We’ve established that Nintendo Switch can, in fact, run Crysis – but what about PlayStation 4, Xbox One and their enhanced equivalents? At the tail end of last week, Crysis Remastered finally appeared – and it’s safe to say that we were not quite prepared for how unpolished the final code would look. Crytek told us to expect imminent patches and Xbox One at least did receive an update last night, but the reality is that the experience is still not good enough. In fact, the patch may have even made the situation worse.
From the outside looking in, it’s difficult to accept that a title that runs beyond expectation on Switch should under-perform on much more powerful consoles. There are several reasons for this, perhaps most notably that the Switch game was developed by Saber Interactive in Sweden – in fact, we understand it’s produced by the team that delivered the incredible port of The Witcher 3. All other versions were produced by a separate wing of Saber working with Crytek, and it is effectively a rendition of Crysis Remastered. The result is a version of the game which looks decidedly unlike any other – this is not just an upgraded Switch port here – there are significant differences.
As things stand, Crysis Remastered supports all variants of current generation consoles. On the enhanced machines, this means users have access to three distinct modes on each. Firstly, there’s the quality mode, aiming for a dynamic 4K on Xbox One X (with a 1080p minimum). The PS4 Pro equivalent there is a dynamic 1800p, with a 900p minimum – though I should stress that the minimums seem rather rare. Next up is the performance mode – this uncaps the frame-rate while reducing the maximum resolution to 1080p on both enhanced machines. Lastly, we have ray tracing mode. This enables Crytek’s impressive software-based ray tracing solution applied to select objects. In this case, on both machines, maximum resolution is dropped to 1080p while minimum is 900p. The vanilla consoles deliver the performance mode’s visual feature set with a 30fps cap – got it?
Obviously, ray tracing on the enhanced machines is a huge inclusion, though its usage can be somewhat subtle in many levels. The alien structures midway through the game and final carrier section, however, really showcase what is possible. Skinned models aren’t reflected, as is possible on PC – so you won’t be seeing your Nanosuit reflected in reflective surfaces – but the result is still impressive. Next, HDR has been added to the mix enabling a much wider range of luminance when engaged.
Screen-space reflections have been added and are used in conjunction with ray traced reflections and planar reflections. Crysis utilises these techniques in tandem to cover reflections across many types of materials ranging from the water of the ocean to metal plating but the big boost fidelity comes from SVOGI – or sparse voxel octree global illumination. Crytek’s solution to indirect lighting is implemented across the board and at a higher precision than the Switch release. Additionally, screen-space direction occlusion or SSDO, has been implemented in this version of Crysis. This allows lights to be included in the ambient occlusion pass, enabling colour from local objects to be considered in the process. It simply enables more realistic contact shadows and is a feature that was not available on Switch. Beyond this, texture resolution is massively increased with up to 4K textures used across the game world and on objects, while shadow rendering is enhanced to include soft shadows with variable penumbra. Both features are new to this version of Remastered.