gamescom 2012: Crysis 3 Co-op Preview
The tag-line for Crytek’s latest triple-A title, Crysis 3, is ‘Become the hunter’. It is perhaps the most appropriate visual phasing ever conceived when trying to describe my hands-on experience with the game’s online co-op battle mode, aptly titled ‘Hunter’ – the premise of it being to quite literally stalk around the beautifully overgrown war-tarnished iteration of New York, silently picking off your prey in an awesome Predator style.
Armed only with the series’ newly acquired bow and arrow the objective of the game is relatively simple. You start in two varying sized teams, based on the amount of people playing that are split into a heavily one-sided group of C.E.L.L. operatives, armed with machine guns and general military gubbins. Whilst the other, much smaller team consists of the aforementioned bow and arrow weilding hunters, equipped with the mighty Nanosuit - only for some unknown but splendid reason it is stuck on stealth mode.
The premise of the mode is for the hunters to pick off unsuspecting C.E.L.L operatives; each time a C.E.L.L. operative dies they become a member of the Nanosuit hunters, thus creating a constant ever-increasing ‘fat man on a seesaw’ survival based challenge that heavily rewards the last surviving member of the defending team.
If you are as lucky/tremendously skilled as me you will find something euphorically terrifying about being the last surviving C.E.L.L. surrounded by five near-invisible humanoid shapes, slowly creeping towards you, and yes, I shouted the customary “you’ll never take me alive!” and started windmill-spraying bullets in all directions before being ultimately and unceremonlasly stabbed in the face.
Outside of the short game mode I sampled, the graphics appear as crisp as Crysis 2. Truthfully that’s more than fine with me considering how hard Crytek pushed things for the last few years. The gameplay of the (now beautifully camo skinned) Nanosuit hunters does feel slightly more refined and agile compared to the last game, whilst the C.E.L.L. soldiers were obviously a bit more cumbersome – no doubt brought on by the fact they can super-jump like a mother fucker.
I enjoyed my brief foray into Crysis 3’s online mode; it was great to see Crytek focus on the multiplayer side of the series, as honestly the previous title was sadly just not up to scratch in that area in my opinion. Perhaps once I get a chance to play some of the game’s other modes or single player I will be able to elaborate a bit more. Until then I will remain joyfully smug and hopeful that this may just be the defining Crysis game.
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