Four Crysis games are now available on GOG, but not the one I really want

"But can it play Crysis?" That's the eternal question when anyone in my friendship group splashes out on a new gaming PC or upgrades their existing rig. It's practically a running joke among us gamers, considering just how many polygons developer Crytek jammed into the trilogy, making it the de facto benchmark for high-end hardware. If you haven't played the games before, they're also great FPS games in their own right, from those heatsink-testing visuals to the great gunfeel. And right now, they're available from GOG with a heavy discount.

I'll caveat this news immediately. Four of the games are now available on GOG. The original game, Crysis, has been added to the online store. The Crysis Remastered Trilogy, comprising of, you guessed it, the recent remasters of the three mainline Crysis games.

This is important for numerous reasons. Firstly, GOG sells games DRM-free. The long and short of this is that it means you don't need to be online in order to play them. Many games, including those you own on rival platform Steam, require an online connection in order to establish that you actually own the game before you can play it. This means that you can't play many games offline, even if you bought them. That's not the case with games you buy on GOG.

Secondly, this preserves the original games. Three months ago, the original Crysis disappeared from Steam, meaning PC players struggled to play the classic game. It's still not available on Valve's platform today.

But there's a little bit of bad news. While the GOG release is worth celebrating, it doesn't include the original Crysis 2 or Crysis 3, only the remastered versions. While the remasters look very pretty, many of us want to play through the originals again. They've aged surprisingly well, and GOG's DRM-free approach would be most welcome when playing Crysis 3 in particular, which always required you to log into your EA account in order to play. A way of playing this underrated threequel without jumping through those online hoops would be perfect.

I'm not one to dwell on the negatives, though, so I'm excited to get stuck into the Crysis Remastered Trilogy again via GOG. The original Crysis is nothing short of a masterpiece, achieving an immense aggregated score of 91 on Metacritic. With 75% off on GOG for today only, it's a bargain not to be passed up.

Crysis and the Crysis Remastered Trilogy are now available on GOG. They are on sale for ~$5.38 / £3.99 and ~$19.54 / £14.49 respectively, until Tuesday, October 7. You can buy Crysis here and the Remastered Trilogy here.

If you were late to the sale and want to wait for the classics to drop in price again, check out our list of upcoming PC games for news of Crysis 4. It's also worth upgrading to one of the best gaming monitors to see these titles in all their glory.

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