Crysis 3 Hands-on Preview
Reuters

Key Features:

  • Developer: CryTek
  • Publisher: Electronic Arts
  • Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, WiiU
  • Release Date: February, 2013
  • Price: TBC

Crysis 3

My time with Crysis 3 was very short, but not because there was a big line of people waiting - the CryTek stand at this year's Eurogamer has been met with a surprisingly muted response.

The only reason I didn't get to play very much is because there isn't very much to play, not yet anyway.

From the looks of things, this will one day be the biggest Crysis ever. The various screenshots and bits of footage which have been drip-fed to the press over the last few months promise a larger, more vibrant game-world than even the first Crysis' tropical sandbox could deliver. But for now, we just have multiplayer, and a new, neat little game mode called Hunter.

Two teams, eight on one side, four on the other, duke it out until there's one man left standing. The catch? The smaller team are Hunters, bow-and-arrow wielding super-soldiers, who are permanently invisible thanks to Crysis' trademark nanosuit. As the eight man team, the CELL, it's your job to wipe out all the Hunters and stay alive; as the Hunters, you need to kill the CELL.

Although rounds of Hunter are only two minutes long, they rarely end in a draw: The Hunters are terrifying. Thanks to the loud bleep-bleep of your threat detector, playing as the CELL feels like that bit in Alien, as you watch and listen for that blip on the radar that you know is just getting closer and closer.

Play as a Hunter, and the feeling is entirely different; shielded by the Nanosuit, facing a team of mere humans, the sense of empowerment is absolute. That is until you catch a bullet in the head, and get dumped onto the CELL team.

Appeal

Therein lies the appeal of Hunter mode. Not only do you switch teams between each round, your playing experience flips several times over, too. One minute you're picking off people like Predator, the next, you're the hunted, and you need to band together and make a stand if you're going to live.

I played for maybe 15 minutes, and the emotional rollercoaster had more loops in it than a lot of games do from beginning to end.

And obviously, since this is Crysis, it looks gorgeous - astonishing even. CryTek have gone to the trouble of rigging up some top-of-the-line, Nvidia-powered laptops to run their Crysis 3 beta and the results are eye-popping. It sounds great as well.

If Crysis 2 suffered from anything, it was the overbearing, orchestral, Hans Zimmer score. Crysis 3 is far more subtle - the rat-a-tat of gunfire is dispersed with deep, foreboding synth.

It's still a way off - Crysis 3 won't be available until February next year - but the short spell I managed to grab at Eurogamer has me convinced CryTek's latest effort will be worth waiting for. Keep an eye out.

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