Ever wanted to play a first-person shooter that included not only regular heated firefights but also well-developed stealth mechanics? Crysis 3 (released on Feb. 19), the newly released first-person shooter from Crytek and Electronic Arts (EA), continues and finishes its series with a solid, exciting game that has pleased fans and critics alike.
The series introduced itself with the first Crysis, containing a challenging and newfound storyline about alien and foreign nations invading an island. This continued in Crysis 2 when the alien race, the Ceph, invaded New York City and was eventually wiped out. In Crysis 3, New York City’s mercenary police force took the entire city and encased it in a ‘Nanodome’ to protect the city from things entering or leaving. The main character from Crysis 2 returns to the city in his high-tech Nanosuit, a piece of alien technology that can make its wearer invisible or invulnerable. The DNA-fitted suit is used by Prophet, a former military member that took on the name of the Nanosuit 2’s first wearer (The first Nanosuit did not return after Crysis).
The story of Crysis 3 begins with Prophet, who was out of the city hunting the Ceph, returning to find it encased in the huge Nanodome CELL, the police force, placed over it. CELL, who captured Prophet’s friend and tortured him, become the antagonists for the story, that is until Prophet destroys CELL’s power supply, which turns out to be the Alpha Ceph, the huge worm-like Ceph creature that powers the Ceph’s collective mind. The Ceph, CELL and Prophet all fight against one another, with Prophet representing the Resistance, a group of rebels fighting CELL but eventually have to turn against the Ceph as well.
First of all, the scenery in the game is gorgeous. The old hardware in consoles starts to show when you first compare, but even then, just entering the Nanodome for the first time offers a widening of the eyes and an audible gasp. The story presents itself easily, with little detail from previous games needed to understand it, although to find out who CELL is or the Ceph are, some research or listening might need to be done. The characters are very versatile, with moods changing constantly, as well as feelings between and for each other, however subtle. The gameplay for the campaign is brilliantly done, and utilizes all aspects of your suit, including stealth to sneak around and behind enemies, armor to get through tough firefights, and the new hacking ability to turn enemy equipment against them. However, during the first mission, you receive your newest weapon in your arsenal: the Predator Bow. This high-tech compound bow allows you to keep your stealth mode on even when you shoot the bow, making the game seem, well, simple. All you need to do for each objective is keep stealth mode on, sneak around every enemy possible, and if necessary, bypass every enemy or enemy turret without hacking or killing anyone. It creates a baseline for the game that dumbs down every other option to thinking about how you could’ve done an objective. The campaign’s story is its strong suit, leaving the gameplay to be fun in stealth mode, but much too easy to prove any sort of difficulty on anything but the hardest setting.
The multiplayer on Crysis 3 is a welcome bonus, but is very limited in what you can achieve. Compared to other modern first-person shooters, the multiplayer is the same thing you see in every one. The class setup is almost identical to that of Call of Duty, utilizing Nanosuit upgrades instead of the ‘Perk system’; and the game modes are all basic, except for a few differences in some game modes, like Crash site and Hunter. It’s generic game design will turn most away, but once in the actual game play, it is surprisingly, very fun. Just having the stealth ability adds a whole different view on a first-person shooter game, and the Nanosuit upgrades, or perks, are actually quite useful and different than you would normally think. Another downside, though, is that different lobbies have to ‘Migrate game’ constantly due to bad connections, which can resolve itself sometimes, but most of the time I have found that it simply kicks all the players out for ‘lost connection’. The guns also need some balancing, as there are a few guns that are quite overpowered, and some of the other guns get little to no exposure for players because there is not much desire to use them from any of the players.
SUMMARY:
Crysis 3 is a beautiful, well-designed game based on its action and stealth mechanics rolled into one, but starts lacking when it contains overpowered weapons, making the campaign a bit too easy to finish. The multiplayer brings some life to the game, and even with its bad first impression, can entertain players for a much lengthier time than they think.
8.2/10
