Questions & Concerns About Crysis 3

Crysis 3 arrives in just a few days, and there are ads and flashy trailers everywhere you look telling you what's awesome about it. That means it's time for a reality check! Don't get us wrong: we're hoping this will be a return to form after a bit of a stumble in Crysis 2, and it's undeniably gorgeous, but what do we really know about how good it'll be, and what important questions remain unanswered? Here's your GameSpy-recommended dose of healthy pre-release skepticism: our five biggest questions and concerns about Crytek's latest shooter.


Can Crytek fix the story?


The storyline in the Crysis series underwent some "creative revisions" between Crysis and Crysis 2, to the point where if it weren't for that fancy nanosuit and a couple of character names they might as well be two completely unrelated sci-fi stories. In effect, Crytek traded a simple but effective plot about an accidentally unearthed alien invasion force that must be stopped for a needlessly convoluted one about a Weyland-Yutani-style evil corporation trying to harness aliens' power despite an obvious cost in human lives. It was not an improvement, especially at the cost of casually discarding Crysis protagonist Nomad without so much as a mention of what happened to him after the cliffhanger ending (answer: they killed him off in a comic no one read). Now the story is skipping ahead another 24 years -- something you generally only do if you want to cut as many ties as possible with your existing characters and fiction and start fresh.

That means anything could happen. While we know the basic gist of Crysis 3's story -- Alcatraz, no calling himself Prophet, is fighting Cell and the Ceph in a ruined New York that's been encased in a giant biodome -- we don't have a lot of reason to believe things will be any better this time around. Could Crytek pull out of its fictional nosedive? Sure. But we'll believe it when we play it, and our hopes aren't high.


Will Crysis 3 find a balance between simplicity and complexity?


Crysis 2 obviously had to make some concessions to console users in the process of shifting from PC exclusive to multi-platform shooter. Your suit powers in Crysis 1 -- strength, speed, stealth, and armor -- have to be very carefully managed, as they're all manually activated and can drain your suit's energy in mere seconds. Crysis 2's overhauled system gives you much more energy to burn in combat, and also revamps some of the activated abilities like enhanced jumping and strength as always-on powers that activate automatically when appropriate. Levels are also constructed in a much more linear fashion than Crysis' open maps; they're still wide enough that we can choose an angle of attack, but we didn't get nearly the sensation of freedom.

Those changes didn't make Crysis 2 a bad game, but they did eschew the sense of vulnerability that Crysis created: despite being a special forces badass in a billion-dollar cybersuit, you can still be killed in a heartbeat if you attempt to be bold instead of smart, or don't know how to use your tools effectively. In Crysis 2, though, Alcatraz's much more powerful than Nomad ever was, able to run long distances while cloaked and soak up tons of bullets while armored. That's fun and all, but it also feel a lot like other recent military shooters. A little more complexity and depth to the combat might help Crysis 3 feel more unique.

From what we've played at preview events, it seems like Crytek is trying to meet us halfway. Powers are still largely auto-activated, but stealth burns juice quickly, and playing as "Prophet" felt a little more freeform thanks to larger, more open maps (even though they don't approach Crysis size). Will that extend to the rest of the campaign? We'll see.


Is the bow a cheap gimmick?


One of the big new features that separates Crysis 2 from its predecessors is surprisingly low-tech for a sci-fi game: a compound bow with a variety of trick arrows straight out of a Green Arrow comic. We're not saying bows are dumb, or even necessarily played out -- even though Crysis 3 is coming between Assassin's Creed 3 and Tomb Raider, both of which feature archery as the combat style du jour. It's a fad that, perhaps coincidentally, follows in the wake of the success of The Hunger Games, and forces us to wonder whether it was added because it was the best idea Crytek had for improving gameplay, or someone in bursting into a development meeting and yelling "Bows! So hot right now." The effect of us having the ability to kill silently at a distance without even dropping the cloak first could be big, and it might take away some of the challenge of playing stealthily unless CELL and the Ceph have a counter.


Will fighting aliens ever be as fun as fighting human enemies?


Taking on the North Korean army in Crysis is a blast, largely because of their competent AI and the suite of tools that you can bring to bear against them. The aliens that pop out of the mountain halfway through the campaign to simply fly around and charge us? Not so much. What begins as a tactical shooter against relatively intelligent enemies quickly devolves into a series of circle-strafing encounters against bullet sponges. (Even if they are rather cool-looking bullet sponges.) Crysis 2 tones down the frustrating aerial antics of the Ceph in favor of simply making most of them bipedal humanoids, which makes them act like little more than human enemies that could simply, again, absorb a lot more punishment. The problem is they just don't feel as smart as Crysis' Koreans. It's hard to tell if it's a result of the level design or just a downgraded AI. While Prophet's fight against CELL seems to be the thrust of Crysis 3, the Ceph pop back up too. Will they be interesting to fight this time? We're not asking for much from them, really: we want to face aliens that force us to adjust the tactics that work well against human enemies and fight them in unique ways, instead of simply firing twice as many bullets at them.


A full-on sequel or Crysis 2.5?


Crysis 3 is hitting just two years after Crysis 2. Is that enough time to evolve the series' gameplay, or is this a mere minor iteration? We're not saying graphics needed an overhaul -- this time we won't have to wait for the DX11 support and HD texture pack that Crysis 2 got after release -- but Crysis 3 could use something striking to show us that this is more than Crysis 2's equivalent of Crysis' stand-alone expansion, Warhead.