Now we know what many of you may be thinking, how could Crysis 3 possibly continue the story of Prophet from the past game, considering what happened to Prophet during Crysis 2. Still, during our closed-door presentation at EA’s booth during E3 this year we were told that Prophet would indeed be continuing to fight against the aliens and the 5th cell in Crysis 3. In fact, Prophet is quite literally a prophet in this game as he has had a vision of the end of the world and has set out on a mission to prevent it from happening at all costs.
Now for the first time ever, players will actually be able to make use of the alien’s weaponry whenever they come across one such piece of equipment; however we were not shown how one of these pieces of weaponry would perform in actual combat. Instead the developers chose to give us a chance to try our hand at playing through a level that was about a third of the way through the game called Dam Busters. It is worth noting that we were able to try out Crysis 3 on a high-end PC, but I opted to use the provided game controller for ease of access.
On the PC build of the game we were able to try our hand at making it through the same stage shown during the EA press conference, though we could choose our own way to do it. In this level we were tasked with disabling a generator in a nearby dam to create a window of opportunity to take out another target. Now all of the past gameplay features will be returning, such as stealth and armor mode, and now players can make use of the signature weapon for Crysis 3, the silent but deadly bow weapon.
This bow can be fired from stealth mode without actually discharging the players’ suit energy and disabling stealth. Not only that but various arrow heads could be equipped to provide multiple enemy take downs, such as fragmentation tips which explode upon contact, similar to a frag grenade, as well as electric arrows capable of electrifying enemies in water. Now, not one for too much subtlety I found it quite easy to sneak past a number of enemies despite causing quite an uproar after encountering the first group of enemies, exchanging bullets and multiple explosions.
Still, despite my less than sneaky means of stealth, I was able to make my way to the dam and here I was shown another new feature of Crysis 3, the ability to hack turrets and other electronic devices within the range of the players’ sight. These electronics can be hacked in visor mode and doing so not only eliminates an obstacle for the player, but also provides additional stealth opportunities.
Of course, all that stealth was likely for naught as there is nothing stealthy about blowing apart a massive dam after disabling the generator inside. However there is a lot that can be said for how impressive the title managed to present this large scale devastation. Regardless of how the player chooses to play, whether aggressively or stealthily, it will likely be hard to avoid having fun with Crysis 3 when it is released in February next year.
