Visually amazing, lacking substance. New York City has been completely decimated. It is now under total quarantine. Prophet, back from the dead, must help a small resistance force eliminate the Cell and Ceph forces still present in the city.
1. Gameplay
The Crysis series is the pinnacle of visual awesomeness in gaming. The story was decent, but that wasn’t what made these games famous. They’re famous for the amazing graphics, open environments, and interesting suit mechanics. Crysis 3 definitely hits with the graphics, but there’s a lot that left me unhappy with the changes that were implemented. The basic story is pretty easy to follow. Aliens attacked Earth and decimated New York City. The entire city has been put into some sort of a quarantine in order to contain the alien leader, which the player accidentally lets loose over the course of the game. Cue in the giant laser meant to kill the alien but which will actually destroy the Earth, etc. etc. It all plays like a pretty standard Michael Bay movie. The problem is that the specifics of the campaign are absolutely 100% impossible to follow. Somehow the main character, Prophet, killed himself in the previous game but is alive in this game. Somehow he gets captured by Cell and, after getting released, ends up having to help humans that are fighting against Cell in New York for further reasons unknown. For some reason Cell is using an alien as a power source and somehow that alien is able to open up a wormhole from Earth to the alien galaxy in order to call in reinforcements. Oh, and the voice acting is horrible. Seriously, I overlook questionable voice acting in games, but this was downright ridiculous. For example, in one section a random friendly soldier comes on the radio and yells “It’s hopeless! We’re doomed!” A gruff commanding officer says “Stow that bellyaching! I won’t have any of that on my radio!” Then the main female resistance leader comes on the radio and says “No, he’s right. It’s hopeless.” Seriously? Let’s all just give up. Screw it, Earth’s doomed. We’re all dead. I was ready to say “Oh well, game’s over. It’s hopeless.” But for some reason, I kept going. I really think the developers went on a binge of science fiction and action movies and decided to throw in everything they liked, hoping it would somehow all work. There was definitely some Transformers and Halo thrown in along with Star Wars (Emperor Palpatine’s lightning fingers depicted below) and Independence Day. There weren’t many new enemies, strategy boiled down to “use stealth or kill everything”, and the epilogue was one of the worst, least logical “endings” I have seen in some time. If you’re looking for a fun game with awesome graphics, pick up the first or second Crysis game. Don’t pay full price for this abomination. And don’t play it on consoles. Without the graphics, this game wouldn’t exist.
It took me around 8 hours to complete Crysis 3’s campaign. I took my time, stealthily killed most of the enemies in each area, and completed every optional objective. There is basically nothing for me to do if I go back and replay the campaign. There are multiplayer modes for this game, but they aren’t nearly as smooth as its competitors. While the suit and weapons add some variety to the gameplay, I was never compelled to consider buying this game for the multiplayer.
For the most part the gameplay was fairly smooth. My controls felt a bit weird at times, but this has been the case for every Crysis game I have played with a mouse and keyboard. Enemies are pretty easy to kill as long as you cause enough damage in the right spot or use the right weapon. There was one major exception that nearly made me quit the game so I could calm down. Late in the game there is a section when the player will have to be the gunner of a VTOL aircraft. He will have to shoot down various enemy aircraft before they take him out. This was a surprisingly boring section, since enemy aircraft can only be killed at very specific times. If the player fails to kill the correct aircraft at the correct time, he dies. This wouldn’t have been so bad, except for some reason the sensitivity for my mouse was out of control while in the VTOL. I would somehow go from aiming at the far left to aiming at the far right with the slightest twitch of the wrist. This made accurate aiming completely impossible, so I was forced to hold down the trigger and pray that my shots landed. I would have changed the sensitivity settings on my mouse except I also found that during these sections I was unable to pause the game. That by itself is a nuisance, but it also meant that I couldn’t get back to the settings, load from a previous checkpoint, or even quit the game. The only reason why I didn’t quit to take a break and calm down was because I couldn’t quit at all! The multiplayer was an equally frustrating experience, but that’s talked about in greater detail in the “Online Community” section. 2. Parental Notices
Violence is pretty predictable in Crysis 3. As it is a first-person shooter, the player will use a small number of different weapons to dispatch foes. Most weapons will simply cause a small splatter of blood at impact points. This is very minimal for human enemies and slightly more noticeable on Ceph enemies. Enemies can also be killed via the player’s hunting bow. Surprisingly, the hunting bow is probably the least violent weapon in the game. The player can hit enemies with different types of arrows, each of which will have a different effect. Some are good for killing armor, some allegedly cause damage via an EMP (although I never found these very effective). With the exception of the thermal arrows to destroy heavily armored targets, I always stuck to the simple “impact arrow”. These would act just like one would expect from an arrow, silently killing enemies almost instantly and, if there is enough force behind the shot, sending the enemy flying backward. The amount of damage and force will be determined by how much draw the player puts on the bow. The greater the draw, the more force. If the player manages to sneak up behind a human enemy undetected, he can silently kill that enemy with a knife. The act is extremely quick and there is no visible blood. While gore will never be present with any human enemies, the Ceph can be blown into gelatinous splatter with an explosive. The impact of the violence is significantly lessened since these enemies seem more like melting pink jello, but it is still definitely present. Also, some enemies will explode into said jello regardless of how the player kills them. There are one or two instances where fire will become a factor. The most notable of these is when some Cell soldiers are surprised and quickly overwhelmed by a Ceph Incinerator. They are hit by flamethrowers and die quickly.
Sexuality is not a factor in this game.
Substances are not a factor in this game.
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
Technically Cell is in charge of New York City. Since the entire civilian population is either evacuated or dead, the only meaningful “law enforcement” are Cell agents. This isn’t so much a police force (after all, there are no more civilians) as much as it is a military presence to keep the Ceph remnant at bay. However, the player and the other humans are constantly working to overthrow the Cell presence. The motivation behind this, though, still remains fuzzy to me.
By the time I got onto Crysis 2’s multiplayer, it was pretty much over. There were only one or two people playing, so the experience wasn’t too horrible but probably wasn’t representative of the game at launch. Crysis 3’s multiplayer is a different story. It’s still pretty early into the game’s life, so people are still figuring out what’s good and what isn’t. There are some people who are clearly still working out the kinks and some, through either skill or hacks, have become expert killing machines. Unfortunately that’s one of the problems. I know there are some guys who are seriously skilled and can just wipe the floor with their enemies. The guys that snipe are definitely in that category. They find a powerful, accurate weapon and dominate the battlefield with it. And that’s fine, the game mechanics allow for that kind of thing. The problem is that it’s unbelievably overpowered and makes it impossible to do anything else. This is especially true for the guys that have access to the hunting bow, a one-hit kill weapon with unbelievable range. It’s seriously ridiculous. I’ve played plenty of shooters and a good number of them have multiplayers that I’ve at least tried. If I break even on a match, it’s a bad day for me. In the one and a half matches I tried (I quit in the middle of the second), I got a single kill. One. I can’t tell if the guys running around at five times the speed of the normal player are hacking or using some sort of upgrade or what. I can’t tell if the guys sniping me from across the map are using crazy auto aim or are just that good. I can’t even tell if the time that I died instantly after spawning was a hack, a glitch, or just bad luck. Whatever the case, the multiplayer is boring and frustrating. I’d rather put up with Black Ops 2’s terrible community and frustrating gameplay than even think about touching Crysis 3’s multiplayer again.
Extreme sports does play a minor role in this game. The player can use the suit’s power to jump impossible heights and survive long drops with relative ease. The player will have to make use of these abilities in order to maneuver around cover. It is possible to go through most of the game without falling far or jumping high, but in certain areas they will be required. There are also a number of zip-lines that the player can use to quickly go from one location to another. However, unlike traditional ziplines that require the user to hold onto some sort of device that slides along the line, it looks like the player simply grabs the line directly and slides across. Late in the game the player will gain access to a dune buggy which he will have to drive across battlegrounds in order to reach a satellite control facility. The “extreme sports” factor of it really only comes in because of the high speeds and some absurdly high jumps that the player will have to make in order to progress. Other than this, it’s just like an off-road driving sequence.
Because all of the seemingly magical elements are explained via technology or biology, magic is not a factor in this game.
Torture One of the characters used to wear a nanosuit like the main character, but it was forcibly removed by Cell. This event is constantly mentioned and images of the process are occasionally shown. The process is extremely painful and the unfortunate subject is kept awake so that he can feel the pain of the removal process. Human Disfigurement
Late in the game one of the NPCs, who was important in Crysis 2 but who only makes two appearances in Crysis 3, turns out to be controlled by the main alien enemy. When he turns to face the player, his left eye is glowing and that side of his face is badly disfigured. I don't know if this change is permanent because he dies soon afterward, but he did not have any visible scarring or issues
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