I wish there was a new Crysis game. Would be interesting to see how much they can push graphics now with the current gen consoles and graphics cards. Also wouldn’t hurt to have another linear FPS, which is basically a dead genre now.
No need to make it traditionally linear. Crysis 1 was a semi-open world game which had a linear mission structure but every mission took place in a big open location.
@Sonic That and the shift towards BR. I’ve always found linear games to be much better at storytelling. The developers can give you a more tailored experience that way and graphics can be pushed harder too.
@@SgtZaqq Yeah you're right but he means that there's no side missions or any other unnecessary filler shit. Just straight forward killing to progress in the game, because there's only one thing to progress on.
lol I didn't even know the vegetation was locked at 30fps until this video as I played it way back when I was using a 660ti, which ran the game at 30fps average at 1080p max settings. 30fps was tolerable enough for me at the time even when using a mouse and keyboard setup.
But i still say some of maldos textures still looks better than the remaster not every thing just things like foliage they seem to be more detail and the brick walls and concrete floor but still this remaster is dam good especially how the first crysis remastered was a big disappointment. I was hoping it would be more realistic in the foliage and lighting but instead it look more cartoonish with over bright saturated color's
@@bioshock6935 yes maldo's was better in some aspects, which is funny if you think about it, 1 guy with limited technology 7 years ago made an amazing mod like this and they can't even top some of his accomplishments
@@bioshock6935 that would be a remaster in a perfect world where the devs actually care about giving 100% effort into remastering, but no in our world modders give 100% effort instead
@@rumbazumba3189 Modders probably have all the time in the world and not restricted to deadlines and for them it's a hobby and not doing it for money unlike the game company's . But with most mods come with compatibility issues and breaks the game even the maldo mod has issues but i get where your coming from as not all remasters are always good but we are lucky on this game for a change
Reviewers: "I don't really see much of a difference between Crysis 2 and the new remaster on PC" Digital Foundry: Literally everything has been changed.
@@arricado Not the entire truth tbh, if it takes an extremely detailed comparison to make out all the improvements while the performance suffers heavily, I don't think that qualifies as a big success
@@omarcomming722 It's more that people care more about consistency and having things "feel" correct than they do about something actually being correct. Crysis 2 still looks great, the art direction made the most of the technology and, with the DX11 patch anyway, you really gotta study it for the illusion to break. Naturally, when you get a remaster of that game, your brain will go "this still looks correct, I can't see much difference", even if it's pretty drastically improved. It's a testament to the original's art direction. The stylish color grading and IBL solution still look great imo. Not physically correct, but the scene still looks "complete", so to speak.
@@omarcomming722 I don't think that's the entire truth either. Crysis 2 is quite radically different, but I assume you meant Crysis 3 in this case. But the big contributing factor for lower fps there are planar reflections, as Alex pointed out. The thing is, they are only enabled on very high settings. You can look at it as a future proof optional reflection method :)
No normal person will notice much a difference. If you have to put 2 versions side by side and play "Spot the Difference," then the difference is minor. But all Digital Foundry videos over-exaggerate microscopic differences
Gotta hand it to Saber, while the "downgrades" in the original Crysis remastered were a let down to me, they seem to have done a nice job updating and modernizing the following two entries
@@carny15 I just played the first remaster again and I just genuinely don't understand how anyone can say it isn't an upgrade on almost all fronts. The foliage still doesn't quite respond to gunfire at the full framerate, but that's a minor issue imo, and the graphical upgrades, which are significant, are more than worth that single gripe.
That may be, but different =\= lower quality. I’ve made several sets of comparison screenshots between the original pc release and the remaster, and the textures that are different generally don’t look worse, just somewhat different. The Remaster looks significantly better in almost every shot, and at least somewhat better in the others (mostly interior scenes that have seen few changes). The lighting is more detailed and more accurate, the view distances and foliage quality are better, the skyboxes are better, the water is better, many of the textures actually do look better, the particle effects are better, and I generally does look like a next gen game, IMO. I don’t really know what you mean by texture effects. If you’re talking about POM, it was reimplemented shortly after release, and looks as good as and often somewhat better than it did in the original.
@@Orangeflea1 Aside from multiple areas where the visuals are objectively worse (which Alex has gone over), the game is also a buggy mess with a spate of control deficiencies and broken features. I bought it recently and had to refund it after just 30 minutes of play due to all the issues it has, many of which I hadn't expected or heard about before, and the relative lack of improvement in visual quality over a modded version of the 2007 release (at least up to the point I quit at, I didn't get to see any interiors, which I'm sure look way better in the new one).
Bro fear 1 is great fear 2 is poo and fear 3 I've played the most. Fear 3 is high up on my list of turn off your brain youtube time games and I always think of fear 3 when I go to Sam's Club because of that one mission.
Because Saber prioritized frequently appearing textures to get best bang for their budget buck, I think that it's possible Maldo's more scattergun approach redid some props that weren't touched by Saber. So there is potential for modders to carefully touch up some of the infrequently appearing textures Saber placed out of scope -- like bags of chips in the vending machines, for example. I'm really happy you showed Maldo's mod and put it in context against the remaster. Because people do often make glib remarks about how "mods look better" but that really isn't true in this case. Maldo did good work. But Maldo was one person. He touched a much smaller subset of textures. And he had to work within C2's tech limitations, and the somewhat garish artistic conventions of the time.
100% agree. You nailed it, in my opinion. Especially the last sentence made me chuckle because it conveys the exact feeling I get when I think back to _that time_ in gaming. Thx =)
Agreed, so happy for the MaLDo mention and comparison - lots of other things (bugs, tess errors) were fixed along with replacing terrible textures in the final version of the mod. And some really amazing POM surfaces were added, too. Glad this remaster was given a similar amount of attention from Saber/Crytek.
Man it's pretty insane how well these games hold up visually, even the old versions still look downright modern on max settings on PC. The general consensus is that Crysis 2 & 3 are downgraded weaker sequels to fit on consoles, but IMO they aged extremely well visually and in terms of design. Even the wide/linear design of the gameplay is downright refreshing in the day and age where we were burned out on both hyper linearity and giant bloated open worlds. It's just enough freedom and tactical options to not feel restrictive, while still providing hand crafted scenarios and cinematic pacing. Wish Crytek would come back to making forward thinking single player games!
Particularly Crysis 2's campaign is actually extremely well done minus a couple annoying quick time events, and by far the best campaign in the trilogy IMO, far surpassing the original in terms of pacing, variety and length. Crysis one was 2-3 hrs of wide open tactical shooter and 2-4 hours of linear alien wack a mole with some turret/vehicle stuff in between. Crysis 3 is gorgeous and has the best core gameplay of the trilogy but it feels short and rushed unfortunately
This two turned out to be great. Great job with this vid, Alex. RT reflections are much more noticable in C2R, due to the city setting and its materials. SVOGI looks great like in the C1R and does so much for the image. Many games even nowdays doesn't have a lighting system this good and suffer from the same old light leaking/occlusion problems. Crytek outdid everyone with their tech once again.
Been looking forward to this video, I thought I was going mad when I couldn't tell that much difference from Crysis 3 original and remastered on my PC. Also glad I can happily set RT on low or medium. Will be great to play through these games again.
and i have no idea before watching a DF review that it is actually the animation's 30fps lock, i always thought it is shotgun explosion physics too demanding for my gpu haha
@@Sonyrocks1Of Havent got 2/3 remaster yet, but the first game remaster has 'Advanced sensitivity' option for the mouse where you can use 'RAW input' and adjust ADS sensitivity seperately. Aiming feels slow in the original's yes.
I'm going to have to disagree with you ME Ehanced edition is , you have GI , reflections infinite bounce lighting , etc runs alot better too , dlss quality 4k , rt max settings way over 60fps at all times with a rtx 3080 these remasters with subpar RT dlss having to be in performance mode to even get 60fps on the same hardware is laughable
It is so interesting to see how times have changed. What once was lauded as forward-thinking and future-proofing visuals (to the point modern pc's could not run the game on anything but lower settings) is now a source of complaint and "unoptimized" for many. Striking a balance between visuals and performance seems much more important to the average gamer these days.
Yeah, standards and mindsets changed. Going back 15 years people were used to PC Games being heavy and hardware being outdated very quickly from what I heard, also the audience was smaller (in count) and therefore more 'niche'. Now PC gaming or gaming in general has much more of a mass appeal and a lot more casual gamers I suppose, that's already one reason for decisions to make most people happy. Then other technological advancements like High-refresh-rate (and high resolution) monitors and them being much more common the last years raised standards and the need for developers to support this properly too. Even consoles now mostly target 60fps and can do 120fps in some cases too. But IMO that's good, people can focus more on experiencing and enjoying the game and needing to worry less about how it runs and enthusiasts still will fiddle around with settings and find ways to spend time with performance investigations (like I do^^).
This! I want more wow looking games which brutalize my setup on ultra/max settings but still giving me 30+ fps on medium (with reduced res/scaling as an option) & not looking like trash. This way I can enjoy them once again when I upgrade my setup later, but I guess not everyone has such a mindset. The only game which I refused to continue playing on my laptop was TW3, mostly because it's a huge time-sink & I know that when I eventually upgrade I'd want to play it all over again (on an UW😍) so I saved that time now.
People like to complain about new releases being 'downgraded' and about 'lazy devs', but in reality I think we've reached an average level of visual quality in games that's high enough that we just don't _need_ to aim for some imaginary future anymore. Games no longer have blurry textures or huge polygons, light and shadows usually look good even if there's no ray tracing, and antialiasing is becoming almost perfect. Four out of five gamers play on a 1080p or higher screen. Games _look good_ now. So it's time to make games _work_ good now, instead of later.
@@KillahMate that's kinda correct given how most recent games (even non-AAA) look at medium quality and are decent/good looking. But the other side is that until you have seen what the next iteration or revolution in graphics looks like, it's hard to judge. Tech keeps on improving & we might be blown away again
You know when you have an image in your head of what a 10 year old game used to look like, then you see it and it looks so much worse? I swear crysis 2 is the only game where my brains fictional enhancing of graphics, matches what they actually were like
Well tbh for the remaster at 4k Dlss quality max setting a rtx 3080 shouldn't be struggling and for the upgrade of crysis 2 and especially 3 which is barely improved , fyi MEEE has way better RT and runs alot better are they still using dx11 for this remaster ? Being a pc gamer myself I have no issues with game a being demanding but there's got be a big enough technical or visual return
Quite a contentious topic these remasters have been. Much could be said, but it is what it is, and at the end of the day they have been updated. Thank you for covering them as always, Alex.
How are you not gonna mention how it’ll run on non RTX cards like GTX? Sure it’s old but on the GPU shortages, it’s understandable that some of us still own these!
Just waiting for those silly original looks better comments. Slap a tint filter like blue or orange and make everything unrealistically contrasty and half the people thinks it looks better.
Why didn't they add real-time raytraced lighting and shadows? That would make the game more future-proof for benchmarks (as well as making it look better supposedly).
@@damsen978 Sure :) Crysis 2 @ 1:03 and Crysis 3 @ 14:40 The way I understand it is, and feel free to correct me, Crysis 2 uses a mix of software and hardware raytracing for lighting, or 'global illumination', as well as hardware raytracing for reflections, whereas Crysis 3 uses Raytracing for reflections only because, A) it already looks great and B) The lighting was crafted by artists and rebuilding the whole lighting system would have been too much to overhaul.
@@damsen978You're not looking on the right places then. Everything that use to use cubemaps now reflect in real time. Car windows, water bottles, water, so on and so forth.
Sometimes I question the value of trying to make everything look more 'realistic' in videogames. More accurate lighting and colours and objects! Well yes. I'm not sure it actually looks more enjoyable though. The real world is often grey, drab and muted. Videogames about fighting invading aliens in New York as a superhuman hero thanks to Nanosuit technology don't have to be.
This might be the era we are living on. Like in the 2000's every game had to have some sort of yellow "piss" filter added on top for some reason and 2010's had very vibrant games. Ofcourse there were exceptions to those. Namely the first Far Cry that came out in 2004 was very coloful and vibrant where most games back then were either dark corridor shooters or ones with yellow filter. What i really liked in that game was a color grading setting. I remember "Paradise" being very colrful while "Realistic" was muted. This allowed the played to choose their own style.
There are just as many if not more "non realistic" games as there are "realistic ones" and even the realistic ones almost always have their own artstyle.
It's about being able to make games look real, not making everything look real. It's just something we have yet to achieve, to be used in certain scenarios.
The crysis series was way ahead of it's time making lighting tech that did not exist at the time that does now using clever tricks to hide what they still made work. I think it's fantastic that they are updating this so a whole new generation can enjoyed it without having to buy, at the time was a 7800gt which many could not afford, let along running them in SLI. Seeing the same situation now with top 30xx hardware is dissapointing from a optimization stand point. Now the barrier to entry is much lower to achieve but still seems to suffer the same reception. Sad to see warhead always left out of all the series bundles. Great video.
Awesome as ever Mr Bataglia - million thanks buddy 👍🏻 Cant wait to replay Crysis 2 on my CX + 2060S. So this will be so good. Loved the second game and of course the third.- witch I allready played to many times. Crysis 2 it is. Damn I cant wait to get back to it!
I definitely noticed the antialiasing in C3... thats the main thing I didn't like about the original... many jaggies... quality all together smooth... although some scenes fps drops to like 40 but mostly it's been a smooth 60 on my 3090
Always expect 10% dislikes for weird reasons. If people can't afford Crysis Remasters in this case, they blame DF for it and downvotes the video. People downvote for the most stupid things.
I wouldn't take downvotes too seriously, especially on a platform as popular as TH-cam. The downvotes could be anything and not necessarily aimed at DF themselves. Just off the top of my head it could be drunk/stoned people accidentally pressing the wrong button, it could be bots that are programmed for go around disliking vids (for whatever reason), it could be a random person that doesn't even like video games at all but for some reason they got suggested this video by the YT algorithm. From what I've heard dislikes are really not that bad, I think its actually worse to neither like or dislike the videos, which is very sad when you consider the ratio of views to likes. One of the DF recent videos has over 700,000 views but less than 30,000 likes, really guys? it costs nothing to hit the like button and it really helps out the channels you love to watch.
They definitely learnt a lot from Crysis Remastered, it also helps that Crysis 2 and 3 are on more modern versions of the engine. I'll definitely be doing a play through of all 3 games.
5:02 God that music track STILL gives me chills... Replaying the Trilogy on my PS5, I forgot how great the Soundtrack for Crysis 2 is (probably because I only ever hear the Main Theme, which is also good but nowhere near the rest of the OST imo 🤷♂️)
@@socratese5 To be honest it's mixed for me with 2. Alot of the style got sucked out when they decided to make it look more realistic. Some of the more breathtaking bits in 2 just seem flat now. On the flip side the crushing of the blacks was annoying in the og2. If you never played it go ahead., But if you can get a hold of the of one on PC with the same specs I'd do that.
Under trailers there are bunch of comments about games looks same, but when you do compare them and actually point out changes, this looks really good.
I absolutely love your in-depth analysis of graphics in new and upcoming games and really try to find out whats path traced/ray traced and what other technologies are involved in the presentation! Fantastic work you do (yoda?) and great video!
@Sonic so there are more pc gamers in general but what you're saying is, pc gamers are the minority because they play more popular games regulary. That doesn't make much sense. Lets put it this way. I played control, the game was great but there wasn't much replayability, but on the other hand I can play skyrim and can sink hours into the game. I can add mods then then I can make a whole new experience and play it again. Therefore control wouldn't be an active game anymore, it's finished Uninstalled and now skyrim is an active game. That's why some games are more active than others because esports and open ended rpgs offer more hours. Who is going to play a demanding game if most are one and done games? Hell even new world you can play for hours. That doesn't prove pc gamers are the minority. The numbers are there. Have you watched Santiago Santiagos channel? There's people asking how 1030s play on crysis trilogy remastered. People with low end hardware want to know how it plays and how much better the remastered look compared to the original so I don't get your point?
Why would you praise DOF there on the edge of the gun, close to the screen, I'd rather see the close up detail instead of having simulated short sightedness.
We are reaching a point where everything is about 'realism'. Well 'realism' doesn't always mean that it will look better. There were some scenes in this video where the older version looks better.
The new lightning and textures are a great improvement on the original Crysis 2, but what makes me like them even more is that they don't change the overall astetic of the game (unlike Crysis 1 Remastered). One thing I did encounter in C2 Remastered is that the game has a massive stuttering issue when played on an HDD, this is off course improved by installing it on an SSD. Still, I don't think it's good to make it a must to have it installed on an SSD, to even have it be enjoyable, considering that I have plenty just as great looking games on my HDD that don't have this issue. As for Crysis 3: At first I was a bit dissapointed that the Remaster is literally just the same game just with RT, FOV slider and DLSS added in, but thanks to the side by side comparisons I appreciate the remaster more. In my experience, Crysis 2 Remastered is actually much heaver on the performance as far as I have played them. While Crysis 3 Remastered has about the same performance as the original, Crysis 2 Remastered doesn't just run worse than the original (which was expected) but also more than Crysis 3 Remastered (which may be because there are way more reflective survases in C2 than in C3) One thing I dislike about Crysis 2 Remastered is that, just like in Crysis 1 Remastered, your shadow disappears when activating cloak, which wasn't the case in any of the original games (exception is in Crysis 2 when using Stealth Enhancement). At first I thought this was a conscious desicion because it's in both C1 and C2 Remastered, but then in C3 Remastered, your shadow is still visible even when cloaked. This just creates an inconsistency across all games. But I'm also probably the only one who cares about that.
The shadow not disappearing was one thing that always annoyed me in the originals, and I was glad it finally disappeared in c1 remastered. Didn't know it's not in C3 remastered -.-
@@rumbazumba3189 seems my link got deleted. Here a quote from an entry on nanosuits on a crisis fandom wiki page: "When Cloak Mode is activated, the Nanosuit alters its outer surface through the use of a crystalline generation, capable of fully absorbing or bending incoming wave spectrums such as visible light, radiowaves (Radar), Infrared (Thermal Imaging), and possibly microwaves or others, to render itself completely invisible to the human eye and most surveillance equipment." Fully absorbing the light would make it appear black afaik, since that is how the most light absorbing materials we have (and also black holes) appear, so skip that. Now take into consideration that we see almost no distortion of what's behind a nanosuit when it's in cloak mode. When bending the light, this means the light coming towards your eyes gets bend around the suit, but the path needs to be corrected afterwards (or you'd see distortion, probably just a rainbow mess). Which would result in no shadow. A different idea would be to think of the suit as a display, showing a video feed of what is behind it. While this method would result in a shadow, it would also break if more than one person is looking at the suit because one display can't account for different perspectives. This method is therefore not what the suit is using. Maybe you can find an official source which describes a different method, but from observing how the suits cloak mode operates the only sensible consequence I can think of is: If you can physics invisibility, you inadvertently physics turning the shadow off.
@@SimonVaIethere's no feasible way to describe how the suit goes into cloak that works with our knowledge of physics, so the best way is to call it alien tech and say it's a display that has magical properties lol Or it just turns into an infinite mirror so it looks transparent, but in my book as long as there is "some" distortion there should be a shadow
@@rumbazumba3189 well yes, as long as there is some distortion there should be a shadow. But with how little distortion there is, the shadow would be just as slight - noticeable on a very simply formed and coloured plane, not on a more complex one as we usually have. No shadow is close enough, while in the og games there was no difference in shadow brightness between cloaked and non cloaked at all.
I much more prefer Crysis 2's OG look because it gives it character instead of looking bland. realistic =/= better Plus as first example you showed the plastic building. At least imo Crysis 2 OG was more accurate because some of those things are just retina killers and light passes through them easily.
I'd image these remaster are partially being released to test the water and gauge interest in a possible sequel, provided these sell well I'd expect to see Crysis 4 sometime in the not too distant future.
@@Antares-dw9iv this is exactly what I think to be honest. 1) It’s good marketing, informing the public of their product and having them take interest in it. 2) it’s an easy cash grab and 3) remasters are necessary because bromides don’t like old games with outdated mechanics and graphics even in the HD era so a remaster in necessary in order to sell and get the name of your game out there.
_Very_ surprised that they opted for planar reflections here... So the implication is that ray traced water would have been more expensive? Is Cryengine unusually efficient with planar reflections or something? Odd.
I suggest reading this forum thread over on unreal engine's website called: "Is raytracing less “expensive” than planar reflections?" I'll try and sum up what they said: Planar reflections are ideal for flat surfaces like a water plane. They are pretty expensive as they essentially render the whole scene again from a different POV. However, they should still be more efficient than RT in most case if it's just a single plane you are reflecting. So a large flat body of water would probably be best suited to planar. I guess tracing rays that far into the distance would be too expensive.
I'm usually against remasters but holy... I loved the way those games looked back in 2011 and 2013, seeing them now makes me question everything I liked back then haha and this freaking soundtrack!! So effing good! After reviews confirm all of this I think I'll pick it up!
Why are you against remasters? (2) Don't you want the younger generation to experience stuff that made our childhood awesome? Without remasters they only have some Sony exclusives, some Ubi titles, few EA n MS titles and everything else fontnight-ish junk.
Honestly, the original games looked much better to me in a lot of side-by-side comparisons. Sure, they're not technically as accurate, but it still looks better to me.
Great review, I really couldn't appreciate the difference of shadowing until I saw your Cyberpunk and crysis videos, keep on the good work. Am I the only one willing to see metro 2033 or last light rtx on?
Word is that certain media outlets were allowed by Crytek to post videos on the remasteres ahead of the embargo for everyone else. Also Crytek gave outlets review guidelines about the do's and dont's in the reviews. Is this true? Did Digital Foundry get preferential treatment by Crytek?
Well, Digital Foundry was kinda "overlooking" the development, even if that is a stretch. They were in the crytek hq some times and made sure that graphical features like motion blur etc. work correctly and that the graphical featureset wasnt downgraded unintentionally, as it happened with the remaster of part 1
While most stuff looks great and I'm not the "old stuff was better" guy, the textures seem to have lost a bit of contextual awareness... look at 3:03, the grass lokks flat and less detailed. Right after that at 3:08 the floor looks way more "one world" in the original while the leaves seem placed on the remaster
Hmm, very interesting point. I've looked at the scenes again and ... for the life of me, I can't arrive at your conclusion. Don't get me wrong, no offense meant here, honestly Carsten. ^-^ Maybe it's down to personal taste? Hard to say, but these scenes look super cohesive *to my eyes*. You said it yourself: They *have* lost contextual awareness, that was the entire point, engine wise. This awareness you meant _(totally get what you are saying)_ will be established not only by the texture itself but the systems of the engine that ultimately drive it. From this POV alone, one could argue that the new end result, in the remaster, is technically more "contextually aware", because it's final look *is more defined by the context* than before. Made this sense to you? It's late =) Have a gr8 day
@xpgx1 Good morning! So, let me go into more detail, maybe you can see it then. The point you might have misunderstood is that I do not see a fault in the engine's rendering, this is totally fine. Instead I was talking about the very base texture itself, the drawn image without all the post processing (or, actually with it because of the way you see it ingame). I'm not saying that the engine renders the floor out of context -- but that the texture itself does not fit as well as the old one. Admittedly this might be more subjective with the grass, but let's look at the floor with the leaves again.The floor texture looks great, no problems here! The leaves as well, they are totally fine as well (except for the hard cut against the wall maybe, but that's not the point here). But when they both come together, the color, warmth and in general the "fading" between them is way more organic in the original. Floor and leaves have a similar tone to them, at first glance it is one big layer and then you see that there are leaves laying around. In the remaster, there is a hard break between the brown floor and BAM the yellow leaves. Maybe this is more realistic, maybe this is completely correct and surely it looks great and has a way better rendering than before! But the artist who made the textures was, and that is my original point, less context-aware and, in this specific scene, the textures don't fit as well as they did before. I hope this explains it a bit better? I was not really complaining about a deep, complex render structure, I was just watching the video and in the second those screenshots appeared, my first reaction was "whoa, is this a lighting bnug or....ohhh, no, that's supposed to lok this way." Have a great day as well :)
I just wish they did more to update the actual feel of the gunplay. Playing 2 feels really sluggish even after fiddling with the sensitivity. The AI also still abysmal and makes it nearly impossible to play stealth.
@@trblemayker5157 I mean, it’s still piss easy on the harder difficulties, but might as well have just removed the stealth stuff completely because it’s absolute garbage.
While the new version of Crysis 2 looks better, I still like the original gloomy look. It never looked very realistic but I found the look very appealing. But then you said it looked 360like and I still enjoy that look. For some reason I find it much easier to keep the the overview in these games and it’s much easier to spot which objections actually play a role in the gameplay.
I was looking at the side by side comparison and man, the original Crysis 2 game is really beautiful, the remaster is more plain and dull, and all this new "ray tracing" stuff is not enough to outgun the original games.
@@danielgomez7236 I was talking about this last night with a friend of mine. The PS3/360 generation games still look really good. And I fully agree: aside from reflections on shiny surfaces, RayTracing has not really convinced me so far. The calculation of shadows and lighting may be „real“ but it does not look better. More realistic but often less spectacular. „Dull“ is exactly the right word.
@@dronescoVKE well said. I feel like I'm one of five people on the planet who thinks ray tracing looks worse than alternate methods. Art style/ aesthetics over hyperrealism any day.
@@chs_ambs8356 I don't mind if they use technics to reproduce reality where it actually looks beautiful. But as you say sometimes deliberate placing of fake lights creates a more purposeful light atmospherehan ray tracing. So ray-tracing can be a great start but it should not release develpers to reconsider whether the look it creates really serves the mood they want to achieve.
Damn, they did a really good job on the technical side of things on Crysis 2. However I must admit that I much prefer the look of Maldo's textures, the new textures look... kind of bland, they lack character.
9:20 Original honestly looks better to me here. I know the remaster is more technically correct, but some of the comparison shots sorta look nicer to me artistically in the original. For example, the remaster redone texture is higher resolution, but I prefer the general look of the original’s brick texture here.
the alien at 12:53 also looks more intimidating in the original dunno his battery run out or something? his metallic outer shell is also downgraded from what i see in favor of another different artistical choice
@@blightviolin7322 Agreed, maybe it's just us, but in a lot of scenes I side by side (I own both the originals and the remasters) the original has a more striking/preferable look to it seems to me. The shots Alex showed even like the ones we mentioned with stamps look less visually interesting imo. There are also some geometry overlap issues like Alex pointed out in this video I noticed that I don't think the original game has. There is also weirdly more aliasing at 18:12 in Crysis 3's remaster. Then you add on to all this how much heavier these remasters are too run and I'm just ... not sure what we got was such a dramatic improvement. Ideally when you buy remasters for single player games, the devs should just give you the original copies as well so you can choose which you prefer to play.
To me crysis 2 remastered looks very soft and reflections are everywhere, even walls. It just looks unnecessarily unrealistic that a painted wall shows a reflection of a building.
I gotta be honest, I'm not a fan of the texture work in Crysis 2 Remastered. I can understand from a technical standpoint it helps the lighting, which is definitely better in the remaster, the new textures just look incredibly flat and under detailed. I'm personally a fan of the grittier, sharper textures in the OG version. It feels more war torn to me.
When using RDNA1 instead of RNDA2, you might as well have used an Nvidia card without HW RT as well, like the 1080. Of course, you might not have any RDNA2 cards to test.... I have RDNA2 and really would love to see how it perfoms! Can anybody test RDNA2 with RT, or direct me to someone who has done that in these games? Thanks! Might buy this if it traces ok :)
It would also give us an idea of how the consoles would have fared if they supported RT in this game. Obviously it would be a 30fps affair, maybe that wouldn't even have been possible, but I'm still curious...
Crysis 2 Remastered's lighting and detail are absolutely incredible. It's amazing how one of the best looking games in the last decade comes back and looks even better. Admittedly, I do slightly miss the blue-ish tone on everything, as I feel like it stylized the game and made some scenes look really cool. Still though, I'm happy to play C2 again in a better-looking, more optimised format. Same with Crysis 3 Remastered.
It’s a really contentious matter - the whole preservation debate. but in the case of this so called Transformers-look, I must say I very much appreciate that a remaster just cleans up the noise, and the art and environment direction can better flex on the current hardware.
I have bought Crysis Remastered Trilogy because of this excellent video which being so detailed made with time and good effort, also as the appreciation for the Crytek for not giving up their precious intelligence and intention in this cruel competitive environment and the persistent to come out the masterpieces one by one. I don't care how people think out of remastered Crysis, I just know that it is stunning.
I just did the same because of this video. Already had C1R. Getting C2R and C3R for £19 was fair enough, even if I have played the originals many times. I was like Alyx in that the colour palette of C2 Max Ed, was somewhat of a turn off. Still played it lots though. Now for the new one.
30fps on a 3090 in Crysis 3? The madlads did it. They made a game that modern PC's can't run again!
Yeah same with consoles with ray tracing lol it's no surprise, it's pretty obvious lmaooooo
Thats bad optimization for you
I think that's more bad optimization. These days Crysis doesn't really look impressive anymore, especially when games like RDR2 exists
@@Echoplex25 rdr2 doesnt look that good tbh it has great animations but that about it.
@@Carlisho No, Red Dead Redemption 2 looks good, it had sucky animations but everything else looks good.
Could this actually be Alex’s last Crysis video?
No, don’t be silly.
Indeed. :D
Crysis 4 incoming
I fully blame you Alex for the fact that I can no longer see the inside of event without noticing that it's glowing in the dark like the Moon.
Also for being honest to tell the truth that basically Crysis 3 is not remastered at all, but enhanced with raytracing .
glowing in the dark you say?
Both of them look absolutely incredible. Can't wait to play them at 4K 120 fps in year 2031!
You got me in the first half not gonna lie
4k 120 will in 22
I can't wait to buy a 9090ti used in 2041 for 9000 dollars
@@ut2k4wikichici Shit that's only 5 generations away. 10 years. ;) 2031 more like.Ha
@@jonny-b4954 nah amd ezpzm8
I forgot how gorgeous Crysis 3 is. Imagine how amazing a Crysis 4 could be.
If they do let’s hope it’s exclusive to next Gen consoles and pc
ryse is beautiful the crytek problem and only focus on graphics
🤞
⚠️ If - only from Crytec please ⚠️ .. and then .. Make it right - right from the Start. Please. ❤️
Best people who made crysis left Crytek and only they know how cryengine works because Its hard to make a game with this engine
I wish there was a new Crysis game. Would be interesting to see how much they can push graphics now with the current gen consoles and graphics cards.
Also wouldn’t hurt to have another linear FPS, which is basically a dead genre now.
I think there was Crysis 4 in games list that leaked from Nvidia, so there is a chance.
No need to make it traditionally linear. Crysis 1 was a semi-open world game which had a linear mission structure but every mission took place in a big open location.
@Sonic That and the shift towards BR.
I’ve always found linear games to be much better at storytelling. The developers can give you a more tailored experience that way and graphics can be pushed harder too.
@@SgtZaqq Yeah you're right but he means that there's no side missions or any other unnecessary filler shit. Just straight forward killing to progress in the game, because there's only one thing to progress on.
@@SgtZaqq Tho Crysis 2 is the better game imo
30fps vegetation in Crysis 3 always really bothered me. Really glad they fixed that.
lol I didn't even know the vegetation was locked at 30fps until this video as I played it way back when I was using a 660ti, which ran the game at 30fps average at 1080p max settings. 30fps was tolerable enough for me at the time even when using a mouse and keyboard setup.
@@Shieftain they new most people will only able run it on max at 30 fps, that is why they made that choice..
I think he is kidding.
Now the whole game runs at 30 fps.
Props to you guys for including maldo's mod, it's an amazing piece of work and needs to be applauded.
But i still say some of maldos textures still looks better than the remaster not every thing just things like foliage they seem to be more detail and the brick walls and concrete floor but still this remaster is dam good especially how the first crysis remastered was a big disappointment. I was hoping it would be more realistic in the foliage and lighting but instead it look more cartoonish with over bright saturated color's
@@bioshock6935 yes maldo's was better in some aspects, which is funny if you think about it, 1 guy with limited technology 7 years ago made an amazing mod like this and they can't even top some of his accomplishments
@@rumbazumba3189 would look even more amazing if it was able to mix the two together while keeping the new rtx and svogi to match everything together
@@bioshock6935 that would be a remaster in a perfect world where the devs actually care about giving 100% effort into remastering, but no in our world modders give 100% effort instead
@@rumbazumba3189 Modders probably have all the time in the world and not restricted to deadlines and for them it's a hobby and not doing it for money unlike the game company's . But with most mods come with compatibility issues and breaks the game even the maldo mod has issues but i get where your coming from as not all remasters are always good but we are lucky on this game for a change
Reviewers:
"I don't really see much of a difference between Crysis 2 and the new remaster on PC"
Digital Foundry: Literally everything has been changed.
Yeah that's the sad reality, it feels like some reviewers just go off of their memory.
@@arricado Not the entire truth tbh, if it takes an extremely detailed comparison to make out all the improvements while the performance suffers heavily, I don't think that qualifies as a big success
@@omarcomming722 It's more that people care more about consistency and having things "feel" correct than they do about something actually being correct. Crysis 2 still looks great, the art direction made the most of the technology and, with the DX11 patch anyway, you really gotta study it for the illusion to break. Naturally, when you get a remaster of that game, your brain will go "this still looks correct, I can't see much difference", even if it's pretty drastically improved.
It's a testament to the original's art direction. The stylish color grading and IBL solution still look great imo. Not physically correct, but the scene still looks "complete", so to speak.
@@omarcomming722 I don't think that's the entire truth either. Crysis 2 is quite radically different, but I assume you meant Crysis 3 in this case. But the big contributing factor for lower fps there are planar reflections, as Alex pointed out. The thing is, they are only enabled on very high settings. You can look at it as a future proof optional reflection method :)
No normal person will notice much a difference. If you have to put 2 versions side by side and play "Spot the Difference," then the difference is minor. But all Digital Foundry videos over-exaggerate microscopic differences
Gotta hand it to Saber, while the "downgrades" in the original Crysis remastered were a let down to me, they seem to have done a nice job updating and modernizing the following two entries
Why put actual downgrades in quotations marks? The first Crysis remaster is a damn shame. 2nd and 3rd however look a lot better.
@@carny15 I just played the first remaster again and I just genuinely don't understand how anyone can say it isn't an upgrade on almost all fronts. The foliage still doesn't quite respond to gunfire at the full framerate, but that's a minor issue imo, and the graphical upgrades, which are significant, are more than worth that single gripe.
@@Orangeflea1 That would be forgetting the fact that many textures and 3D models are those from the 360/PS3 version, plus missing texture effects.
That may be, but different =\= lower quality. I’ve made several sets of comparison screenshots between the original pc release and the remaster, and the textures that are different generally don’t look worse, just somewhat different. The Remaster looks significantly better in almost every shot, and at least somewhat better in the others (mostly interior scenes that have seen few changes). The lighting is more detailed and more accurate, the view distances and foliage quality are better, the skyboxes are better, the water is better, many of the textures actually do look better, the particle effects are better, and I generally does look like a next gen game, IMO.
I don’t really know what you mean by texture effects. If you’re talking about POM, it was reimplemented shortly after release, and looks as good as and often somewhat better than it did in the original.
@@Orangeflea1 Aside from multiple areas where the visuals are objectively worse (which Alex has gone over), the game is also a buggy mess with a spate of control deficiencies and broken features. I bought it recently and had to refund it after just 30 minutes of play due to all the issues it has, many of which I hadn't expected or heard about before, and the relative lack of improvement in visual quality over a modded version of the 2007 release (at least up to the point I quit at, I didn't get to see any interiors, which I'm sure look way better in the new one).
Hopefully Monolith remaster F.E.A.R.-1&2 and _Fear Files_ expansion. (Forget fear 3)
I would kill for a rerelease of FEAR with a lick of modern graphics paint
Bro fear 1 is great fear 2 is poo and fear 3 I've played the most. Fear 3 is high up on my list of turn off your brain youtube time games and I always think of fear 3 when I go to Sam's Club because of that one mission.
FEAR 2 should be left in the dumpster where it belongs but a remaster of the original game would be amazing
A remaster have a very high chance of fucking up the original game's atmosphere, and F.E.A.R. was all about dark atmospheric places.
Agreed. Fear 3 is just absolute trash.
Because Saber prioritized frequently appearing textures to get best bang for their budget buck, I think that it's possible Maldo's more scattergun approach redid some props that weren't touched by Saber. So there is potential for modders to carefully touch up some of the infrequently appearing textures Saber placed out of scope -- like bags of chips in the vending machines, for example.
I'm really happy you showed Maldo's mod and put it in context against the remaster. Because people do often make glib remarks about how "mods look better" but that really isn't true in this case. Maldo did good work. But Maldo was one person. He touched a much smaller subset of textures. And he had to work within C2's tech limitations, and the somewhat garish artistic conventions of the time.
100% agree. You nailed it, in my opinion. Especially the last sentence made me chuckle because it conveys the exact feeling I get when I think back to _that time_ in gaming. Thx =)
Agreed, so happy for the MaLDo mention and comparison - lots of other things (bugs, tess errors) were fixed along with replacing terrible textures in the final version of the mod. And some really amazing POM surfaces were added, too. Glad this remaster was given a similar amount of attention from Saber/Crytek.
Q
That visual performance of "auf wiedersehen" at the end was great alex, as was the whole video !
the BGM in Crysis 3 hit the feels.. nostalgia.. "Remember me..." - Prophet
Man it's pretty insane how well these games hold up visually, even the old versions still look downright modern on max settings on PC. The general consensus is that Crysis 2 & 3 are downgraded weaker sequels to fit on consoles, but IMO they aged extremely well visually and in terms of design. Even the wide/linear design of the gameplay is downright refreshing in the day and age where we were burned out on both hyper linearity and giant bloated open worlds. It's just enough freedom and tactical options to not feel restrictive, while still providing hand crafted scenarios and cinematic pacing. Wish Crytek would come back to making forward thinking single player games!
Particularly Crysis 2's campaign is actually extremely well done minus a couple annoying quick time events, and by far the best campaign in the trilogy IMO, far surpassing the original in terms of pacing, variety and length. Crysis one was 2-3 hrs of wide open tactical shooter and 2-4 hours of linear alien wack a mole with some turret/vehicle stuff in between. Crysis 3 is gorgeous and has the best core gameplay of the trilogy but it feels short and rushed unfortunately
Overall very underrated trilogy and I'd love to see Crytek return to the Far Cry/Crysis style of boundary pushing single player FPS
It's the level design and art direction more than the graphics themselves
This two turned out to be great. Great job with this vid, Alex. RT reflections are much more noticable in C2R, due to the city setting and its materials. SVOGI looks great like in the C1R and does so much for the image. Many games even nowdays doesn't have a lighting system this good and suffer from the same old light leaking/occlusion problems. Crytek outdid everyone with their tech once again.
Great video, just wish you highlighted some of the brick textures in-game that use tessellation/POM. Some of the best brick textures in gaming!
I was wondering why they didn't mention that too🤔
Yeah, was hoping for that lol
Great video Alex. I forgot how good Crysis 2 actually looked even in 2011. Wild!
Now I want Crysis 2 Remastered Maldo Remastered Edition
Been looking forward to this video, I thought I was going mad when I couldn't tell that much difference from Crysis 3 original and remastered on my PC. Also glad I can happily set RT on low or medium. Will be great to play through these games again.
Getting it just for the shotgun animation fix. I literally stopped using that weapon in the original because of it.
and i have no idea before watching a DF review that it is actually the animation's 30fps lock, i always thought it is shotgun explosion physics too demanding for my gpu haha
Does Crysis 3 have 60fps animations already? Or have they been added in this time as well?
@@rmsrmsrmsrms Crysis 3 had mostly 60fps weapon animations, except for the revolver, IIRC.
Can I ask you something for crysis 2 did you not find the ads sensitivity to erratic and the aim acceleration to annoying
@@Sonyrocks1Of Havent got 2/3 remaster yet, but the first game remaster has 'Advanced sensitivity' option for the mouse where you can use 'RAW input' and adjust ADS sensitivity seperately. Aiming feels slow in the original's yes.
It's great that all of these old games are getting remastered like Dead Space. I would love to see the Quake trilogy get remastered too.
Dead Space is getting a remake.
The comparison at 26:04 is amazing, holy hell!
It's just incredible, crysis 2 looks especially great!
This is a great showcase of ray-tracing. The games look so much more coherent.
Crysis 2 got the best remaster imo. It looks so much better now.
I'm going to have to disagree with you ME Ehanced edition is , you have GI , reflections infinite bounce lighting , etc runs alot better too , dlss quality 4k , rt max settings way over 60fps at all times with a rtx 3080 these remasters with subpar RT dlss having to be in performance mode to even get 60fps on the same hardware is laughable
Its just SVOGI. Ray tracing covers only transparencies.
It is so interesting to see how times have changed. What once was lauded as forward-thinking and future-proofing visuals (to the point modern pc's could not run the game on anything but lower settings) is now a source of complaint and "unoptimized" for many. Striking a balance between visuals and performance seems much more important to the average gamer these days.
Yeah, standards and mindsets changed. Going back 15 years people were used to PC Games being heavy and hardware being outdated very quickly from what I heard, also the audience was smaller (in count) and therefore more 'niche'. Now PC gaming or gaming in general has much more of a mass appeal and a lot more casual gamers I suppose, that's already one reason for decisions to make most people happy. Then other technological advancements like High-refresh-rate (and high resolution) monitors and them being much more common the last years raised standards and the need for developers to support this properly too. Even consoles now mostly target 60fps and can do 120fps in some cases too.
But IMO that's good, people can focus more on experiencing and enjoying the game and needing to worry less about how it runs and enthusiasts still will fiddle around with settings and find ways to spend time with performance investigations (like I do^^).
This!
I want more wow looking games which brutalize my setup on ultra/max settings but still giving me 30+ fps on medium (with reduced res/scaling as an option) & not looking like trash.
This way I can enjoy them once again when I upgrade my setup later, but I guess not everyone has such a mindset.
The only game which I refused to continue playing on my laptop was TW3, mostly because it's a huge time-sink & I know that when I eventually upgrade I'd want to play it all over again (on an UW😍) so I saved that time now.
wrong, people leveled those claims at the time - they are not new, if anything, they are crusty and vaguely inaccurate.
People like to complain about new releases being 'downgraded' and about 'lazy devs', but in reality I think we've reached an average level of visual quality in games that's high enough that we just don't _need_ to aim for some imaginary future anymore. Games no longer have blurry textures or huge polygons, light and shadows usually look good even if there's no ray tracing, and antialiasing is becoming almost perfect. Four out of five gamers play on a 1080p or higher screen. Games _look good_ now. So it's time to make games _work_ good now, instead of later.
@@KillahMate that's kinda correct given how most recent games (even non-AAA) look at medium quality and are decent/good looking.
But the other side is that until you have seen what the next iteration or revolution in graphics looks like, it's hard to judge.
Tech keeps on improving & we might be blown away again
I'm glad that more people will play crisis 3 now. Very underrated game!
I hope this remaster funds a crysis 4.
Already has
You know when you have an image in your head of what a 10 year old game used to look like, then you see it and it looks so much worse? I swear crysis 2 is the only game where my brains fictional enhancing of graphics, matches what they actually were like
Great video.
I don't think the Crysis 3 Remaster is worth it. It basically completely destroy performance for very few visual differences.
There is a easy fix for it
Not if you have the hardware to run it.
Well tbh for the remaster at 4k Dlss quality max setting a rtx 3080 shouldn't be struggling and for the upgrade of crysis 2 and especially 3 which is barely improved , fyi MEEE has way better RT and runs alot better are they still using dx11 for this remaster ? Being a pc gamer myself I have no issues with game a being demanding but there's got be a big enough technical or visual return
Turn off planar reflections.
@@DC3Refom what the heck is mee?
Never thought these games needed a remaster as they already look better than a lot of games do today.
Its good for console gamers, for PC its kinda not needed.
They don't look better than AAA games of today anymore with the exception of Crysis 3.
@@chalpua8802 Agreed. The console upgrade is night and day.
@@LN.2233 I didn't say they did.
@@Maddmargarita then what games are you talking about? Indies? Because that's an unfair comparison when Crysis was AAA
Great analysis Alex! The end had me chuckling!
that blue ambient lighting felt so surreal, like you could feel the terror but now its "fixed" it doesn't feel "right".
Soooo basically Crysis at max settings with rt on still brings modern GPUs to their knees lol
Well my 3080 Ti can run it maxed out at 120 FPS which is the maximum framerate the game allows..
Nah they start smoking and melting ask (NEW WORLD).
@@DeaDPooL-XforceX cringe.
@@fraggsta what resolution
@@DC3Refom 1440p. I could test it at 4k if you're interested.
I’m really enjoying Crysis 2 so far. I’m playing with a RTX 3090 at 1440p and the game looks and plays amazing!
FPS? :)
@@Resifreak90 DLSS To THA MoOn
@@jotunheim5302 DLSS is well implemented here tho why mock it lol? It made crysis 3 jump from 37fps to 60 on quality mode 🗿🗿
@@GetOffMyDick00 Wasn't "mocking" lol got a 3090 and I love DLSS.
Quite a contentious topic these remasters have been. Much could be said, but it is what it is, and at the end of the day they have been updated. Thank you for covering them as always, Alex.
How are you not gonna mention how it’ll run on non RTX cards like GTX? Sure it’s old but on the GPU shortages, it’s understandable that some of us still own these!
Crysis 2 annihilated the 2011 release, it's the one with major changes between the trilogy.
Just waiting for those silly original looks better comments. Slap a tint filter like blue or orange and make everything unrealistically contrasty and half the people thinks it looks better.
Are half of the people silly or do they enjoy a different look?
Great to see you added the Maldo mod to the comparison. I still regard this to be one of the very best mods for a game!
Why didn't they add real-time raytraced lighting and shadows? That would make the game more future-proof for benchmarks (as well as making it look better supposedly).
Did you watch the video? He explains why
@@victorn1291 What? I watched it full and it doesn't. Can you share me the timestamp?
@@damsen978 Sure :) Crysis 2 @ 1:03 and Crysis 3 @ 14:40 The way I understand it is, and feel free to correct me, Crysis 2 uses a mix of software and hardware raytracing for lighting, or 'global illumination', as well as hardware raytracing for reflections, whereas Crysis 3 uses Raytracing for reflections only because, A) it already looks great and B) The lighting was crafted by artists and rebuilding the whole lighting system would have been too much to overhaul.
@@victorn1291 Damn, true. It flew over my head then. And what about the first Crysis? Couldn't have they added it in full?
@@damsen978You're not looking on the right places then. Everything that use to use cubemaps now reflect in real time. Car windows, water bottles, water, so on and so forth.
Sometimes I question the value of trying to make everything look more 'realistic' in videogames. More accurate lighting and colours and objects! Well yes. I'm not sure it actually looks more enjoyable though. The real world is often grey, drab and muted. Videogames about fighting invading aliens in New York as a superhuman hero thanks to Nanosuit technology don't have to be.
This might be the era we are living on. Like in the 2000's every game had to have some sort of yellow "piss" filter added on top for some reason and 2010's had very vibrant games. Ofcourse there were exceptions to those. Namely the first Far Cry that came out in 2004 was very coloful and vibrant where most games back then were either dark corridor shooters or ones with yellow filter. What i really liked in that game was a color grading setting. I remember "Paradise" being very colrful while "Realistic" was muted.
This allowed the played to choose their own style.
There are just as many if not more "non realistic" games as there are "realistic ones" and even the realistic ones almost always have their own artstyle.
Do realism everything, just increase vibrancy abit. Done
You can still have more advanced lighting and then choose to do post processing to apply an artistic twist, they are not mutually exclusive.
It's about being able to make games look real, not making everything look real. It's just something we have yet to achieve, to be used in certain scenarios.
Finally a developer who knows how to utilize ray tracing
Crysis 2 Remastered might be the best looking game in the series now.
The crysis series was way ahead of it's time making lighting tech that did not exist at the time that does now using clever tricks to hide what they still made work. I think it's fantastic that they are updating this so a whole new generation can enjoyed it without having to buy, at the time was a 7800gt which many could not afford, let along running them in SLI. Seeing the same situation now with top 30xx hardware is dissapointing from a optimization stand point. Now the barrier to entry is much lower to achieve but still seems to suffer the same reception. Sad to see warhead always left out of all the series bundles. Great video.
Awesome as ever Mr Bataglia - million thanks buddy 👍🏻
Cant wait to replay Crysis 2 on my CX + 2060S. So this will be so good. Loved the second game and of course the third.- witch I allready played to many times. Crysis 2 it is. Damn I cant wait to get back to it!
I definitely noticed the antialiasing in C3... thats the main thing I didn't like about the original... many jaggies... quality all together smooth... although some scenes fps drops to like 40 but mostly it's been a smooth 60 on my 3090
I always preferred to super-sample to 5k on my 1440p monitor rather than use the games AA. A huge performance hit but damn does it look better.
Your work is always so much appreciated. This video is exactly what I needed.
I absolutely love these videos! So detailed and explaining everything! I'm a pixel peeper myself, coming from photography..so yea i love this.
I wonder who are these people disliking DF' videos. their videos are by far the best. we have no alternative to Digital Foundry.
Some braindead moron console fanboys. If you are regular here, you can easily spot them deep in the comment section.
Always expect 10% dislikes for weird reasons. If people can't afford Crysis Remasters in this case, they blame DF for it and downvotes the video.
People downvote for the most stupid things.
NX Gamer is another great source.
I wouldn't take downvotes too seriously, especially on a platform as popular as TH-cam. The downvotes could be anything and not necessarily aimed at DF themselves. Just off the top of my head it could be drunk/stoned people accidentally pressing the wrong button, it could be bots that are programmed for go around disliking vids (for whatever reason), it could be a random person that doesn't even like video games at all but for some reason they got suggested this video by the YT algorithm.
From what I've heard dislikes are really not that bad, I think its actually worse to neither like or dislike the videos, which is very sad when you consider the ratio of views to likes. One of the DF recent videos has over 700,000 views but less than 30,000 likes, really guys? it costs nothing to hit the like button and it really helps out the channels you love to watch.
@@sherlockholmes7630 it's not that real guy
They definitely learnt a lot from Crysis Remastered, it also helps that Crysis 2 and 3 are on more modern versions of the engine.
I'll definitely be doing a play through of all 3 games.
Another tight video nice guys👍
Really good remaster
2:42 That kind of material can actually leak that much light in real life when hit with direct sun.
@@InnerFury666 That IS plastic. There's no way that's metal.
5:02 God that music track STILL gives me chills... Replaying the Trilogy on my PS5, I forgot how great the Soundtrack for Crysis 2 is (probably because I only ever hear the Main Theme, which is also good but nowhere near the rest of the OST imo 🤷♂️)
Pretty sure Hans Zimmer is behind the music
@@NothingHereForYou Pretty sure he just did the Main Theme, someone else did the rest of the music (including that track)
@@NothingHereForYou From Wikipedia "composed by Borislav Slavov and Tilman Sillescu with the help of Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe."
Thinking about getting this, how’s it look on the ps5?
@@socratese5 To be honest it's mixed for me with 2. Alot of the style got sucked out when they decided to make it look more realistic. Some of the more breathtaking bits in 2 just seem flat now. On the flip side the crushing of the blacks was annoying in the og2. If you never played it go ahead., But if you can get a hold of the of one on PC with the same specs I'd do that.
Under trailers there are bunch of comments about games looks same, but when you do compare them and actually point out changes, this looks really good.
I absolutely love your in-depth analysis of graphics in new and upcoming games and really try to find out whats path traced/ray traced and what other technologies are involved in the presentation! Fantastic work you do (yoda?) and great video!
PC.. now here's the platform we give a damn about. Thanks Alex!!
Thanks god you are minority.
@@user-qg7oq6qw5c More active steam users than xbox and playstation. That's without looking at epic store.
@@user-qg7oq6qw5c Oh I quite agree, thank god.
@Sonic sorry, what’s the argument? There is ‘literally’ none.
@Sonic so there are more pc gamers in general but what you're saying is, pc gamers are the minority because they play more popular games regulary. That doesn't make much sense. Lets put it this way. I played control, the game was great but there wasn't much replayability, but on the other hand I can play skyrim and can sink hours into the game. I can add mods then then I can make a whole new experience and play it again. Therefore control wouldn't be an active game anymore, it's finished Uninstalled and now skyrim is an active game. That's why some games are more active than others because esports and open ended rpgs offer more hours. Who is going to play a demanding game if most are one and done games? Hell even new world you can play for hours. That doesn't prove pc gamers are the minority. The numbers are there.
Have you watched Santiago Santiagos channel? There's people asking how 1030s play on crysis trilogy remastered. People with low end hardware want to know how it plays and how much better the remastered look compared to the original so I don't get your point?
Why would you praise DOF there on the edge of the gun, close to the screen, I'd rather see the close up detail instead of having simulated short sightedness.
2 of the most alex things to be in a DF video . Ray tracing and crysis
17:48 that is such an improvement. The hand and grenade are exceptional in the remastered. Just gotts to wait for it to download now.
I have a 2080S and with your recommendation the game run at like 50-55, pretty bad, especially for a 10 years old game and using dlss performance.
The only REAL remaster is Crysis 2.
I liked that blue tint in 2. Gave it some personality then just going for realism
"halos of darkness" great band name ;)
We are reaching a point where everything is about 'realism'. Well 'realism' doesn't always mean that it will look better. There were some scenes in this video where the older version looks better.
The new lightning and textures are a great improvement on the original Crysis 2, but what makes me like them even more is that they don't change the overall astetic of the game (unlike Crysis 1 Remastered).
One thing I did encounter in C2 Remastered is that the game has a massive stuttering issue when played on an HDD, this is off course improved by installing it on an SSD.
Still, I don't think it's good to make it a must to have it installed on an SSD, to even have it be enjoyable, considering that I have plenty just as great looking games on my HDD that don't have this issue.
As for Crysis 3: At first I was a bit dissapointed that the Remaster is literally just the same game just with RT, FOV slider and DLSS added in, but thanks to the side by side comparisons I appreciate the remaster more.
In my experience, Crysis 2 Remastered is actually much heaver on the performance as far as I have played them.
While Crysis 3 Remastered has about the same performance as the original, Crysis 2 Remastered doesn't just run worse than the original (which was expected) but also more than Crysis 3 Remastered (which may be because there are way more reflective survases in C2 than in C3)
One thing I dislike about Crysis 2 Remastered is that, just like in Crysis 1 Remastered, your shadow disappears when activating cloak, which wasn't the case in any of the original games (exception is in Crysis 2 when using Stealth Enhancement). At first I thought this was a conscious desicion because it's in both C1 and C2 Remastered, but then in C3 Remastered, your shadow is still visible even when cloaked. This just creates an inconsistency across all games. But I'm also probably the only one who cares about that.
The shadow not disappearing was one thing that always annoyed me in the originals, and I was glad it finally disappeared in c1 remastered.
Didn't know it's not in C3 remastered -.-
@@SimonVaIe there should be a shadow based on physics
@@rumbazumba3189 seems my link got deleted. Here a quote from an entry on nanosuits on a crisis fandom wiki page: "When Cloak Mode is activated, the Nanosuit alters its outer surface through the use of a crystalline generation, capable of fully absorbing or bending incoming wave spectrums such as visible light, radiowaves (Radar), Infrared (Thermal Imaging), and possibly microwaves or others, to render itself completely invisible to the human eye and most surveillance equipment."
Fully absorbing the light would make it appear black afaik, since that is how the most light absorbing materials we have (and also black holes) appear, so skip that.
Now take into consideration that we see almost no distortion of what's behind a nanosuit when it's in cloak mode.
When bending the light, this means the light coming towards your eyes gets bend around the suit, but the path needs to be corrected afterwards (or you'd see distortion, probably just a rainbow mess). Which would result in no shadow.
A different idea would be to think of the suit as a display, showing a video feed of what is behind it. While this method would result in a shadow, it would also break if more than one person is looking at the suit because one display can't account for different perspectives. This method is therefore not what the suit is using.
Maybe you can find an official source which describes a different method, but from observing how the suits cloak mode operates the only sensible consequence I can think of is:
If you can physics invisibility, you inadvertently physics turning the shadow off.
@@SimonVaIethere's no feasible way to describe how the suit goes into cloak that works with our knowledge of physics, so the best way is to call it alien tech and say it's a display that has magical properties lol
Or it just turns into an infinite mirror so it looks transparent, but in my book as long as there is "some" distortion there should be a shadow
@@rumbazumba3189 well yes, as long as there is some distortion there should be a shadow. But with how little distortion there is, the shadow would be just as slight - noticeable on a very simply formed and coloured plane, not on a more complex one as we usually have.
No shadow is close enough, while in the og games there was no difference in shadow brightness between cloaked and non cloaked at all.
I much more prefer Crysis 2's OG look because it gives it character instead of looking bland.
realistic =/= better
Plus as first example you showed the plastic building. At least imo Crysis 2 OG was more accurate because some of those things are just retina killers and light passes through them easily.
Wow, that's a loot of work done here, great material ! Now waiting for Crysis 3 on consoles ;) !!
WHEN ARE WE GETTING CRYSIS 4!? I know crytek read the comments and has heard our demands, so when is it actually going to happen?
I'd image these remaster are partially being released to test the water and gauge interest in a possible sequel, provided these sell well I'd expect to see Crysis 4 sometime in the not too distant future.
@@Antares-dw9iv this is exactly what I think to be honest. 1) It’s good marketing, informing the public of their product and having them take interest in it. 2) it’s an easy cash grab and 3) remasters are necessary because bromides don’t like old games with outdated mechanics and graphics even in the HD era so a remaster in necessary in order to sell and get the name of your game out there.
Crysis 3 did not sell well. Crytek does not care about pleasing an internet community. They do npt believe Crysis4 is worth the expenses
Best 27 minutes and 47 seconds of today! Thank you Digital Foundry and thank you Alex!
1:57 Remastered has that awkward wind dust that goes underneath those characters feet with bright light in the shadows
Spectacular video. Great comparisons, 10/10!
Great in-depth review Alex. I don’t have a gaming PC because of the GPU market but it looks great for those who have good hardware.
_Very_ surprised that they opted for planar reflections here... So the implication is that ray traced water would have been more expensive? Is Cryengine unusually efficient with planar reflections or something? Odd.
I suggest reading this forum thread over on unreal engine's website called:
"Is raytracing less “expensive” than planar reflections?"
I'll try and sum up what they said:
Planar reflections are ideal for flat surfaces like a water plane. They are pretty expensive as they essentially render the whole scene again from a different POV.
However, they should still be more efficient than RT in most case if it's just a single plane you are reflecting. So a large flat body of water would probably be best suited to planar. I guess tracing rays that far into the distance would be too expensive.
@@brewski535 Thanks!
I love this channel. So many tiny details explained clearly.
What a fantastic video. Great job Alex!
I'm usually against remasters but holy... I loved the way those games looked back in 2011 and 2013, seeing them now makes me question everything I liked back then haha and this freaking soundtrack!! So effing good! After reviews confirm all of this I think I'll pick it up!
Why are you against remasters?
Why are you against remasters? (2)
Don't you want the younger generation to experience stuff that made our childhood awesome? Without remasters they only have some Sony exclusives, some Ubi titles, few EA n MS titles and everything else fontnight-ish junk.
With the remasters, will we see the venerable Crysis 3 DF train and Psycho benchmarks return?
Honestly, the original games looked much better to me in a lot of side-by-side comparisons. Sure, they're not technically as accurate, but it still looks better to me.
Great review, I really couldn't appreciate the difference of shadowing until I saw your Cyberpunk and crysis videos, keep on the good work.
Am I the only one willing to see metro 2033 or last light rtx on?
Word is that certain media outlets were allowed by Crytek to post videos on the remasteres ahead of the embargo for everyone else. Also Crytek gave outlets review guidelines about the do's and dont's in the reviews. Is this true? Did Digital Foundry get preferential treatment by Crytek?
Well, Digital Foundry was kinda "overlooking" the development, even if that is a stretch.
They were in the crytek hq some times and made sure that graphical features like motion blur etc. work correctly and that the graphical featureset wasnt downgraded unintentionally, as it happened with the remaster of part 1
@@captainaustria95 no way, that's sick
While most stuff looks great and I'm not the "old stuff was better" guy, the textures seem to have lost a bit of contextual awareness... look at 3:03, the grass lokks flat and less detailed. Right after that at 3:08 the floor looks way more "one world" in the original while the leaves seem placed on the remaster
Hmm, very interesting point. I've looked at the scenes again and ... for the life of me, I can't arrive at your conclusion. Don't get me wrong, no offense meant here, honestly Carsten. ^-^ Maybe it's down to personal taste? Hard to say, but these scenes look super cohesive *to my eyes*. You said it yourself: They *have* lost contextual awareness, that was the entire point, engine wise. This awareness you meant _(totally get what you are saying)_ will be established not only by the texture itself but the systems of the engine that ultimately drive it. From this POV alone, one could argue that the new end result, in the remaster, is technically more "contextually aware", because it's final look *is more defined by the context* than before. Made this sense to you? It's late =) Have a gr8 day
@xpgx1 Good morning! So, let me go into more detail, maybe you can see it then. The point you might have misunderstood is that I do not see a fault in the engine's rendering, this is totally fine. Instead I was talking about the very base texture itself, the drawn image without all the post processing (or, actually with it because of the way you see it ingame). I'm not saying that the engine renders the floor out of context -- but that the texture itself does not fit as well as the old one.
Admittedly this might be more subjective with the grass, but let's look at the floor with the leaves again.The floor texture looks great, no problems here! The leaves as well, they are totally fine as well (except for the hard cut against the wall maybe, but that's not the point here). But when they both come together, the color, warmth and in general the "fading" between them is way more organic in the original. Floor and leaves have a similar tone to them, at first glance it is one big layer and then you see that there are leaves laying around. In the remaster, there is a hard break between the brown floor and BAM the yellow leaves.
Maybe this is more realistic, maybe this is completely correct and surely it looks great and has a way better rendering than before!
But the artist who made the textures was, and that is my original point, less context-aware and, in this specific scene, the textures don't fit as well as they did before.
I hope this explains it a bit better? I was not really complaining about a deep, complex render structure, I was just watching the video and in the second those screenshots appeared, my first reaction was "whoa, is this a lighting bnug or....ohhh, no, that's supposed to lok this way."
Have a great day as well :)
@Sonic If you say so, Hedgehog =P
Last time I was this early I was living a good life
Return of the king
These remasters need a HD Texture pack asap!
I just wish they did more to update the actual feel of the gunplay. Playing 2 feels really sluggish even after fiddling with the sensitivity. The AI also still abysmal and makes it nearly impossible to play stealth.
Git gud
Still easy to kick ass at max difficulty.
The 3rd game got brutal at times. imo
@@trblemayker5157 I mean, it’s still piss easy on the harder difficulties, but might as well have just removed the stealth stuff completely because it’s absolute garbage.
Wowee, excellent content Alex! Thanks!
Reviewer: "here!"
Me: "wait, where?"
While the new version of Crysis 2 looks better, I still like the original gloomy look. It never looked very realistic but I found the look very appealing. But then you said it looked 360like and I still enjoy that look. For some reason I find it much easier to keep the the overview in these games and it’s much easier to spot which objections actually play a role in the gameplay.
Art style>realism. Crysis 2 and Halo:Reach are that gloomy 360 look lol.
I was looking at the side by side comparison and man, the original Crysis 2 game is really beautiful, the remaster is more plain and dull, and all this new "ray tracing" stuff is not enough to outgun the original games.
@@danielgomez7236 I was talking about this last night with a friend of mine. The PS3/360 generation games still look really good. And I fully agree: aside from reflections on shiny surfaces, RayTracing has not really convinced me so far. The calculation of shadows and lighting may be „real“ but it does not look better. More realistic but often less spectacular. „Dull“ is exactly the right word.
@@dronescoVKE well said. I feel like I'm one of five people on the planet who thinks ray tracing looks worse than alternate methods. Art style/ aesthetics over hyperrealism any day.
@@chs_ambs8356 I don't mind if they use technics to reproduce reality where it actually looks beautiful. But as you say sometimes deliberate placing of fake lights creates a more purposeful light atmospherehan ray tracing. So ray-tracing can be a great start but it should not release develpers to reconsider whether the look it creates really serves the mood they want to achieve.
Damn, they did a really good job on the technical side of things on Crysis 2. However I must admit that I much prefer the look of Maldo's textures, the new textures look... kind of bland, they lack character.
9:20 Original honestly looks better to me here. I know the remaster is more technically correct, but some of the comparison shots sorta look nicer to me artistically in the original. For example, the remaster redone texture is higher resolution, but I prefer the general look of the original’s brick texture here.
the alien at 12:53 also looks more intimidating in the original
dunno his battery run out or something? his metallic outer shell is also downgraded from what i see in favor of another different artistical choice
@@blightviolin7322 Agreed, maybe it's just us, but in a lot of scenes I side by side (I own both the originals and the remasters) the original has a more striking/preferable look to it seems to me. The shots Alex showed even like the ones we mentioned with stamps look less visually interesting imo. There are also some geometry overlap issues like Alex pointed out in this video I noticed that I don't think the original game has.
There is also weirdly more aliasing at 18:12 in Crysis 3's remaster. Then you add on to all this how much heavier these remasters are too run and I'm just ... not sure what we got was such a dramatic improvement.
Ideally when you buy remasters for single player games, the devs should just give you the original copies as well so you can choose which you prefer to play.
Good stuff. Cheers Alex!
To me crysis 2 remastered looks very soft and reflections are everywhere, even walls. It just looks unnecessarily unrealistic that a painted wall shows a reflection of a building.
Glossy paint DOES show reflections, though. I've worked with plenty of it in industrial zones.
I gotta be honest, I'm not a fan of the texture work in Crysis 2 Remastered. I can understand from a technical standpoint it helps the lighting, which is definitely better in the remaster, the new textures just look incredibly flat and under detailed. I'm personally a fan of the grittier, sharper textures in the OG version. It feels more war torn to me.
Yeah in many of the shots the original looks better than the remaster.
@@kusayfarhan9943 in all shots the OG look better
The music takes me back.
I once used New York Memories as a presentation background music 😂
Svogi sounds like the lovable hobo that comes through town once in a while. "Heya, Svogi!"
Now all we need is a proper remaster of Crysis Remastered, and the Crysis Warhead Remaster.
When using RDNA1 instead of RNDA2, you might as well have used an Nvidia card without HW RT as well, like the 1080.
Of course, you might not have any RDNA2 cards to test.... I have RDNA2 and really would love to see how it perfoms!
Can anybody test RDNA2 with RT, or direct me to someone who has done that in these games? Thanks!
Might buy this if it traces ok :)
It would also give us an idea of how the consoles would have fared if they supported RT in this game. Obviously it would be a 30fps affair, maybe that wouldn't even have been possible, but I'm still curious...
Crysis 2 Remastered's lighting and detail are absolutely incredible. It's amazing how one of the best looking games in the last decade comes back and looks even better. Admittedly, I do slightly miss the blue-ish tone on everything, as I feel like it stylized the game and made some scenes look really cool. Still though, I'm happy to play C2 again in a better-looking, more optimised format. Same with Crysis 3 Remastered.
I wish it could be toggled on in the options.
@@lum26akua28 Ah like in Halo MCC, a new and old graphics option. That'd be cool, though I guess it would've been a ton of extra work.
It’s a really contentious matter - the whole preservation debate.
but in the case of this so called Transformers-look, I must say I very much appreciate that a remaster just cleans up the noise, and the art and environment direction can better flex on the current hardware.
I have bought Crysis Remastered Trilogy because of this excellent video which being so detailed made with time and good effort, also as the appreciation for the Crytek for not giving up their precious intelligence and intention in this cruel competitive environment and the persistent to come out the masterpieces one by one. I don't care how people think out of remastered Crysis, I just know that it is stunning.
Check out original Crysis 1 if you can, it looks better, the remastered version is PS3 version.
I just did the same because of this video. Already had C1R. Getting C2R and C3R for £19 was fair enough, even if I have played the originals many times. I was like Alyx in that the colour palette of C2 Max Ed, was somewhat of a turn off. Still played it lots though. Now for the new one.