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#Post#: 830--------------------------------------------------
Crysis 3
By: crazynutsx Date: April 24, 2012, 12:52 pm
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Most gamers will have shot down opposing forces in almost every
scenario that you could reasonably imagine. We've fought them on
alien planets, we've fought them on the wide streets of modern
American cities and the winding, cloistered alleys of ancient
European ones, we've fought them in Russia (a lot), we've fought
them on deserted islands, in jungles, and literally on the
beaches. And yes, we've shot at stuff in New York before, too.
But it's never looked like this.
My first thought upon seeing that Crysis 3 would be set in a
literal urban jungle was that this was going to be Crysis 1's
astonishingly verdant scenery grafted on to Crysis 2's
vertiginous New York cityscape layout – as if Crytek, having run
out of ideas for settings, had just decided to combine the two
that they'd already had. But this isn't just a New York covered
in vines, it's a city that's rapidly evolved into a diverse
rainforest: the former Chinatown has become a flooded swampland,
where other well-known sections of the city are suffocated by
vegetation. Glimpses of shop signs and advertisements peek out
from between dense vines, and chandeliers are still hanging in
grand rooms whose carpets have long succumbed to the undergrowth
creeping in through crumbling walls.
It looks good – extremely good – but importantly, there's
unexpected variety in the rainforest aesthetic. Crysis 3's New
York is split up into seven regions, each with its own
environmental quirks and weather conditions. In that way at
least, Crytek's overgrown future version of New York resembles
the real one: depending on where you are, the look and feel of
the place is completely different.
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PdGUZauShA&feature=player_embedded
Crysis 3 is set in 2047, when New York has been enclosed in a
giant bio-dome (or nanodome, as the game calls it) for many
years in the aftermath of the Ceph alien infestation. The Ceph
themselves have continued to evolve inside; there are plenty of
the same robot/alien crossbreeds that Crysis 2 players have
already fought, but new breeds like fire-spewing Scorchers and
flying recon droids that can remotely disable your dynamic
camouflage have also emerged. You take control of Prophet, a
returning hero for the series, on a revenge mission against the
corrupt CELL Corporation, which installed the Liberty Dome in
the first place – and have now abandoned it to the Ceph.
Prophet comes with his own signature weapon, a collapsible
composite bow that can fire several types of bolt (and reminds
me rather a lot of Hawkeye's in The Avengers). When firing from
a distance, the camera follows the bolt's trajectory before it
embeds itself in the head of an unsuspecting alien. In
situations when noise isn't so much of a problem, it can fire
explosive or incendiary warheads to control crowds of
aggressors. The reveal demo, set in flooded former Chinatown,
starts off quietly, with stealthy reconnaissance and silent
killing, before a rogue Ceph recon droid blows Prophet's cover,
setting up a showpiece large-scale firefight.
Crysis 3 is an interesting game to watch because of the
arresting contrast between the wild outdoors, which often isn't
remotely recognisable as a former city street, and the
still-intact buildings and interiors higher up in the city. It's
true to an extent that this is a synthesis of both previous
games; you leap and roll from skyscraper rooftops like you did
in Crysis 2, and creep through drooping foliage on the ground
like in Crysis 1. Inside one building, furniture and light
fittings still decorate a grand room, whilst a crumbled wall
reveals the jungle outside, crawling with danger.
Keeping quiet – stalking the undergrowth with cloaking engaged,
stabbing Ceph through the head from behind and sniping with the
crossbow – might be the least dangerous path, but there are
other options. You can also fire immensely powerful alien
weapons, which Prophet's Nanosuit has evolved to accommodate. It
doesn't seem to like it that much when you tear a plasma grenade
launcher off the arm of some Ceph behemoth, flashing
INCOMPATIBLE HARDWARE in the corner of the screen in big red
letters, but it works fine, firing balls of white-hot death with
an almighty shudder, sending plumes of swampy water up into the
air. The layout, with its high buildings and dense undergrowth,
allows for an interesting combination of urban and jungle combat
styles; one minute Prophet his hiding behind the walls of a
former apartment block or sniping from a rooftop, the next he's
dashing across old metal beams from building to building,
avoiding fire from the jungle below.
The Nanosuit itself is still at the centre of Crysis,
ever-present as an overlay on your first-person view of the
world. It lets you scan the area for enemies, decorating the
screen with tactical information that helps you to decide how to
approach. It imbues Prophet with superhuman powers that can
still lead to moments of elated disbelief as you pull through a
situation that looks impossible or uppercut an enemy six feet
into the air. Only one new ability was explicitly shown: Prophet
can remote hack enemy turrets, turning them against the Ceph to
create a distraction.
The demo ends ominously, with Prophet surrounded by Ceph outside
a communications tower, his weapon knocked from his hand.
Throughout the reveal presentation, he has been the hunter; once
he's overwhelmed, it's clear that he's vastly outnumbered inside
the Liberty Dome. It seems inevitable that this will define the
pace of the game: the suit might make him almost superhuman, but
Prophet is a vulnerable figure in these surroundings.
At the moment, Crysis 3's setting is the most interesting thing
about it. Its artistic direction and extreme good looks are
seductive, as is the sense of absolute power that the Nanosuit
conveys, but gameplay-wise, everything in this reveal demo is
something we've seen before (alien weapons are new to the
series, but they're hardly new to shooters). We can safely
assume, however, that Crytek has more to show in the coming
months, and hope that the developer's traditionally strong enemy
AI will keep the game as interesting on a minute-to-minute
gameplay level as it is look at. It's currently planned for
Spring 2013.
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