Crysis 3 Review | Zero1Gaming

Welcome back to New York. Or at least what’s left of it anyway. Anyone planning a trip to the Big Apple during the Crysis 3 timescale might want to hold off on purchasing those flight tickets. EA’s latest game in the series is in some ways excellent, but also falls flat in a few key areas.

Carrying on a few years after the events of Crysis 2, all the Ceph alien race are presumed dead and the military group CELL have rose to power, hell bent on harnessing the alien technology to achieve their goal of world domination. This is where you, the supersolidier known as Prophet, come in. Held captive by CELL but released by a group of rebels including a ‘friendly’ face that fans of the original game will recognise, its your task to stop CELL in their tracks and rid the world of their existence, one soldier at a time.

If only it were that simple, the Ceph presumed dead are, of course, alive and well, and pretty darn determined to claim back the technology, and indeed the world, that they believe is rightfully theirs. So there is you, Prophet, and your ragtag bunch of rebels against an army of soldiers and an army of aliens. How can you expect to succeed? The Nanosuit of course. Back for it’s third outing, the old dog still performs admirably, allowing you to become the ultimate badass. The suit still has three main modes of use. Stealth allows you to cloak and sneak around undetected, armor allows you to become a bullet soaking walking tank, and power allows you to run faster and jump higher. Power also allows you to do awesome actions like the returning power stomp. There is no better way to make an entrance into a room full of soldiers than by jumping from an inexplicably large height and smashing the crap out of everyone below with one well placed slam.

The campaign by and large feels very similar to its predecessor in all truthfulness. The levels retain that half linear, half sandbox feel and they look similar to the last game aswell. New York is still the destination of choice, and despite their being more grass around now, its still the same city you explored two years ago in Crysis 2. The one main gameplay element is the introduction of the Predator Bow. The bow can be loaded with regular, explosive or thermite tips, making for some very entertaining kills. After acquiring it in the first level it stays on you all the time, meaning you don’t have to worry about switching it out for another weapon, and you can call on it whenever you need too. The other unique thing about it is you can fire it and stay cloaked, something you can not do with any other weapon.

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The levels feel like they have been designed with this mechanic in mind, as it is a much more stealth based experience than the previous game. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends or your personal preference, but it is worth noting that fans of the action set pieces in the previous may feel left wanting at the hands of a more stealth based game. The campaign is also pretty short, capping out about about the 8 hour mark. This is not terribly short for a modern FPS, especially when you factor in the excellent multiplayer, but it still feels like it concludes just as it is getting going.

Once you finish the main campaign, there is the aforementioned multiplayer suite which thankfully, takes everything that Crysis 2’s multiplayer did right and builds on it, whilst also fixing a lot of the issues the previous game had. The first question on everybodies lips will undoubtedly be, how is the lag? Crysis 2, for all it did right, was crippled by lag in multiplayer that at times made it unplayable. I’m happy to report that at the time of writing this, four days after the EU release, that lag is not too bad. It is still noticeable at times, but overall it is a far less frustrating experience than the previous game. The mechanics themselves have also improved drastically. Sprinting and power jumping does now not effect your suits power unless you are cloaked, which immediately creates a faster paced game. The stealth and armor modes now have their own individual bars now, as opposed to sharing one, which again creates a better flow and rhythm to games as it means players spend less time waiting for their suit charge to regenerate. The maps are all medium sized and play very well, with a nice balance of close and long range engagements. The learning curve feels shallower this time as well, and veterans wont had access to the same overpowered equipment they did on Crysis 2, making it much less daunting on newcomers. The Predator Bow also appears in multiplayer and Crytek have done a pretty decent job making it as balanced as possible. It is difficult to use, but very satisfying when you get the hang of it. My one bugbear that remains from Crysis 2 is the killstreak rewards. Most of them are fairly useless in all honesty and I don’t really see any reason why they need to be there at all. They are not game breaking by any means, but a 7 kill streak earning a short lived EMP blast just does not seem worth it to me. Overall it feels like a hybrid of Call of Duty and Halo, with the fast paced gunplay of the former combined with the on map weapon pickups and tactical play of the latter. It really is fantastic and makes up for the campaigns brevity.

All in all then, Crysis 3 is a bit of a mixed bag really. The campaign is enjoyable enough and has some standout moments, but just feels overly familiar and a little bit short. The multiplayer though more than makes up for this and will keep you coming back for more long after you have completed the single player. It still looks fantastic, but lacks the wow factor it did two years ago. If you are going to lay down £40 just for the single player, I would advise waiting for a while until it drops in price, but if you love multiplayer action as well then be sure to pick this one up as soon as possible.

Positives