Crysis 3 Review Round-Up: More Than Just A Pretty Face?

This week Crysis 3 is hitting stores throughout the world. The reviews are in and it looks like the game could be an enjoyable diversion for shooter fans. Keep your expectations in check, though.

Crysis 3 is set two decades after the events of Crysis 2. The CELL Corporation has tightened its control on the world, building massive nanodomes around many of the world's cities. Prophet, the super soldier from previous games, heads to the New York City dome to stop the corporation. The city has been turned into an urban jungle and is inhabited by both CELL forces and the alien race known as the Ceph. Fortunately, Prophet has an arsenal of weapons at his disposal. Furthermore, he's still wearing his nanosuit which lets him perform superhuman feats.

The Metacritic rating for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game are all hovering around 80. For basis of comparison, Crysis 2 had a average Metacritic of about 85. It seems like the core gameplay is wearing a bit thin. PC Gamer said the game is closer to "Crysis 2: Episode 2" than Crysis 3.

As usual, we've dug up ten interesting reviews of the game from throughout the web. Excerpts and links from each are below.

Joystiq - "Crysis 3 succeeds not only as a shooter, but as a stealth game too. It's entirely possible to sneak through the game and minimize casualties, and doing so is challenging and incredibly rewarding (should you succeed). The same goes for players who prefer to quietly assassinate every enemy one-by-one. The inclusion of the bow – a silent weapon that doesn't force you to break your cloak when you use it – is a big boon to the stealth experience in Crysis 3."

Shacknews - "AI impressed me, especially on higher difficulties. Silly mistakes, such as coming out of stealth too soon, become quite difficult to recover from. I had to constantly monitor my energy meter or tag new enemies as they showed. Otherwise, both CELL and Ceph troops would easily overwhelm me."

PA Report - "Crysis 3 is an enjoyable game, but it’s lost much of what made the first two games special. It’s not bad by any means, but you can see hints of a much better game peeking out through the cracks. I don’t mind the time I spent playing through the game’s single-player campaign, and I had great fun during a few sequences, but it feels like the features of the first two games have been eroded, not improved."

OPM UK - "I clocked the campaign in exactly four hours, 55 minutes and 40 seconds, making Crysis 3 shorter than the offspring of Danny DeVito and Wee Jimmy Krankie (what a looker that kid would be). Even briefer than Black Ops II, it’s hard not to feel slightly short-changed by Prophet’s brisk jaunt through the Big Apple."

1UP - "If you go in understanding that Crysis 3 delivers blockbuster entertainment and multiplayer that iterates on Call of Duty's perks system, you'll be fine. But if you want Crysis to stake a claim all its own, you might be disappointed. But don't let that stop you from enjoying a solid action sandbox like this one. Crysis 3 might not reinvent itself into a grander vision, but like a good Hollywood sequel, it sticks to what it does well and iterates its formula into an impressive video game."

VentureBeat - "Crysis 3 is the strongest entry in the franchise. The puzzle-like combat scenarios have never been better with its suite of gameplay options and opportunities while the engaging narrative urges you to see Prophet’s journey through to the end. And if you’re a console owner, you can rest easy knowing that it still looks great on seven-year-old hardware."

PC Gamer - "The déjà vu of handling the same weapons is offset by Prophet’s newfound ability to wield Ceph guns. Each of these devastating power weapons pulls from a single, small magazine of ammo. They’re intentionally disposable; as long as you don’t mutilate an alien with explosives, you can steal their flamethrower, lightning sniper rifle, or absurd plasma minigun that transforms into a wide-firing plasma shotgun. Firing each of these produces the same pleasure I felt when I first fired the Combine Pulse Rifle in Half-Life 2: giving enemies a taste of their own medicine."

IGN - "The online side of things does a commendable job of appropriating the Call of Duty class/load-out/perk systems, but works best in the modes that leverage the Nanosuit powers. This is particularly exemplified by the new Hunter mode, which pits two cloaked hunters against a team of CELL troopers. Each trooper killed switches sides and becomes a hunter, until there’s one trooper left to nervously twitch and shoot at shadows. It’s genuinely intense stuff, and well worth investigating once you’ve polished off the campaign."

MTV - "With a poweful graphics engine alongside pretty fun gameplay, EA and Crytek definitely have a good game here despite a rather short (roughly 12 hours across 7 missions) and lackluster story about humans fighting intergalactic aliens. The real fun is in its deep, engaging multiplayer that should keep you engrossed for months to come. In spite of more than a few troulesome issues, if you're a die-hard shooter fan you could do worse to pass on "Crysis 3."

GameTrailers - "As much of a visual showpiece as a restoration of the series’ ideological roots, it represents an impressive return to form for the series once synonymous with high-end PC gaming."