There’s a series of imaginative, evocative settings here – a financial district transformed into a towering hydroelectric dam, say, or Chinatown-cum-swampland – but playing through them is like flicking through concept art. They simply don’t exist as part of a thought-out, directed whole. This is all more the surprising considering Crysis 3′s modest length in comparison with its immediate predecessor. There’s about five hours of game here, a length that, even without Call Of Duty’s linear rails, should really be able to sustain a stronger sense of pacing than this.
It looks beautiful, of course. Everybody knows Crytek can work magic on a gaming PC, but it’s the Faustian pact that the studio has presumably entered into in order to conjure such imagery from consoles (while avoiding Far Cry 3 levels of performance) that has us concerned. What was lost along the way? The first game’s soul was traded away by Crysis 2, but at least that game was aware of its limits, using its new walls to guide players through a series of emergent, reactive encounters. Crysis 3 has neither direction nor freedom, though it does have human weapons, alien weapons, a cloaking device, an Armour mode, and a bow. And with this many options at your disposal, Crysis 3 insists, surely you must be having fun.