Crysis 3 Preview

Frankfurt-based developers Crytek walked a group of games journalists through a live preview of Crysis 3 last week. You may have already heard from the announcement that Crysis 3 is set 20 years after the events of Crysis 2 and you’ll be playing as Prophet, our protagonist from Crysis 2. The action we saw covered a team-mate named Psycho talking Prophet, through the Liberty Dome of New York, where accelerated growth within the nanodome has allowed the rainforest to claim back much of the urban environment.

In practice, that translates to the FPS staple of half-destroyed buildings and chest-high rubble strewn over the streets but with Crytek’s signature undergrowth everywhere. Fans of their non-corrider map design will be pleased to know that Crysis 3 will follow the same philosophy. As you might expect from the setting, there are plenty of ferns and bushy cover for stealth kills. There’s also the added advantage that the leaves muffle the sound of a freshly-killed Ceph warrior splooshing heavily into a puddle not 5 metres away from one of his perimeter guard companions. Handy, that.

We were shown the Compound Bow, a new weapon in the game for distant stealth kills. This is the first weapon in the series that can be fired while the nanosuit cloaking feature is activated.

The game has only been in development for six months so there’s a lot of room for features to be added but at the moment, they’re not modelling archery ballistics. This leaves the bow as basically a silent and slow-to-reload form of rifle. Kinda makes me wonder why they made a bow at all when a silenced sniper rifle would do the same job but I guess it looks cool.

Another weapons on display was Typhoon machine gun that allegedly blasts out 500 rounds per second. According to the HUD, each clip for the Typhoon only held about 750 rounds, so it’s probably best saved for large crowds or really big enemies. For human weapons, the HUD also gives a nice breakdown of wapon properties, covering accuracy, fire rate, mobility, damage, range and recoil. The Ceph weapons that you can use are unrecognised and get no such analysis but from what we saw, you can assume they are pretty gosh-darn devastating.

Rather more interesting to me were the Ceph scorcher bugs that came scurrying out of the undergrowth to throw massive gouts of flame into Prophet’s face. Again, it’s early days so there’s no word on whether they’ll be able to burn away the undergrowth in which you’ll be sheltering but they can certainly set it ablaze.

The HUD also provides analysis as you examine your enemies from a distance. It will identify their type (“Ceph Warrior”), strengths (“hardened exoskeleton”) and weaknesses (“exposed jelly”). You also examine turrets from a distance and identify if they are hackable.

Crysis 3 looks set to be another quality free-reign Ceph adventure from Crytek. The return of leafy stealth should please those who were unhappy with Crysis 2’s urban environment and the big Ceph guns will add a satisfying explosive element to the combat. This could be a good one.

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