Crysis 2 Remastered Review (dml!)
Recommended - this is the best of the bunch when it comes to the Crysis remasters. Note that it doesn't feature multiplayer, and there are no cloud saves at time of writing.
The Remaster:
- Crysis 2 Remastered has had a huge overhaul of lighting, textures and assets compared to the original game, making it look more modern and in most cases more natural, and is a welcome visual upgrade for me. Weapon animations look a lot smoother now too. Ray traced reflections are also available and look pretty good on the high / very high settings given there are quite a lot of reflective surfaces in the game. DLSS is present and works well at least at quality on 1440p for me.
- In terms of performance, the game is pretty heavy on the GPU particularly, but if you have a mid range gaming PC from the last five years or so you should be able to target around 60 FPS at 1080p with high settings. Anything less and you might be better off playing the original. There are also a few quality-of-life upgrades such as an FOV slider in the menu, and the remaster runs out-of-the-box on Windows 10 whereas the original requires a fix to get high refresh rates. However I have heard that some people needed to install the lasted Visual C++ redistributables and / or set the game executable to Windows 7 or 8 compatibility modes to get the remaster to launch.
- Note however that some bugs from the original game are still present, such as the laser pointers not aligning properly at high FOV, and the odd audio problem. The biggest thing for me is that unfortunately a portion of one individual level runs poorly regardless of graphics settings, and that's still not been patched.
Conclusion:
- I highly recommend Crysis 2 Remastered to both players of the original and new players, as for me it's the best way to play the singleplayer campaign with the upgraded visuals.
The Game:
- Crysis 2 is quite different to the first Crysis. Set in New York, the levels are more linear now, though several areas still give a slight choice with forking routes to reach the same objective, and there's a little bit of verticality too. The suit powers have been streamlined, with separate controls to activate armour or cloak modes, whilst sprinting and holding jump automatically engage power mode rather than requiring separate selections. Certain suit powers can be upgraded too. You also get a visor that can tag ammo boxes and points of interest as well as enemies. The weapon and attachment selection is wider, and most weapons feel and sound good to use. CELL soldiers wield a few different weapons themselves, and there's a wider selection of alien enemies that are more fun to fight than the first game. There's also the ability to stealth kill many enemies whilst in cloak mode. Overall the gunplay and combat feels more refined to me than the first game.
- A few features have been scaled back though. As mentioned the levels are more linear, but there are also fewer destructible objects, and fewer objects can be picked up and thrown, with only the largest ones doing worthwhile damage to enemies. There is a power-kick function for some larger objects like cars though. The game is also a lot more cinematic than the first Crysis, following the trend of other popular shooters of the time. For the most part it does this quite well, expanding the story, though some of the characters are a bit cliché. Probably the biggest issue is that the majority of cinematics are tied into the gameplay so cannot be skipped, which hurts subsequent playthroughs a bit, and the introduction is quite long. There are also a few "press / mash " events, but they aren't as intrusive as full-on quick-time events at least. Overall though it's a fun game, and the soundtrack is excellent.