Crysis 3 Preview

As cringeworthy as it is to say it – barely worthy of a two-bit action movie one-liner – if ever there were a game series that’s suffered a permanent identity crisis, it’s Crytek’s Crysis. The first game retained the jungle setting and guerrilla warfare style of Crytek’s illustrious debut, Far Cry, and that didn’t really work in terms of sales, so the sequel was moved to a quarantined New York City. Itself an in vogue change of setting, reflecting depictions of Manhattan previously seen in the likes of Radical Entertainment's Prototype, Brain Wood's DMZ, and J. J. Abram's Cloverfield, this change of tack still failed to pull in sales figures in line with EA and Crytek’s lofty expectations. Even a Call of Dutified multiplayer couldn’t save Crysis 2 from landing itself among the also-ran FPS titles of 2011.

And so it should come as no huge surprise that Crysis 3 has the Big Apple’s urban landscapes, and jungle environments as well for good measure. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with parallel story-arcs or Modern Warfare-style globetrotting, and no, I’m not making some kind of concealed, Crocodile Dundee-esque reference to the ‘urban jungle’. In Crysis 3, New York is literally a jungle, with foliage and everything! The year is 2047 and, to further halt the alien infestation from spreading outside of New York, a huge dome has been erected over the city. Like a vast greenhouse, this dome is effectively terraforming Manhattan, encouraging the growth of tropical flora at hyper-accelerated rates. The upshot for you, the FPS gamer, is that now you get the best of both worlds: the verticality and extended draw distances of a city, as well as the cover and stealth opportunities offered by a jungle.

And, as you might expect, Crytek has brought some new toys to the table to take advantage of this new conceit. Chief of which is the genuinely quite cool combound bow. Anyone who’s played Call of Duty Black Ops will know how awesome a bow can be in an FPS (be it a crossbow in that instance), and the demonstration didn’t disappoint in Crysis 3’s case either. Once again riffing off of Crysis’ very decent stealth gameplay, which has come a long way as the series has progressed, this compound bow can be fired without compromising the Cryosuit’s cloaking capabilities (using guns, of course, classically forced a decloak in Cryses 1 & 2). Alternatively, however, it’s also possible to rig-up the compound bow for all-out assault, swapping in explosive-tipped arrows and throwing all stealthy caution to the wind.

To counteract these enhanced stealth capabilities, Crytek is introducing alien bots that scrupulously scour the environment for Cryosuited foes such as yourself, and will raise the alarm to all nearby aliens with a pinpoint on your location should they detect you. These bots can be hacked to disrupt their programming, and also appear to come in a variety of flavours – we could’ve sworn we saw one with a flamethrower during the demonstration. Other gameplay curious from the demo included alien weapons that bond with your suit District 9 stylee, and final kill cameras that follow in-behind bullets as they dispatch the last batch of aliens. This kind of camera feature is the same sort of thing you’ll see in upcoming shooters such as Max Payne 3 or Sniper Elite V2. Again, it’s typically Crytek – very in vogue.

In fact, there’s time for one final Crysis 3 curio before I sign-off on this article. Laurence ‘Prophet’ Barnes, a returning character in the series but first-time protagonist in this third instalment, does away with Crysis conventions by speaking. It sounds a bit jarring the first time you hear it actually, particularly as we’ve been so used to the silent archetype in the first two games, and there was something very Duke Nukem about the voice-over actor to our ears. It may not surprise you to learn that we didn’t get a very positive reaction from a Crytek developer in response to our likening of 'Prophet' to the Duke. Let’s just say, then, that this 'Prophet' fellow sounds gruff and battle-hardened instead. Either way, he still doesn’t sound like he can turn around the image of Crysis as a second-rung shooter, and not much else about the game is popping its head up above that parapet at this stage either. Once again, our first impressions are that Crysis 3 is just lacking that Premier League magic.