The hyper realistic Sci-Fi Shooter Crysis both gets high praise for its stunning graphics and flacked for some of its more generic first person shooter elements.  The thing is maybe everything you hear on the internet isn’t entirely true.



Crysis 3 is a standard FPS in a beautiful Sci-Fi world where the Ceth Aliens have invaded and is trying to take over the world.  While yes the story is a bit generic the gameplay is fast and fluid.  Every time you shoot it feels responsive and with the abilities from the Nano Suit you can play the game exactly how you would like to rather than be forced to play a specific way. The nano suit is what makes the game unique with its special armor abilities. If you want to run and gun you can turn on armor ability, absorb bullets like they are coming from a pea shooter, and mow down your enemies.  Maybe you are more of a sneaky fellow though.  If that is the case turn on your cloaking ability and stalk your prey. Or maybe you just want to hack turrets to kill your enemies for you.  No matter what you do choosing how you are going to attack is possibly the most important thing in the game as you will need to use your suit in a number of ways to defeat your enemies.  And with a good variety in enemies from human Cell Soldiers to Ceth Stalkers you will find that using your suit in every possible way to survive is necessary.  And while the original Crysis was an open world shooter, Crysis 2 a corridor shooter, Crysis 3 seems to be able to hit a nice blend perfectly.  Giving you both corridor and open scale to see the beautiful sci-fi world around you. Even though the game looks much better on PC and possibly the best looking game the consoles still hold their ground and possibly the best looking console shooter.

I will say that fighting the Ceth is far more rewarding than it was to fight the humans though.  The Ceth is powerful, smart, and can challenge you in a number of ways.  One of my favorite missions was when Ceth Stalkers was hunting me down in high plain grass.  Not only was the surroundings beautiful but watching the grass starting to move downward coming towards you can give you a rush like you’re being hunted by a Raptor from Jurassic Park.  In fact the behavior they exposed was very similar.  Setting up traps for other stalkers and attacking from all angles.  You quickly become the hunted. “Clever girl.” 

An all new aspect of the game is the weapons.  You are now able to use Ceth weapons and a Cross-Bow which becomes the most versatile weapon in possibly all games.  You want to blow up a helicopter, sure just shoot an explosive arrow at it.  What about a Small turret?  Yeah just shoot an electric arrow at it?  You want to stalk your prey quietly?  Just use a regular arrow.  The number of ways the cross-bow becomes effective this weapon may quickly become your favorite.  Don’t worry though, they have plenty of other weapons for you and you can quickly modify your weapons on the fly by giving them red dot sites and silencers if you want to.

The downside though is not from what people say and it being generic.  In fact it is one of the best shooters on the market today.  Both beautiful and finely tuned.  The problem is in fact the Nanosuit.  While the Nanosuit is cool and allows for some pretty cool scenarios you become far too powerful the more you know how to use it.  The stalkers for example are an awesome enemy but a complete pushover because the nanosuit allows you to absorb their attacks by using overshield.  If I was a regular man in this same situation it would have turned out amazing.  Even if I was Masterchief I think it would have been amazing.  While it is obvious Crytek was inspired by Masterchief and Halo I still believe they made The Nanosuit too powerful.  Even Masterchief can die in one hit by a sword and many other weapons.



The Multiplayer brings the solid shooting over from the story and allows you to go head to head with competitive people across the world.  Nothing screams superb about the multiplayer and is mostly things you will see in other games such as capture the flag and Team Death Match but they do have one game mode called Hunter.  Hunter allows asymmetrical gameplay where a team of Hunters will try to kill normal soldiers. The hunters are silent and invisible so they can kill the regular humans before the time runs out.  This is by far the most interesting game mode they have and does create some tention while playing multiplayer. It does allow for some fun gameplay to side track you for a while but unfortunately the multiplayer is not the best in the game industry but in general can be solid.



The story of Prophet is an interesting one but a shallow one.  Prophet is possibly more Ceth than human now completing his transformation that he took in the original Crysis years ago.  Telling a story about this Super suit and bringing emotions of Prophet together telling why he was the only hope to save mankind can be emotional but never truly gets you to care about the character himself.   While you do learn a little bit about Prophet and some of the characters that helps him, something is missing from this and his story.    It is like they are telling me to care but not giving me a reason to care.  Pairing that with a generic storyline just didn’t pair together correctly.  None the less it is a great scifi-action story with a bit of emotion to it.  Not something that I will remember for years but the ending was satisfying enough to get me to wonder about Prophet and truly feel like it is the end of his trilogy.

Analysis

Crysis 3 is a great FPS shooter and one of the best on the market.  It is both stunning to look at and fun to play for FPS fans but the story was generic and never gave me any real reason to care about the characters in the game.  Crytek has proven they can make a game with good gameplay, now they just need to prove they can make a game with good story.

Played the beta on PC and the full game on X360 (Gamefly doesnt do PC)

That souns like an awesome console XD