When I played Crysis 3 the first 2 times, I was on the lukewarm side. This time around, I enjoy the game much more than I did previously. Everything just clicked a lot better for me this time. I might even say this is easily the best game in the series. The game does have it's issues like with every game but when it comes to me playing this game in the moment, I had an enjoyable time. Crysis 3 in a lot of ways tries to combine the larger and more open environment of the first game with the combat improvements and bombastic and cinematic story of 2. It comes together for the most part.
The story has to be the biggest surprise. If Crysis 2 was mainly just a simple but decently presented alien invasion story, Crysis 3 is the more ambitious and thought provoking sequel.What mainly carries the whole thing is the dynamic between Prophet and Psycho. The former is a supersoldier powered up by the nanosuit and is the only one left who still uses it. Due to this he's slowly going crazy by the Ceph and drives himself harder and harder to stop them while the actual threat is Cell and everyone thinks Prophet is going insane by the nanosuit.
Psycho after the events of the first game has been depowered and got the suit ripped off from him. Throughout the whole game, he misses the nanosuit like if lost a limb. At various points in the with Chapter 2 being a standout where he tries to rig a train to get past a Cell checkpoint with the Ceph also there.
My favorite moment in the story was the twist that Claire was one who skinned Psycho's nanosuit off and the latter starts angrily lashing out at her and Prophet stood up for the former after she insulted him for being Hardware and thought he was nothing more than a ticking time bomb. Prophet earned my respect after that.
The story does have it's problems. Rasch is a dull and underdeveloped villain. He does help give more conviction to Psycho's arc and his dynamic with Prophet. It also follows George Lucas Star Wars logic almost to a fault like many game franchise stories. Like how Cell became more powerful than ever after Crysis 2 making that game's events seem hollow, or how Prophet regained his body back, or what Psycho was doing inbetween Crysis 1 and Warhead to 3. Still, for an FPS story it was more engaging than I thought it was going to be.
The gameplay is interesting in that it doesn't have the corridors with a few branching paths like Crysis 2 but it kind of cuts down on the dead and empty space of the first game.
Crysis 3's length has been a commonly stated criticism but considering the first game's second half was filled with boring squid alien fights and a good portion of Crysis 2's campaign were mainly just large scale scripted alien shooting galleries while it worked for the latter, Crysis 3 keeping the forced alien fights to a minimum gives the campaign a killer no filler feel to it.
Many of Crysis 3's environments are larger than 2's with some scripted moments thrown in for good measure.
A nice addition to the game is that when opening the visor, enemies will already be avaliable to be marked so now it cuts down on the boring recon of tagging enemies which is why I almost never use the feature when a game offers it or prefer to not use it.
Due to this, it's easier to avoid enemy sightlines when decloaking. This doesn't mean that the Crytek guard AI quirk of enemies randomly knowing your location is completely eradicated, there will be some "what the hell" detections from time to time. This will happen a lot when the Ceph become more prominent later in the game. Luckily you can still sneak around them and perform the stealth takedown from Crysis 2.
The combat is also more satisfying than ever with better weapon feedback than before with better punch for the weapons especially the shotgun. The Ceph also blow up into bloody chunks when you blow them up now.
The bow is also a really fun weapon to use. You can view this as being weapon as being a "win" button but it's mainly an instant kill on the human enemies and it can be fun just to get a quick kill when sneaking and having them randomly detect you from time to time. The bow is less effective later in the game when the Ceph overtake Cell.
Final level can be on the dull and at times frustrating side. It can give the illusion of being open but the better, faster and more efficient option is to kill every alien you set your sights on. It does become the boring alien shootouts from Crysis 1 again but to this game's defense, this is only one level and it's the last one.
The final boss isn't as bad as Crysis 1's either. The only obtuse part is knowing when to shoot it's weak spot before it does the drill attack that insta kills you. It's not very good but not completely insufferable due to a checkpoint after the first two phases.
Overall, when you combine the open levels of Crysis 1 with the combat polish of 2, it's tightly paced campaign and story, Crysis 3 is my favorite in the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment