developed by Crytek with Saber Interactive and released September 18, 2020 for PC (via the Epic Games Store), PlayStation 4, and Xbox One — with the Nintendo Switch version, unusually, arriving first, on July 23, 2020. It reached Steam on September 17, 2021 after a year of Epic exclusivity, priced at $29.99. Metacritic scores landed in the high 60s to low 70s depending on platform — “mixed or average,” and a steep fall from the original’s 91.

Its launch is remembered as one of the messier remaster debuts of its era: a leaked trailer that looked worse than the 13-year-old original, a last-minute delay in response, and a release that still drew a “just play the 2007 version” consensus. The less-told half of the story is what happened afterward — a two-year patching effort that quietly turned it into a much better product than the one reviewers scored. The recurring community question “is Crysis Remastered really that bad?” has two honest answers depending on which year you ask about.

Technical Specifications

The Leak, the Backlash, the Delay

The project surfaced through a premature Microsoft Store listing in mid-2020, with a gameplay trailer planned for July 1 and a July 23 release across all platforms. The trailer leaked early — and the reaction was brutal. “Looks like original Crysis but with the lowest settings” became the representative YouTube comment, with fans pointing out that the modded 2007 game already looked better than what Crytek was showing. Within a day of the planned reveal, Crytek delayed every version except the Switch one “by a few weeks” to improve visual quality, publicly acknowledging that fans’ passion for the franchise “deserves an undeniably high-quality game.” A relaunch trailer in August, showcasing 8K textures and ray-traced effects, set the final September 18 date.

Built on the Wrong Foundation

The deeper issue, uncovered by Digital Foundry’s analysis of the early Switch release, was structural: the remaster wasn’t based on the original 2007 PC game at all, but on the pared-back 2011 Xbox 360/PS3 console port. That inheritance explained a list of launch absences that PC veterans noticed immediately — the Ascension VTOL mission was missing entirely, multiplayer wasn’t included, and control staples like leaning and suit-mode shortcuts were gone, alongside the original’s look-and-feel in areas where the console port had simplified physics and AI behavior. For a game whose entire legend was built on being the most technically ambitious PC release of its generation, “remastered from the console version” was close to the worst possible headline.

What It Did Bring

The remaster’s genuine technical contribution was ray tracing that didn’t require ray-tracing hardware: a software solution built on CryEngine’s SVOGI system delivered ray-traced reflections even on standard GPUs and on consoles — among the first console ray tracing implementations anywhere — with hardware acceleration supported on capable Nvidia cards. It also added an HD texture pack, temporal anti-aliasing, rebuilt lighting, and, in a wink at the franchise’s own legend, a maximum graphics preset literally named “Can it Run Crysis?”. A later update restored the classic 2007 Nanosuit design as an option, after the remaster’s default suit — restyled toward the Crysis 2 look — became its own small community grievance.

Reception

Reviews split along a consistent line: the ambition of software ray tracing and the Switch port’s very existence earned real respect, while the PC version drew the sharpest criticism — Digital Foundry’s verdict, “beautiful tech, brutally limited performance,” became the launch’s defining phrase, and user reviews piled on the missing features, Denuvo DRM, Epic exclusivity, and the sense that a modded original still looked better. Metacritic user scores sat far below even the mixed critic average. The common closing line across coverage was the harshest thing you can say about a remaster: most players were better off with the 2007 game.

The Two-Year Repair Job

Crytek kept working, and the post-launch record is genuinely substantial: updates restored leaning and the classic control shortcuts, brought back the cut Ascension mission, added the classic Nanosuit, and steadily rebuilt performance — culminating in a final February 2022 patch that Digital Foundry measured at up to a 79% frame-rate improvement in one test scene versus the launch build. The version sold today is, by any honest accounting, a different product from the one reviewed in September 2020 — which is why community threads asking whether the remaster is “really that bad” increasingly get a qualified no, with the caveat that the 2007 original remains the purist’s answer.

The Trilogy Context

A year after this game’s rough solo debut, Crysis 2 Remastered and Crysis 3 Remastered launched together with it as the Crysis Remastered Trilogy (October 2021) — and reviewers consistently rated the two sequels’ remasters as the more polished half of the package, treating the first game’s remaster as the weak link even in its improved state. Trilogy reviews also repeated a complaint this game inherited from launch: Crysis Warhead, the 2008 standalone expansion, was left out of the remaster project entirely and remains stranded on its original PC release. Our separate Crysis 2 Remastered entry covers the stronger middle chapter in detail.

Where to Play It Today

Crysis Remastered is available on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the EA app (and via EA Play), on PlayStation 4 (playable on PS5), Xbox One (playable on Series X|S), and Nintendo Switch, plus GOG as part of the Remastered Trilogy — a bundle that regularly discounts to under $20 for all three campaigns. Whether to pick it over the original comes down to priorities: the remaster is the only way to get the campaign on consoles and Switch, and its post-patch state is solid; the 2007 original — still sold on Steam in the Maximum Edition bundle and DRM-free on GOG — remains the version with multiplayer history, mod support, and the untouched original feel.