Crysis 3 - E3 Preview

In the realm of extremely beautiful shooters there are many contenders, but only one has continually taken the cake for pushing the graphical boundaries of the system it has been on. Crysis is back, and it is more beautiful than ever. The nanosuit is spectacular, the water effects are amazing, and the entire world just looks alive. But if all we wanted in a game was graphics we would just watch movies and the indie scene would not see the great growth that is has. No a game needs good gameplay, and that was the real star of the demonstration at E3 this year.

Crysis 3 was the singular EA title we were able to get in (a tragedy). The game is set in the city of New York which the Crynet Enforcement & Local Logistics (CELL) has placed under a large dome in order to study alien technology. Prophet (nope, not dead) is back and has had a vision of the end of the world at the hands of the alien invaders. Now he is on a mission to save the planet, and no one is going to stand in his way, not the aliens and not CELL.

The demo we were shown involves an attempt to cripple CELL by removing their source of electricity, a hydroelectric dam in the area. Prophet uses stealth to get the drop on an enemy operative with the new primary weapon, a compound bow (which if you have seen any pictures of this game it means you already guessed that). We saw some of the special arrows that you get to use in the game. They had an explosive arrow, one that seemed to shoot out small steel pellets after it hit, an electric arrow, and a regular arrow (did not see that one coming). An all out firefight ensues where a mixture of stealth and grenade tactics ensure a win. It was pretty seemless how the player moved from one use of the nanosuit to the next. Showcased during one section was when he had to get past a turret emplacement. This was done by, for the first time ever, using a weapon for a nearby dead alien. The suit complained about unsupported hardware while prophet used it, but it was a nice thing to have added. As Prophet makes his way into the dam he hacks a few other turrets to turn them against his foes, destroys the power generator, and then blows the dam up. It looked like a lot of fun, and was disappointed that I had not left myself the time to actually play this game myself.

Crysis 3 is set to release in February 2013. Guess that gives me plenty of time to get caught up on the game series since I have not had the chance to play Crysis 1 or 2 yet.