Game review: Crysis 3

I'm really not sure how to communicate this, so I'll go for the plain right-off-the-bat style: Crysis 3 is a very good game, and well worth your time and money.

The reason I have to explain this, is because I'll spend some time during this review bitching and moaning about certain aspects of it, but remember: it's a good game. But first, a little history lesson.

In my last review I went into (well, not that much) detail about how the Far Cry series was taken off the hands of Crytek and continued by Ubisoft Montreal. What I intentionally didn't go on to mention was that Crytek didn't just keel over and die; they developped Crysis.

Crysis was all that Far Cry was supposed to be, and more. An open environment first person shooter (even though the term is used relatively leniently here, as the non-mission areas were relatively barren and unimportant to the gameplay), it encouraged dynamic approaches to situations and really, really smart AI. Oh, and of course, the nanosuit, a high tech army suit that was a stand in for an armor, a stealth suit (complete with cloaking), binoculars, map, a performance enhancer (cough). You were basically a high tech Batman in a tropical island. Would that have been enough to make the game stand out? Well, if it was done poorly, maybe not. It was, however, done brilliantly, and on top of that featured an interesting story, told via first-person the entire time. A story of mystery, intrigue, political tensions, artifacts and aliens. A top notch game all around.

And, naturally, it begat both an expansion (Crysis Warhead) and a sequel, Crysis 2. While the original Crysis focused on Raptor Squad's Jake "Nomad" Dunn and Warhead on Michael "Psycho" Sykes, Crysis 2 went dark with its choice for main character. Skip to the next paragraph now if you'd rather not know. Lawrence "Prophet" Barnes, Raptor Squad's leader, was dying, exposed as he had been to alien DNA which, somehow affected his suit into rotting his own body from within. So Prophet did the only thing he could: he took off his suit (which at this point was all but grafted to his body) and put it on a dying US Marine (callsign Alcatraz) during the alien invasion in New York city and, as he did, shot his own brains out. Seemingly, the nanosuit saved Alcatraz's life, while some of Prophet's own brain patterns and memories were imprinted on the suit. Alcatraz never spoke, never chatted: he just did whatever he could to stop the aliens. And it was only at the very end that the gruesome truth that had been hinted at during the game was revealed: Alcatraz was dead, at least in every way that mattered. Merely a braindead vegetable, which the nanosuit was using for Prophet's mind to eventually inhabit properly. Chilly stuff.

This all tied in with the aliens (the Ceph) trying to take over the planet via infecting the human populace via airborne spore dispersion spikes and liquefying them for easy disposal, CELL, the company who is run by Hargreave, the man who co-designed the original nanosuits and humanity's desperate attempts to hold out against the Ceph and combat the infection, and the key for which was, for reasons explained late in the game, the nanosuit. This specific nanosuit.

The game came with easier albeit more limited nanosuit functions, better graphics, a better story, an impressive soundtrack by Hans Zimmer (not since World of Goo had a game soundtrack stuck on my head this much) but at a great cost: the freedom of the first Crysis was limited to restricted freedom in tackling specific setpieces. This made for a cinematic, yet ultimately, on rails experience. It rocked and jerked along those rails, but was never derailed. It was a good experience. It was a fun one. But it wasn't one where you had much freedom in.

And now, Crysis 3 brings the story to a close.

It all begins when Psycho intercepts a hibernating Prophet en route to a CELL "skinning lab", where they take nanosuited soldiers and, painfully, extract the nanosuits from them, killing most in the process. Psycho somehow managed to not only survive the procedure, but escape as well. He's joined the rebellion, people who aren't happy to play ball for CELL, the same corporation from the previous game, which decided to take over the world under the guise of protecting it after the events of Crysis 2. Prophet joins said rebelion and...well...things start getting real interesting after that. I'm not going to spoil the plot, because, frankly, while it might not be groundbreaking (I personally saw through all twists and turns of it from very early on), it's nevertheless told very well, with great dialogue, presented through exquisite animations and voiceover from the characters, great pacing and memorable moments, tied in to a beautiful soundtrack (though, needs to be said, not quite as beautiful as Crysis 2's was). This is mostly (and I hate repeating myself) because of the characters, and not so much the plot per se. And, chief among these characters, is Psycho.

I honestly consider Psycho the star of Crysis 3. While most of the events of the game cover, indeed, Ceph, CELL and Prophet or, specifically, Prophet's struggle between balancing the part of him that's himself and the part of him that's, at this point, machine, Psycho is the unsung hero of the trilogy. While Prophet struggles throughout the game to find some semblance of humanity in his new amalgamated body (about 30% a human body, about 70% Ceph machine and all guided by Barnes' mind), Psycho has found his, and it's not pretty. A damaged soul, Psycho has gone from the cocksure, borderline psychotic supersoldier to a hurt man, a man trying to cope with his loss of the suit and his rejoining the ranks of ordinary man, overcompensating in bravado sometimes, verging on suicidal, but clearly plagued with fear, insecurity, and newfound respect for all the things he used to diss. Psycho does for Crysis 3 what Vaas does for Far Cry 3: roots the whole outlandish premise of the game in reality with a very human character. But where Vaas was a charismatic, insane villain, Psycho is the wretched,  broken shell of a man you can't help but feel sorry for sometimes. The whole plot, while we're on the subject, taken out of context would sound downright bad and cheesy bad at that, but woven into the plot of the previous two games meshes great, and even brings some traces of emotional closure both for the characters therein and the players themselves. 

Yes, the tale will take you places emotionally, although as far as location goes, Crysis 3 follows the same formula as Crysis 2 did: specific setpieces instead of total freedom. The setpieces might be beautiful, what with New York city essentially turned into a jungle, but, nevertheless, this was a risky strategy: when you've spoiled your players with the first game with (the illusion of) total freedom, setting them on rails for them to witness a story rather than make their own is a gamble, any way you look at it, and this was a thing that ultimately hurt Crysis 2. On Crysis 3, not so much, although there are bits which can be annoying. This is perhaps accentuated by the returning checkpoint save system, a console standard that irritates a lot of people when implemented on PCs. While I don't always mind the checkpoint save system as a storytelling mechanic, as a gameplay one it can be a ballbuster, especially when you place a checkpoint mere seconds before certain death. And, unfortunately, this is what can happen here.

Another thing that hurts Crysis 3 is that it throws most of its gameplay tricks at you fairly early on, spoonfeeding you with the info you'll need later on. This doesn't sound bad, but here it's done in an obvious way that doesn't really allow for surprises. For example: high grass? That means there's Stalkers about. It always means that. This could have been easily avoided with, say, one bit with high grass that didn't have bloody Stalkers in it. Don't get me wrong, being hunted by these things is very tense (think high-tech velociraptors), but after a while, you learn to anticipate all its little surprises. At the end of the (roughly) ten hour campaign, you'll barely be surprised at anything, gameplay-wise. A welcome surprise, nonetheless, is the couple of boss fights which most games seem to be done with nowadays, both tense, one hard and the other, well...cheesy, but Gouda cheesy, not Roquefort cheesy.

Your arsenal and powers are carried over pretty much as they were in the previous game, with the addition of the Predator bow, as well as cashes for special ammo (thus you can finally recharge game changers such as the X-43 M.I.K.E.) and, confusingly, arrow cashes scattered around (even though you're the only person in the whole game to use a bow). The difference is, you no longer level your abilities up by collecting nanocatalyst from dead Ceph, but rather by finding semi-rare CELL caches of nanosuit materials from the aforementioned skinning labs. This will not allow you (like the previous game did) to easily unlock every single ability by the end, but it comes with a much needed tweak: you can assign specific configurations to a slot and switch to them by just once click, emphasizing the adopt, adapt, survive theme of the game. Most players, however, will quickly come up with their own ideas about how to handle situations universally, create a "spec" and stick with it, only tweaking it situationally if they hit a wall. These powers improve further with extended usage. The HUD returns mostly unchanged, with the addition of having to manually follow a target to tag it (instead of pressing a button to do it) and remote hacking, which can make allies out of turrets, minefields, deactivate drones and unlock special caches. The weapons are, like before, open to customization, from scopes, silencers, attachments and even special ammo this time around, not excluding the bow.

Ah, the bow. This features prominently in screenshots, promotional art and the likes, but it isn't nearly as fancy or great as it's tooted up to be. Sure, it's customizable with different draw strengths and arrows that can make short work of specific enemies (use an electric arrow, for example, to electrocute several enemies standing in water or fry a mechanical drone), and sure, you can fire it without losing your cloaking, but while at times it feels overpowered as a weapon and at other times woefully ineffective, it never succeeds in making you love it. The limited ammo capacity for it (a total of 18 arrows, 3 of each special kind [electrocuting, explosive and an aoe shrapnel one] and 9 normal [and usually retrievable] ones) only really make it a choice when stalking your enemies. Which really, isn't as much as you'd think, even with the advanced cloaking power. It does (bless it) try to bring some of its own character into the game (what with Prophet hanging the dog tags of fallen Raptor Squam members from it), but ultimately fails to make a big impression, mostly because very few of the setpieces will actually benefit from it. With the implementation of all the previous ordnance, plus Ceph weaponry which you can now use, the Predator bow simply fails to stand out that much.

The technical aspects of this game are quite simply staggering. The screenshots pretty much speak for themselves here, some of them looking like concept art from certain views. This is, much like Far Cry 3, one of the most accomplished things you'll see on your screen for a little time. Granted, whereas Far Cry 3 focused on external environments and their freedom, Crysis 3 focuses on ambiance, making the characters more real, damaged, the whole theme being darker, grittier than both its predecessors and its main competitor for "best FPS this side of the decade". The Psycho screenshot above in particular, the flashlight one, at first glance could easily be confused for a photo or an oil painting. However, not all setpieces are necessarily designed realistically or with a dynamic approach in mind, but rather as a storytelling device, but I'll get to that in a moment. 

The environments aren't quite as interesting as we were told they'd be. When you're promised a rainforest grown out of the heart of Manhattan, that's sort of what you'd expect. And through technically you get it, it doesn't affect the gameplay in the ways you'd think. This is still very much the same stuff Crysis 2 was made off, and, frankly, it doesn't satisfy that much. Being told to adopt, adapt and survive in such a linear experience is, frankly, fairly cheeky. You can find your own little ways to make the experience closer to what you want it to be, but there's not much freedom to be found here.

Comparisons to Far Cry 3 are, to be perfectly honest, inevitable. Both games have the same starting point (Far Cry) and initial creator (Crytek), but where Far Cry adopted and adapted the sandbox nature of it, Crysis, little by little, let it go. They're both really good games, and Crysis 3 is more story driven and the story told better at that, but if you asked me which was the better shooter, I'd have to say Far Cry 3, hands down. Crysis 3, much like Prophet, tries really hard but lacks its own identity.