Welcome to the Jungle once more….
I’m somewhat on the fence when it comes to the Crysis games. I think the first was amazing visually and the idea of the nanosuit with different abilities was well implemented, the story wasn’t too bad either but I felt it all went weird in Crysis 2, which too was a beautiful game but it lacked the freedom of the jungle that was in the original. The third game tries to combine the two with nature returning to New York, and yes…Prophet is back.
The story is a huge improvement over Crysis 2’s and Psycho returns minus his nanosuit, so he’s a little miffed to say the least. Prophet isn’t even human anymore, I’m not really sure what happened to Alcatraz, or if his mind was taken over by Prophet and I only found out that poor Nomad from the original Crysis died in a comic. There’s a lot going on with the story with an organisation called CELL who run everything in the New, New York and it builds to a good, albeit predictable result. Company has power they don’t understand, it gets loose…you get the idea.
The biggest change to Crysis 3 is the inclusion of the Hunter Bow, which is great for stealth kills as you keep cloaked when using it. You can also use different types of arrows like sticky and frag grenades, normal arrows and some that carry electricity. The customisation of the Crysis games has always been strong and that’s no different here, you can add many attachments to the weapons you find and you can upgrade your suit’s capabilities by finding upgrade packs through the campaign, but its more refined as you can pick your own layout of upgrades.
The campaign isn’t as long as Crysis 2’s, but it’s definitely better by far and not to mention more memorable. The enemies are nicely varied from the human CELL troops to the Ceph Stalkers who hunt you through blades of grass. Multiplayer is also a blast with the same modes from Crysis 2, but also a few new ones. The best being a virus-type mode with cloaked enemies. There are challenges, ranking up and perks as you would expect. It’s great fun, even though it won’t really take the crown from the big FPS boys.
The Crysis games have always been visual wonders and the 3rd game is no exception, even on consoles. The lighting is amazing and when you first step out to see New York you’ll pause for a second to take it all in. There’s also great facial animation, especially from Psycho who is resentful for being skinned of his suit. Voice-acting is brilliant, while the music isn’t too shabby either.
The Verdict
Crysis 3 does a great job in bring the story to an end, for now at least. It doesn’t change things too much, but it’s a nice balance between what worked within the past two games. It won’t change your mind if you didn’t like the past games, but for those that did it does more than enough to justify one more outing in the nanosuit.