Crysis Remastered On Switch--The Digital Foundry Verdict Is In, And It's Good

Crysis Remastered is coming to Switch very soon--its release date is set for July 23, despite the other versions being delayed--and many fans have been curious about how the game will run on the system. Crysis is a famously CPU-intensive game, and this represents the first mobile or handheld port the game has received. Considering that "Can It Run Crysis?" has become a meme in games culture, it's more than reasonable to be curious.

Thankfully, tech specialists Digital Foundry are here with a tech review on the latest in a line of what they are calling the Switch's "impossible" ports (previous examples include The Witcher 3 and Wolfenstein II). The verdict is in, and it's mostly good news--the game looks and performs very well on the system.

The port has been handled by Saber Interactive, who previously handled the ports of The Witcher 3 and Vampyr. They've been very upfront about the tech running the game on Switch, and released a tech trailer showing off what it could do--and now Digital Foundry has dug in even deeper into what they call "a remarkable, fascinating port."

The port is based on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game, albeit with enough improvements for Digital Foundry to declare this "undoubtedly the best console port" (upcoming PS4 and Xbox One versions notwithstanding). The game runs at 720P most of the time in docked mode, sometimes dropping to 540P or lower in "busy situations", and the full dynamic resolution scaling ranges from 540P to 900P docked, and 400P to 700P undocked. "The main takeaway is that image quality isn't bad," the report states. "It's not pristine, but it's significantly better than the heavily blurred presentations seen in the likes of the id Tech 6 ports, The Witcher 3 and Warframe."

The game also boasts significantly improved lighting, surpassing even the PC version in some places, thanks to the use of sparse voxel-based global illumination. This "delivers a real-time global illumination system that offers both ambient occlusion and indirect light bounce, delivering a standard of realism that easily eclipses the last-gen ports and indeed the lighting found in the PC original."

The game's frame rate is locked at 30, with occasional dips into the low-20s when there's a lot of action on screen. There are some compromises in the vegetation destruction, too: "when you unload on a tree, it appears somewhat choppy," the report says.

Here's the full 27-minute video from Digital Foundry, digging into every aspect of the Switch port.

Crysis Remastered marks the first appearance of the Crysis series on a Nintendo system. Thankfully, we can put aside our fears for this port--it is not a Potato Mode situation.