To quote Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother – ‘It’s time to suit up!’, because Crytek have just released their final (probably) Crysis game. And taking centre stage as expected in the series renowned Nanosuit. It’s the suit which seperates the game from the rest of the FPS pack, and allows all sorts of variety in the way you choose to take on the game. But we’ll get back to that in a bit.
Crysis 3 is a beautiful FPS which continues the tradition set by Crytek to make brilliant graphically impressive games. The game again features protagonist Prophet. It appears the Ceph, barring a few stragglers, have all but gone, and the focus moves to stopping C.E.L.L. Or at least that is what ‘Psycho’ (a surviving member of Prophet’s old squad) and everyone else is telling you. But Prophet’s suit induced visions predict a much darker future than anyone can expect. It’s down to Prophet to insure that these visions don’t come to fruition.
I would advise that you try playing through the first Crysis games to get a general grasp of the story, or at least try to find a catch up article or video somewhere. While it’s not completely necessary as the story can be followed without prior knowledge. But you’ll get a better experience of the character development and story line by knowing what has happened before. Throughout the single player there are plenty of upgrade options for your suit to find, as well as being able to collect intelligence items across the levels. I found the campaign itself to be very enjoyable if not a bit short. And it was slightly disappointing to see the ending of the game to be a bit spoon fed in terms of gameplay interaction – something which Halo 4 also recently suffered from.
Crysis 3 controls as you would expect a modern FPS to. But with nanosuit technology such as stealth mode, armour mode, enhanced speed, jumping and hacking to consider, there will be a bit of a learning curve for newcomers. I suggest partaking in the optional tutorial mode, and before you know it you’ll be jumping over ledges, activating stealth and performing a silent kill on unaware enemies. Each different suit power does require a certain amount of energy, and when that runs out you will need to wait to recharge before being able to use your powers again. With the different power options at your disposal it’s possible to play the game through it different ways. You can activate the armour mode and go full tank blasting your way through enemies. I decided to adapt a slightly more subtle stealth approach, marking the targets with the visor and hunting them, the best way I could anyway. The Predator Bow, introduced to the franchise in this game, is a strangely satisfying weapon, which fits the stealth approach down to a tee. It’s strange that a super soldier would wield such a basic form of weaponry, but the power shots are deadly, and the choice of different tips leads to plenty of different options when it comes to warfare. It’s not just the Bow that comes with different options though; all weapons have plenty of customisable options to let you play the way you like.
I previously touched on the impressive visuals this game has. And while I know it doesn’t touch on the PC version I found myself with my mouth open at some of the setpieces. The first time you set foot in an overgrown New York and see the sun flickering through the greenery, or when you overlook the hydroelectric dam, and even the dingy damp looking interiors near the end of the game have astounding detail. I seriously doubt any game will match the visual benchmark set by Crytek before the next generation of consoles hit.
Multiplayer is ever present in Crysis 3, putting its own twist on classic gameplay types, the highlight for me being hunter mode. It is essentially an infected type game, except the ‘infected’ have stealth enhanced nanosuits with Predator Bows. 2 of these set out to hunt run of the mill C.E.L.L infantry. If you are killed playing C.E.L.L you are turned into a hunter. A game of survival is a lot more tense when you can’t see your enemy. Along with this you have the normal deathmatch and capture game variants, as well as being able to play through various modes without nanosuits at all. But it is the suit and its powers that make the multiplayer that little bit more interesting that the usual shooters. You are able to choose custom loadouts, choosing weapon attachments and grenade types. And allowing you to alter different modules on your suit, most of these are also tiered which different challenges to increase its effectiveness. It is such a massive shame that the servers always seem quiet, with some modes having less than 100 players online a lot of the time.
If you’ve played previous Crysis games, you’ll no doubt enjoy this too. While it doesn’t revolutionise the series, the sandbox type levels open up the levels a bit more than Crysis 2 did. It isn’t a spectacular game in itself (except visually of course), but it is very enjoyable. If you have yet to experience what Crysis is all about I would recommend you give this a go. The nanosuit adds an extra excitement and spice to the tried and tested FPS formula. And there’s replayability on offer with the choices you make on how to attack each level. And while I mentioned that servers are quiet, I never failed to find a game. And there is nothing quite like being able to armour up one second and absorb enemy fire for a sweet double kill, then being able to switch to stealth mode to silently kill the sniper that has been raining pain on your team.
