Crysis 3 Reviews

Firstly let me begin by mentioning that this is my first review for TA, and I hope I can live up to some of the other excellent efforts on this site. After the mediocre start to 2013 (thanks in no small part to Aliens: Colonial Marines, perhaps the biggest disappointment in my 20-year gaming life) I was looking forward with great anticipation to Crysis 3. I regard the second game in the series as one of my all-time favourite games, and so I was eagerly awaiting this release. The following are some of my thoughts and observations concerning plot, graphics, audio, multiplayer, and achievements. Beware of spoilers.

I had hoped that this game would follow on from the victory of Alcatraz in Central Park, in that you would have to scour far-reaching locales to eradicate the remnants of the Ceph around the globe. Instead we are back in New York again, albeit a more post-apocalyptic, overgrown version of it. My main gripe about the plot and thus the length of the game is that it is far too short, and most of the characters in the second game are completely absent and many forgotten. This disappointed me, as I had hoped Gould, Strickland, Barclay, Chino etc would play some role. You only need to read the credits to see that there are 4 main characters, and this hinders the depth of the story. Although Psycho is back (and is one of the main strengths of the story) there is little in the way of immersion and I found it hard to relate to the plot. The mission briefings were uninspiring when compared to the nanosuit and character-narrated segments in the previous game, which I found exciting from start to finish. There are also few if any set-pieces, which were so plentiful in Crysis 2, such as Central Park rising out of the ground, and the opening scene in particular when you are leaving Battery Park. Moreover, I felt whilst playing the second game that the player assumed the role of Alcatraz (due to his silent nature), and I could relate to being given this state of the art nanosuit to carry on Prophet's work. I feel that the plot of this game lays waste to all of that, and despite it being a decent story in and of itself, it pales next to the experience I had with the second game. Whilst I appreciate the merging of aspects of both the first and second iterations I think that this game lives up to neither.

Graphically Crysis 3 is top-notch, with spectacular looking environments and effects, and this was a breadth of fresh air after the aforementioned start to the year. Crytek have proved that the hardware still has some life, and that there are no excuses for shoddy efforts and screen-tearing and such.

From an audio perspective, I found that bar a couple of themes during the mission briefings, the music was bland compared to the previous installment. Borislav Slavov returns as principal composer, and does a decent effort, but in my opinion the main theme does not compare to that of the second game (perhaps due to the contribution of one Hans Zimmer). I was so impressed with that soundtrack that I bought it, however this effort did not impress. Aside from the soundtrack, there are the usual gunshots and explosions which sound excellent, and I enjoyed the vocal performance of David Kennedy as Psycho, who brings a lot of emotion to his character.

From a multiplayer perspective, it takes a great deal to impress me as I have never really embraced this aspect of modern gaming. My favourite online experience is Battlefield, but this game makes a solid effort and it is a great deal of fun. In fact, I have enjoyed the multiplayer more than the campaign, which is saying something. Although at times it can be hard to see cloaked players, and often frustrating when players camp whilst cloaked and spray to their hearts content with LMGs, all in all it is a satisfying aspect of the game.

Achievement-wise, this game will take a fair bit of time to complete. The main reason for this is the number of collectibles and the token Crytek glitched achievement. The rest of the effort will be directed at multiplayer.

In conclusion, Crysis 3 is not the ending to the trilogy that I had envisioned or expected. In spite of this, it still stands up as a decent shooter with a good online experience. It is just unfortunate that it could not live up to or surpass its stellar predecessors.

Well after the big hit that was Crysis 2 with great single player and surprisingly fun multiplayer we now have the next edition in the series with Crysis 3. Does it surpass the previous installment and move the series forward in a even better direction? Sadly not, it takes about 12 steps backwards.

Now I won’t focus too much on the story since it is really one of the best aspects of the game but it does take place after the events of Crysis 2. Really going into too much detail about it will potentially spoil events and I don’t feel like spoiling anything for anyone that does care. I will say though that even running on Xbox which is toned down from PC this game is stunning. The game for the most parts runs fluidly and when you are able to go from sprint, to jump, to parkour onto a cliff you really do get to see how great it looks. The war torn buildings just give the vibe that a serious attack on taken place on the building and when standing in a wooded area watching the water flow or seeing deers stroll by you do get to see how much effort was really put into the visuals.

The gameplay is in the vein of all the previous Crysis games so expect the same first person shooter in your nanosuit. The nice thing though is while the maps for this game may not be as big and open as Crysis 2 the map is still big enough to let you play the game out in different styles. If you want to run and gun you can but it might be a bit harder. You can go around too if you’d like playing it stealthy and using your bow which is one of the new additions to this game. You can pretty much play through a majority of the game using the bow if you’d like as I ended up using it most of the game except towards the end with stronger enemies. You can run back and grab your arrows from enemies as well.

Another good addition to this game is being able to tag your enemies which can feel cheap when walking into a new area and being able to scan everything from enemies, to mines, turrets, ammo, and collectables since then everything shows up on your HUD and you can see the enemies moving them. It is a great addition and in places where the grass and rocks hides enemies it is a welcome addition. Throughout you can also collect upgrades which unlock perk like stats each with their own small challenge that once unlocked can make your guy even more powerful.

Don’t go in expecting a long game though. I played through it on normal, taking my time, exploring, dying, including all the glitches and freezing, and getting most of the collectables and I clocked in at just 4 and a half hours game time. If you were blasting straight through you can beat this game in under 3 hours easily. It is extremely short.

I’m not saying the game isn’t fun though even if I felt towards the end it was losing me some the time you spend playing is still fun and I think a large part is due to how fun it can be to go around invisible taking out people with the bow.

The game does include multiplayer and I’d love to tell you how it was but I was only able to complete one game. The other few I was able to join ended up lagging out. Biggest problem though is how glitchy, buggy, and freezy this game is. I encountered a handful of serious bugs and glitches in the single player which mainly included falling through or getting stuck into things which often resulted in me having to restart from last checkpoint which sometimes wasn’t that close. It’s killer though is the fact that is seems that during loading screens the game freezes. I had it freeze about 6 times during a cut scene right after a achievement would pop which then resulted in me restarting the xbox and having to beat the end of the level again since it doesn’t save until the beginning of the next level. I saw several times the game freeze during loading for no reason or even when just opening the guide button. One of the worst ones though is that the game freezes when opening the multiplayer portion of the game. After asking everyone I knew about it they said it will load up if you leave any Xbox live party you are in and don’t do anything during a loading screen and that did work. That was until after one game online when the loading screen hit and it froze. I can’t even say that installing it to the Xbox helps as I had the game installed since the beginning.

Overall it’s worth a rental to play the single player but the downsides for the game outweigh the pros. It is fun and maybe after some updates it will help the game fix a lot of its problems.



Score :

5.5/10

http://apocalypticdemise.com/2013/02/24/crysis-3-xbox-360-ga...