I still remember getting the special edition version of Crysis from my former go to game store at the mall. I don’t remember how I first heard about the game but I knew two things; the game was ahead of its time and that my family PC won’t be able to run it. So I get home and open up my new game only for the DVD drive to not recognize the disk inside. Now I know CD/DVD drives die over time but it read other DVDs just fine. Anyway, I managed to swipe up the DVD drive from my friend’s PC and finally install the game as we gathered at his place. Finally, the menu came up. I lowered everything to low in hopes that the game will be playable.
The game starts I am on the island shooting trees and watching turtles. The game’s frame rate is unstable but who cares, I’m ruining my own version of Crysis. I was amazed by the game’s mechanics from picking up dropped weapons to throwing enemies around. The open world plus destructible environments give this game a futuristic feeling. Farcry had islands and cars but Crysis took it to another level. The level editor only sweetened the deal. Playing around with the level placing objects around while changing the time of the day only added to the already awesome experience. Once I completed the game, I put it aside promising to replay it in its full glory once I finally have a powerful machine.
Fast forward to 2018 and I’m once again replaying this master peace, except this time it’s ruining on Xbox One as 360 backwards game. As I said, I was intending to replay the game on my PC but I decided to give this version ago for the achievements and because I’m a collector. So the game finally gets downloaded and started (but not before a quick game of Titanfall 2). The familiar menu appears and the first chapter loads. The opening looks OK and I’m quickly thrown off the plain and this is where I first noticed that something is wrong. Ignoring the Draw Distance, the frame rate was horrible. Not unplayable but not good at all. I land and the actual game starts. Still slow and heavy. The world looked wrong with aliasing all over the place.
Now I understand that it is a miracle that the game was able to run in the first place but couldn’t they at least lowered something else and smoothed the game a bit? The gameplay itself remains unchanged with the same great mechanics as I remember. I thought that nostalgia was making the game better than it was but no, the game is indeed this great. Even on the Xbox 360. Progressing using a controller was good which I’m happily giving the devs credit on this one.
All in all, this isn’t unplayable if you never played the PC version. But for the ones that did on decent settings, this feels like a broken game. Never the less, I’m happy to play and hopefully complete it getting the achievements on the way. If you haven’t played this before, pick it up. It is arguably better than the second and third parts. I do feel that the price is a bit high at 20$ but this IS a good game after all.
