First-Person Shooters have always been popular on the PC platform for a variety of reasons; largely being the graphical superior over consoles with genuine ease. Legend tells of a video game such an immense technical prowess so demanding that many PC gamers didn’t know if their rigs could even handle it; even with substantial upgrades. This is none other than the legendary FPS game known simply as Crysis.

Crysis was developed by Crytek & published by Electronic Arts (EA), and released 13 years ago on November 13th, 2007. Despite the game’s demanding hardware; it received an overwhelming critical acclaim, many Game of the Year awards and has been immortalised by the “can it run Crysis?” meme. While initially a PC exclusive (for good reason), an optimised version would eventually be ported to the Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3 platforms in October 2011.

Maximum Recommendation

In Crysis, you play as a Rapter Team member known as Nomad; a highly trained U.S. soldier dawning the latest and greatest Nanosuit. Nomad and his team are tasked with liberating the fictitious Lingshan Islands from hostile North Korean forces; rescuing American archaeologists along the way. However what they find in the depths of the island is far more sinister than anyone could have imagined.

Luckily for you, you are equipped with the Nanosuit; an ultra-advanced exo-suit that enables you with enhanced strength, speed, armour, and cloaking abilities. The Nanosuit is what gives Crysis its unique and memorable gameplay that simply cannot be found anywhere else. With the ability so pick up and throw medium sized objects, knock down buildings and destroy vehicles; Crysis gives you many options to lay waste to your enemies.

While some textures show their age, Crysis as a whole still looks incredible for a 13 year old game; especially on modern PC hardware. When you really get into it, you may start to forget that this game is over a decade old as the lighting effects specially look outstanding; and explosions, gunfire and particle effects still holding up accordingly. While the same can’t quite be said console versions, especially with frame-rate issues; its incredible that they got the game running on such dated hardware in the first place.

Most impressively is how well the game still plays after all this time, its fun; very fun. The adrenaline of utilising different Nanosuit abilities in the midst of shooting enemies in combat while mixing in sandbox elements just never gets old. Mix in stealth elements, vehicle sections and an entire enemy swap out in the late game; and you have an extremely varied shooter on your hands.

So… Can It Run Crysis?

This Game Recommendation is actually being cut a little bit short; but for a good reason. With Crysis Remastered releasing soon after this article is posted; a full reveal of the game in all of its remastered glory will be following soon! So have maximum patience, as a huge Crysis fan this is a review I’ve wanted to do for some time! Stay tuned for it, here at Informed Pixel.

The original Crysis is available on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Crysis Remastered releases on September 18th, 2020 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and the Epic Games store; and is already available for the Nintendo Switch! So… Can it run Crysis? These days, whatever you are playing on absolutely can! Some images here are captured on PC, others on the Xbox 360; can you tell which is which?

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