Crysis 2: Classic FPS Remastered (Patreon)

Ahhhh the memories of this one - original captures taken in March 2011! The whole notion of Crytek moving over to multi-platform development was massively contentious at the time - and of course, the idea that the consoles would hold back PC from being everything it could be was a common point of discussion. Some might say that the pared back ports of the OG Crysis to PS360 would bear that out, but Crysis 2 was still an ultra-ambitious game in many ways and I'm really looking forward to seeing the remastered version.

How ambitious was Crysis 2? Well, it's borne out, of course, by the (let's be generous) challenged performance of the game running on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, where frame-rates would often drop into the teens and rarely hit the frame-rate cap. Xbox 360 ran with a higher resolution (1152x720) vs PS3 (1024x720) but the experience was massively inconsistent on both systems. All of which tore Cevat Yerli's "nothing under 30fps" claims to shreds: https://www.vg247.com/yerli-theres-nothing-below-30fps-in-crysis-2

We did a lot of performance testing for this one, simply because there's so much variance, so many challenging areas, and... well, we'd never seen CryEngine working on a console before and to be fair, the graphics were exceptional! We'll be following up on this with more Crysis 2/3 Remastered stuff soon - but this was actually a scenario where the Classic FPS Remastered footage actually had relevance in a new project.

As for the best ways to play Crysis 2 today? Until the remasters are out, back compat on Series consoles basically gives you a locked, er, 31fps. PC is king, obviously. I actually think it'll be the Switch remasters which will surprise many bearing in mind the often abject performance seen here. Expect much better frame-rates - and from a weaker CPU no less... 

Downloads: https://www.digitalfoundry.net/2021-08-17-crysis-2-classic-fps-remastered