Crysis 3 – Guns and Glory
Crytek doesn’t get enough credit for how good the guns in Crysis are, or how good the gunplay is. Troops are smart and move in believable groupings, and while the AI isn’t as unpredictable as it is in Halo 4, the experience is closer to that or to Far Cry than it is to Call of Duty.

Some folks feel that Crysis has always been a triumph of technology over gameplay, but that simply isn’t true. Look beneath those incredible graphics and you have action to match any military shooter, and a much higher degree of freedom. Sure, there’s an annoying reliance on hacking mini-games – one of the great curses of modern gaming – but we’ll take these over irritating quick-time event action sequences any time.

The only possible cause for serious complaint is the game’s length. We made it through the single player campaign in roughly eight hours, with quite a few restarts where the going got tough.

You can apparently smash through it faster by playing more aggressively and maxing out the suit for armour, but that’s your choice. And Crysis 3 is one of those games where it’s worth playing through more than once, if only to see how a different approach might work.

Crysis 3 – Multiplayer
Crysis has always struggled to make an impact on the multiplayer scene, but the threequel takes some confident strides forward. Beyond the standard deathmatch and team deathmatch modes there’s a new Hunters mode, which sees nanosuited soldiers up against a squad of Cell troopers, with the Cell guys joining the hunters every time one gets taken down. In all honesty, we haven’t had adequate time to get to grips with multiplayer Crysis yet, so we’ll report back when we’ve found more players to play with.

We’ll also come back to Crysis 3 once we’ve played the PC version more extensively; for reasons out of our control, the console version arrived in advance of release, with the PC version lagging behind. The console version is impressive enough, but the PC version looks nothing short of spectacular. As a result we’ll dish out an 8 for now, but there’s potential for the PC version to go higher still.

Verdict
It might not go far enough in recapturing the freedom of that first PC Crysis, but Crysis 3 is a muscular shooter that juggles open settings and intense set-pieces with genuine skill. It’s every bit as beautiful as you might expect, and there’s a real artistry to this vision of a shattered New York. The minor tweaks to the gameplay only add to the experience. Don’t listen to the naysayers: Crysis 3 is an all-round exceptional FPS.

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