Crysis 3: Thoughts?

[TechBoyJK]

Who got it?

Anybody play the release?

I'm a confessed and known Crytek Fanboy, so my opinion is biased, but I certainly think they learned some lessons from Crysis 2.

The single player campaign took me about 35-45% as long as Crysis 2's campaign. It was definitely shorter. However, it was goddamn intense. I played it on the medium difficulty and had a blast. The levels are incredibly rich and complex and even at mostly 'low' settings and the smallest hint of AA, the game was gorgeous.

The multplayer is where it's at. For once, this MP offering is really good. The play modes are fun, especially hunter and spears, and their netcode seems to be running well. I haven't gotten kicked yet, haven't experienced any cheaters, and I've just overall had a really good time.

I don't like that they got rid of the cover system. I was pretty miffed that I didn't have that available as there were plenty of times I found myself wishing it was still there. I hope someone mods that back in.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I've been slowly playing through the singleplayer; haven't delved into multiplayer at all. The story is better than I was expecting, but still silly. The acting is hit or miss, but it's improved by the detail in the character models and the animation; it really draws you in. The graphics are unreal, absolutely stunning on every front. I've spent more time marveling at random bits of ground texture than actually playing the game. I'm stunned that I can run the game at 1920x1200 with maximum details, 16x AF and 2x SMAA at playable frame rates, as I couldn't do that with the original Crysis for a couple years after its release. And, seriously, the graphics are worth the price of admission alone. I've never seen anything like it.

My biggest gripe with the game is the lack of a quicksave system. I don't have as much time to devote to gaming as I used to and if I suddenly get called away, I don't want the game to take me back 15 minutes because I haven't made sufficient progress in its eyes. Let me save it where I damn well please. This is doubly maddening because after I finish the campaign, I want to run back through and get some quality screenshots (or downsampled bullshots as the case may be) and it would be nice to mark some saves for areas that are particularly beautiful. What the hell Crytek? That's just being an unnecessary pain in the ass for no reason.

And I have to say, I prefer the fastswitch suit commands from Crysis 1 (haven't played 2 yet). I keep accidentally activating armor mode when I don't mean to then wondering why my suit isn't recharging. Double-tapping crouch or jump or sprint or what have you was just simpler in my mind; this feels dumbed-down but also more cumbersome somehow. The addition of suit upgrades was completely glossed over in the story mode, so I didn't realize I could change them up and do various things to "access" them until midway through the penultimate chapter of the game. That's on me, but I still feel it's a completely underdeveloped mechanic that feels almost forgotten in the midst of an otherwise straightforward shooter.

That said, I'm really enjoying the game. I think it's the best game I've played in the last 6 months, but, as I mentioned, I haven't had that much time for gaming so I've missed out on games like Assassin's Creed 3 and Far Cry 3. It'd be worth it for the graphics alone, and it's a pretty good shooter once all that is stripped away.

 

[Red Storm]

Are the levels tiny? In comparison to Crysis 1 that is. After the breathtaking graphics of Crysis 1 in vast and open areas, the way they closed things up in Crysis 2 was annoying. So how is #3 in this regard?

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Are the levels tiny? In comparison to Crysis 1 that is. After the breathtaking graphics of Crysis 1 in vast and open areas, the way they closed things up in Crysis 2 was annoying. So how is #3 in this regard?

They're not as wide open as Crysis, and although some environments give you a lot of freedom to explore, they ultimately end up feeling fairly "point A to point B" in most situations. There are certainly situations where you can plan out different attack strategies to see what works best, but they aren't as diverse as you'd find in Crysis 1. I haven't played 2, so I can't give a comparison there, but from descriptions I've read about it being a corridor shooter, it seems 3 is an improvement in that regard.

The levels definitely aren't "tiny."

 

[Aikouka]

Out of curiosity, is there a reason why the FRAPS framerate counter doesn't show up in Crysis 3? I was playing the other day, and I was curious how my machine was fairing. Unfortunately, I could never check. Although, a FRAPS benchmark might work.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Out of curiosity, is there a reason why the FRAPS framerate counter doesn't show up in Crysis 3? I was playing the other day, and I was curious how my machine was fairing. Unfortunately, I could never check. Although, a FRAPS benchmark might work.

Do you have the latest version of FRAPS? I kept crashing when trying to run FRAPS with Crysis 3 until I downloaded the most recent version. It works fine for me now.

 

[Aikouka]

Do you have the latest version of FRAPS? I kept crashing when trying to run FRAPS with Crysis 3 until I downloaded the most recent version. It works fine for me now.

I think I'm using 3.5.9? I believe I checked the day after I first tried Crysis 3, and it was the most up-to-date. However, they may have released a new version since then.

 

[cmdrdredd]

fraps works for me. You could also try MSI afterburner or EVGA precision with their OSD.

 

[Childs]

One thing I find off putting is the game implies you can use stealth to take out the enemies or bypass them. To a certain degree you can, but out of nowhere they can spot your toe 75m away. I am assuming they must have seen some part of me behind cover, but they were far enough away that I could tell if they were looking at me. Another time, I used the scanner to make sure no one was around. I hacked a crate and was looking at the goodies and a guy spawned right behind me. Then all of a sudden there was another one down the stairs. And I literally scanned the whole area seconds before. And then there are scripted confrontations, so that you have to play a certain way.

Also, you can't pick up bodies. Makes no point sneaking up behind someone or hitting them with an arrow when the guards see the body from across the frickin level. I'm not overly impressed with the game, but I do like looking at the environments. This would have been excellent if you had more freedom.

 

[vshah]

i wish far cry 3 used cryengine 3. crysis 3 looks absolutely amazing.

 

[CrystalBay]

"Phenomenal" They did an excellent job with the vegetation, water and the story this time around.
It runs very good on my gtx 570 on high settings ,very high on shaders and water + FXAA @19x12. I'm not recording frames per second, just by how fluidly it feels.

The only negative would be some mouse lag at times.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

One thing I find off putting is the game implies you can use stealth to take out the enemies or bypass them. To a certain degree you can, but out of nowhere they can spot your toe 75m away. I am assuming they must have seen some part of me behind cover, but they were far enough away that I could tell if they were looking at me.

Initially this part of the game bugged me as well, but realistically speaking, a lot of that makes sense. We're used to video games having guards with a limited line of sight that is much shorter than the player's own. That's just flat out ridiculous. These are trained soldiers posted on lookout in a shooting war between alien races; they're going to be on pretty high alert. If they see something moving 75 meters away, or see the electric shimmer as a cloak is disengaged from a long way off and they didn't react to it? That would be unbelievable. Sometimes the line of sight issues are patently ridiculous, yes, but for the most part, I prefer the way this game handles it as opposed to most every other shooter I've played. Lord knows if I was playing online and crept out from cover, a human player 100m off would immediately see me and start shooting; why shouldn't we expect that from AI?

 

[Childs]

Initially this part of the game bugged me as well, but realistically speaking, a lot of that makes sense. We're used to video games having guards with a limited line of sight that is much shorter than the player's own. That's just flat out ridiculous. These are trained soldiers posted on lookout in a shooting war between alien races; they're going to be on pretty high alert. If they see something moving 75 meters away, or see the electric shimmer as a cloak is disengaged from a long way off and they didn't react to it? That would be unbelievable. Sometimes the line of sight issues are patently ridiculous, yes, but for the most part, I prefer the way this game handles it as opposed to most every other shooter I've played. Lord knows if I was playing online and crept out from cover, a human player 100m off would immediately see me and start shooting; why shouldn't we expect that from AI?

I wouldnt mind it as much if it was consistent. There are times when I can see the enemy looking right at me about 50m away and he does nothing, and other times I'm moving on an elevated position between to cover points, and they see me cross a 6" gap in a fence 50m away. Its not that it makes the game hard or anything, but I feel like I've wasted my time for say 75% of the assault.

I wish there was a debug mode so I could see the vision cone for the AI. It may well be that they can see what I'm doing, but it seems like they see things they shouldnt. I should be able to see them because they have colored triangles above their heads. Maybe I have one above mine, and I didnt notice because of the fps view. :biggrin:

 

[TechBoyJK]

I wouldnt mind it as much if it was consistent. There are times when I can see the enemy looking right at me about 50m away and he does nothing, and other times I'm moving on an elevated position between to cover points, and they see me cross a 6" gap in a fence 50m away. Its not that it makes the game hard or anything, but I feel like I've wasted my time for say 75% of the assault.

I wish there was a debug mode so I could see the vision cone for the AI. It may well be that they can see what I'm doing, but it seems like they see things they shouldnt. I should be able to see them because they have colored triangles above their heads. Maybe I have one above mine, and I didnt notice because of the fps view. :biggrin:

sometimes you get caught, sometimes you don't. I have good vision and if I was looking for stuff, I could see things move from far away, but if I was distracted bigfoot could walk by me and I wouldn't notice.

 

[felang]

Graphics are definitely great. Gameplay seem to repetitive IMO. Stealth, kill soldiers, get arrows back from dead bodies, hide to replenish energy, more stealth... Maybe I should lower difficulty and just run and gun.

What´s up with supposedly using a "silent" bow to kill a soldier and all of a sudden every other soldier in the map is on your ass???

I got bored of it after a couple of hours, maybe I just suck.

 

[Stringjam]

I wish there was a debug mode so I could see the vision cone for the AI.

There is, but Crytek hasn't released the Mod SDK for the game yet (and they have indicated they probably won't until any/all DLC's have been released.)

 

[leper84]

The single player campaign took me about 35-45% as long as Crysis 2's campaign. It was definitely shorter.

uuggghh. I am not paying $60 for some episodic campaign crap like in modern warfare.

I want to see the eye candy but EA and Crytek can shove it if they think I'm paying full pop for a quarter of a game.

 

[Zeze]

I got this game with lots of skepticism. I was pleasantly surprised.

Pros:

- Probably the most visually beautiful game on the market now. I nearly orgasmed when they showcased the NYC for the first time.

- The engine seems to be incredibly well optimized. I thought it was gonna crawl on my $500 budget system (i3-2120, HD6870), but it runs very well at 30-40 FPS on everything Medium at 1920x1080. I'm just shocked how a game can look this good on my system. Even on everything low settings, the game looks great, WTF? I can't even tell the difference between High and Very High.

- Great presentation on cut scenes, interface, acting, and level briefing. I guess that's expected on a triple-A title.

- The game is engaging enough with lots of different weapons, powersuit mechanics, and a splash of RPG element with suit upgrades that can't be reversed.


Cons:

- The game really felt like glorified Smash TV. Clear Room A, then clear Room B. One check point to another. This kept me from playing long sessions at a time, as I grew tired of it quickly. It would've been nice if they threw in some Crysis 1 elements in.

- Prophet's voice acting is cringe worthy. It's too typical and groan inducing. That gruffy grunty voice got old right after the intro. Is everyone suffering from Master Chief syndrome?

- No quick save. This REALLY worsens the 'Room A-to-B' feel. If you die before clearing B, then start all over from end of A.

- I wished the game would vary some of its play mechanics. I really miss fighting various types of enemies like Doom. You get hoards of weak ones, fast and deadly ones, and fat one that take lots of punishment. A real varied enemies make using weapons more fun too. So far, 90% of enemies are plain human troopers, 10% stalkers. Perhaps I'm judging it too fast, but I'm in the middle of mission 2 and I'm still fighting the same enemies. It's becoming a drag.

- Tagging enemies were cool at first but became a necessary cumbersome mechanic.


Verdict:

I have more negatives to say about repetitiveness, but I only played about 10-15%. Do things suddenly get drastically better and more fun? I'm not holding breath for this mainstream CoD clone. If someone made a perfect game that captures the action of Doom and the innovation/story of Half Life together, that would be perfect.

All that being said. The game is indeed fun. I guess I'm being too harsh on the game because it's a run-n-gun mainstream triple-A title. It's solid all around as a casual game. 4/5 stars.

 

[Childs]

- No quick save. This REALLY worsens the 'Room A-to-B' feel. If you die before clearing B, then start all over from end of A.

Even the regular saving is kinda wacky. I did the level on the dam, and I blew it up and was washed down the river. It was like a 5 min cutscene. There surely must have been a checkpoint after all that, so I quit for the night. Next time I play I was at the point before I blew up the dam. So I have to kill the baddies again, blow up the damn, and sit through the cutscene again. Apparently I needed to walk 5 feet to hit a checkpoint.

I'm thinking "no save when you want" must have been a console concession.

 

[CrystalBay]

The game is way to short. Reconning areas is vital because I passed by too many nano suit upgrades. With the current save system in place I can't go back to search for them. Has anybody messed with the FOV settings. I am starting to feel claustrophobic with the default FOV.

 

[Childs]

The game is way to short. Reconning areas is vital because I passed by too many nano suit upgrades. With the current save system in place I can't go back to search for them. Has anybody messed with the FOV settings. I am starting to feel claustrophobic with the default FOV.

You can use Crysis 3 CVar Configurator. You can set FOV, turn off mouse smoothing, skip intro movies, etc.

I didnt find much use for the nano suit upgrades myself. I think when I finished I had 4 unused points.

And that final boss was a pain in the ass. Not because it was tough, but I just didnt know what I was supposed to do in the second stage. Maybe I missed some dialog or something, but

Spoiler

I didnt know I was supposed to recharge the nano suit using the batteries. I didnt do it at any point previously, so it never crossed my mind. It was kinda by luck, since I was going through every weapon and ammo kit on the level, activating sentrys, etc, and just saw the prompt to recharge. Then I could recharge the alien chain gun, and it was game over. Especially if you drop to a lower level so it cant attack you. But F me, what a pain in the ass

.

Anyways, I'd give this game a 7/10. IMO its just barely better than COD with all the on rails stuff, and I'm growing to hate this kind of gameplay. Its especially bad towards the end, when its like cutscene, you get control to hit one button, cutscene, do one action, cutscene, etc. I think there was even a 20 min stretch where all you do is follow Psycho, and you get to hit one button. The writing was pretty bad too. Very corny, and not in the good way like in something like Armageddon. The only thing I really liked was the art direction. And the bow was really satisfying, but I didnt realize how overpowered it was until the last quarter of the game. It just didnt make sense to me that one bolt would take out an armored alien, so I didnt use it when the aliens showed up. It ended up more powerful than the sniper rifle, because you dont need a head shot with the bow.

I dunno, I think the play time was just about right. Just when I was thinking when is this going to be over, it was.

 

[I.M.Weasel]

Done some of the multiplayer yet? I'll give it a run when i'm done with the single player campaign.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Mine keeps crashing after I defeated the alpha ceph on the platform. The first time I was on the vtol trying to free Michael from the harness and now it is happening each time I try to reload the level as I try to return to the same point in the game. I'm not happy with this bug and a repair installed didn't correct it.

 

[dinker99]

Better than Crysis 2 but not a patch on Crysis 1.

No quicksave; lots of cheesy, emotive dialogue and the game is very dark on my GTX670 with the latest NVidia drivers - brightness control does not work.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I've played Crysis 3 right after finishing (for the first time) Crysis 1. And it doesn't look improved much, to be frank. Technically, it's still DirectX 9 at the core. I am wondering, how much money did Microsoft award Crytek for making it a non XP title. I am able to run their latest editor on Windows XP, which is the same engine the game based off, minus some effects. Probably, just didn't want to bother it with support

Game itself is quite short but very intense, good fun. No complaints. The music is quite memorable, too.