After watching the CryEngine 3 demo trailer last year, to say that I was keen to get my hands on the new game would be an understatement of epic proportions. Crytek have always gone out of their way to deliver a visually stunning experience and Crysis 3 is no exception.

That’s more or less where the brilliance ends though. The storyline takes a bit of a back seat to the visual wizardry but if you’ve played the other Crysis games, that shouldn’t really come as much of a shock.

Story and setting

This time around, you play as the ever enigmatic Prophet – 24 years after Crysis 2. What’s that I hear you say? Prophet was killed? Well, it turns out that the Nanosuit kept him alive in the form of some orphaned memories and overlayed them on Alcatraz, giving birth to the peculiar hybrid you get to play with. If any of that sounds complicated or unlikely, go watch Alien: Resurrection and then come back and apologise.

Set in the “suddenly a jungle” New York City, Prophet has been rescued by Psycho (Crysis 1) and joins the resistance, sticking it to CELL who have become a mega corporation out for world domination. He will, of course, be facing some pretty stiff opposition to this in the form of CELL soldiers and there may even be a Ceph or two lurking about.

The story certainly draws on crowd favourites like the Resident Evil series (see: Umbrella Corporation, world dominance) and while it has clearly been given some attention, it’s left feeling a little dry and predictable.

Character development

Prophet’s development throughout the game is at best mildly interesting. I found myself caring more about Psycho and some of the other characters while Prophet himself seemed a little shallow and not terribly well fleshed out. In my defence, that’s mostly because Prophet is a bit of a… well, it rhymes with Banker.

Even so, it was enjoyable to watch him figure out some of the deeper aspects of his own personality and towards the end, you’re at least able to like him a little.

Core gameplay mechanics, features, and level design

The game plays incredibly smoothly and the controls are intuitive enough that I managed to pick them up pretty quickly. There were some small irritations with the operation of the Nanosuit but nothing that makes it impossible to play.

Level design is noticeably more restrictive than previous titles and although there’s some leeway in the form of side quests, there was never a time that I felt completely free to roam where I wanted.

I ran everything on high and the framerate was adequate ranging up to good. Switching a few of the options down a little did an good job though so don’t be afraid to play with the advanced settings.

The benchmark system was a GTX 650, 16GB RAM and an Intel i5 so your mileage may vary.

You will find that there are weapons by the barrel full, but personally I found them all to be superfluous since you’re given the much talked about Predator Bow right from the start. The weapon comes with several “slots” for different payloads including Carbon-Impact (armour piercing & retrievable from corpses), Super Thermite (Explosive, Sticky), Electro/Shock (Electrocution), and Airburst Fragmentation (AOE, Explosive).

If you factor in that the Predator Bow is the only weapon you can use while cloaked, it quickly becomes obvious that this is the easiest path through the game as guards are easy to kill from a distance without endangering yourself.

Additional gameplay mechanics, meta-game mechanics, customisation options

Speaking of guards, this is one of the areas where Crysis 3 really does struggle. Even on the higher levels, the AI is simply not up to scratch and doesn’t provide much of a challenge to someone cloaked and standing very far away. The game fast becomes a sniper title with the occasional melee if really necessary.

As if to counter their rather dim-witted AI, the guards are clearly gifted with Eyes of the Hawk stolen from Bravestar. It’s a little disappointing to be shot at by some guard standing a few hundred meters away that happened to look in your direction.

The game is a little short – I managed to get through it in just over 7 hours and I tend to be quite slow.

Multiplayer implementation

Multiplayer introduces a couple of new modes but they’re mostly rehashes of things that we’ve now become used to in almost every FPS implementation.

Some of the details may be slightly different but the only mode that belongs purely to Crysis 3 is Hunter.

Graphics

Stunning, obviously. With a veritable glut of graphical tweaks, settings and other things to play with. Everything in Crysis 3 is incredibly well crafted all the way down to the bolt heads holding a train together. New York as a jungle is strangely believable and the cut scenes are well done despite mediocre voice acting.

Sound

Something that must be mentioned is the thought and effort put into the musical score. It’s all very well chosen with appropriately emotional music when needed. As mentioned previously, the voice acting isn’t the greatest and you can expect to hear the same bits of dialogue over and over again from guards.

Conclusion

Overall, Crysis 3 is a worthy successor to the series and provides a fairly satisfying end. I’d probably be mildly disappointed if there were a Crysis 4 in the works though I know Crytek have spoken about it.

Personally, I’d grab it from Origin now if you’re very keen. It’s on promo at R279.99 but if you’re not in a rush, wait until the price comes down significantly. This isn’t a game you HAVE to play but it’s worth a go.

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