It has been more than six months since Crysis Remastered was released for PC and it is fair to say that, as a huge fan of the original game, I was disappointed by its resurgence – although there was much to praise, legacy Xbox 360 baggage and PS3 Ports effectively saw aspects of the game missing compared to the original 2007, while CPU performance was not where it should be. Today’s patch 2.1 is a good starting point: there are genuine improvements, missing content has been restored, and for owners of GeForce RTX cards, the inclusion of DLSS AI upscaling dramatically increases performance in scenarios with limited graphics.
There is not much to say about the implementation of DLSS, except to say that it is as impressive as other recent presentations and a great addition to the game. Again, the elements of the visual presentation are really improved over the native rendering and, although there is some ghost in the TAA style, it is almost imperceptible in the middle of the action. What I particularly liked about this specific use of DLSS is that the post-process sharpness can be adjusted manually in the command console – access which I would very much like to see as a standard in all DLSS-compatible titles. Ultimately, the further down the RTX power ladder you go, the more impressive the momentum given by the DLSS, to the point that even in a heavy GPU scene, the relatively modest RTX 2060 should be able to comfortably exceed 60 frames per second at 1440p resolution. It also makes a reasonably good attempt at 4K output – meaning that high-end RTX cards should offer this with the least amount of hassle.
In addition to DLSS, I am happy to report that there have been many improvements to Crysis Remastered since we first examined it: issues with the costume’s controls have been resolved and the switching of moving modes has been fixed, allowing for chain speed mode jumps how you could have seen it in your favorite nanosuit ninja videos. The notorious Ascension level – absent on PS360 ports and even on Crysis Remastered – is back and plays very well, unlike the 2007 original that can still confuse even the most powerful CPUs of the modern era. Ascension still has the appropriate volumetric haze effect of the original version of the Cry Engine 2 game, the omission that elsewhere in the remastered was another problem … and one that, surprisingly, has not yet been fixed.
A deep dive into the latest iteration of Crysis Remastered.
Troubled performance is improved, however, with the nasty stuttering in lightning tracking mode almost completely resolved. However, the renderer’s single-threaded nature is still an issue – as is the loss of CPU performance the higher the resolution. The CPU load seems to have seen some improvement, but it’s still an area of weakness in the game. At launch, I mentioned that keeping CPU performance and headroom high is very important to ensure that you keep 60fps during the experiment. This meant keeping objects, shadows and vegetation in medium settings and then increasing any of the other settings like shading, physics, particles and volumetry to anything you want, as these other settings have little or no big CPU cost. in general. This is still essentially true, but I have deduced a more differentiated view of what is more expensive on the CPU: essentially, the heaviest CPU-related configuration you can adjust is vegetation, where anything above average can be very challenging, even for a capable processor.
In terms of optimized configurations now, I think users should start on the same medium basis for shadows, objects and vegetation, but if your CPU performs great single-thread performance, increase the vegetation setting to high and if you have a modern Intel or Ryzen 5000 very fast chip, add high detail objects on top of that. However, shadows should only be increased if you have an absolutely monstrous processor. Again, the other settings are less impactful in Crysis Remastered, as CPU performance is more important than GPU load. It is still a disappointment to me that this title is so limited by the CPU.
Overall, the new update 2.1 for Crysis Remastered is in fact much improved over the launch game, with DLSS particularly useful for those who really want to force the graphics in this game. Artistic problems have been improved in some cases, but they still do not correspond to the 2007 release elsewhere – which, again, is a disappointment. In addition, some new problems have arisen – the motion blur is now broken, but I hope it will be fixed soon. At this point, I think Crytek should help the Crysis community – and itself – by launching the game’s editor, ensuring the game’s longevity and perhaps allowing user mods to solve the remaining problems. In the here and now, Crysis Remastered is still not the game I expected it to be, but it is definitely a big step up from the release code.