Where the parts is less than the sum
It's a pretty common description for a lot of things that are created, whether game franchises, movie series or albums, where "you take the 'x' from this, take the 'y' from that, put 'em in a blender and you get a perfect package". So with Crysis 3, presumably the last in the Crytek franchise, the goal here is to combine the much more open-ended and player driven gameplay of the first game with the straightforward and refined elements they tried in the sequel. And like the other common phrase, "jack of all trades, master of none", the irony here is that despite all the attempts to make this the best entry in the series, it ends up feeling a little ho-hum, unneeded and almost uninspired. Sure looks pretty though.
24 years after the events of Crysis 2, you play as "Prophet", the character from the first game as he makes his way to ruined New York which has now been covered by a large dome as the alien race Ceph continue their presence on the planet. The corporation CELL have also been after the suit and the secrets of the Ceph that lay within them, leaving many soldiers taken out of their suits, including "Psycho" from Crysis: Warhead. When Prophet is rescued, the mission becomes to take out the Alpha Ceph so Prophet and Psycho travel through New York, now with overgrown trees, rivers and wildlife, to hopefully end the Ceph threat.
In certain respects, Crytek reminds me of the Gueriila Games studio, them of the "Killzone" series. While technically accomplished with them easily churning out some jaw-dropping visuals, the gameplay hasn't exactly matched up with the visual prowess. Granted, the Crysis series is a bit more different as the Nanosuit offers up gameplay the other series doesn't, however the games themselves never really felt anything special but they're still enjoyable in their own right. Crysis 3 wants to be that blend of the prior 2 games but ends up feeling not necessarily rushed but maybe not as finalized as one would like. You can bring up your visor and highlight things on your HUD to make you more visually aware of the battlefield. But this makes it feeling a bit overpowered as not only can it scan through walls but it makes your strategizing less engaging since you can find all the ammo caches, the strong weapons and not have to worry about what's hidden in the map.
In Crysis 2, you could walk over dead alien bodies and basically steal their essence or DNA or whatever it was and upgrade your suit, almost creating an RPG-like "build". Focusing more on stealth, all-out action and other methods, you can focus on what you felt you wanted to be which made it a bit more personal. This time you can find suit upgrades which'll unlock modules which can contain passive bonuses such as less energy depletion, stronger shields, faster reloads etc. But they never felt that impactful and they were almost unnoticeable which I feel is a step down from the prior game. But it still carries the Crysis style gameplay of being able to stealth, straight up FPS mayhem, planting traps and other such ways to get through levels but it still doesn't feel as open as they would like.
If gameplay isn't up to snuff, the visuals certainly are. Now while I couldn't max out the aliasing, the game on "Very High" is downright gorgeous with some great lighting, tons of foliage and trees and some great detail and the levels can get quite expansive, this game can and probably has the potential to melt PC's. And while certain environmental elements are a bit overused, such as the broken and destroyed buildings with missing floors and walls, the game's still a sight to behold.
Multiplayer returns and for the most part, it’s pretty much what was offered in Crysis 2. It’s got the Call of Duty-style progression system where you can rank up and unlock gears, equipment and new toys to play around with as you run, stealth and jump your way through the game’s maps. Now, there’s some multiplayers where they just never click with me despite the cool sounding premise of the whole thing and Crysis multiplayer is always the same. The idea of taking the addicting CoD formula and adding armor modes, stealth gameplay, jumping up ledges and sliding makes it sound so interesting yet I can never really get behind it. What does make a nice addition is the Hunter mode which is essentially zombie mode from Halo. It’s kind of a cool take on a cat-and-mouse style and I found myself enjoying it a lot more than the default multiplayer package.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with Crysis 3: the campaign is brisk (I took literally 6 hours, 00 minutes and 3 seconds to beat it) but it’s gorgeous, has some diverse play areas which makes it refreshing from corridor shooters and the online if you’re into it can be entertaining but if you have an impressive gaming PC and want to test out what you can max than the game will certainly impress. It’s just the game part that doesn’t feel like the price of admission.
