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  Jan 31, 2013 By Shujaat Syed  @shoejaat

PC version tested

I played through the campaigns of the first two Crysis games several times, but their multiplayer counterpart never seemed to click with me. Changing nanosuit modes – from heavy armor to stealth and stomping on enemies all seemed like a great idea but it wasn’t very fun to play. Why wasn’t it fun to play? Crytek decided to put the same game play mechanics in both single and multi-player and that caused a few issues. First off - Crysis is a much more strategic FPS. You have to be aware of not only the enemies around you, but you also have to pay attention what type of nanosuit mode they are in. It usually isn’t a wise idea to approach an armored opponent, for example. This doesn’t bode well with an arena-based gameplay style, mainly because the maps aren’t very big, and you are constantly being bombarded from the opposing faction. It was trying to be Call of Duty but the game mechanics didn’t lend itself towards that type of experience. Secondly, the whole experience felt unpolished. Things like animations getting screwed over, the net code having trouble registering hits, as well as glitched kill cameras were all downers to the overall experience.

To fix these problems, Crytek essentially reworked some of the gameplay foundations to better suit the multiplayer experience that was their original vision with Crysis 2. The game feels much faster, yet it’s still keeping a certain kind of strategy to it. This is due to the nanosuit no longer taking energy for simple actions, such as sprinting and power jumping. The platforming elements such as ledge grabbing have also been quickened. To add to this both the armor and stealth mode now use different energy pools.

The game is much more technically demanding than Crysis 2. Do you have your gaming rig up to snuff?

The returning Crash Site mode plays similarity to the King of The Hill game mode found in other FPS games such as Halo. The beta offers two maps for this mode; the first is Museum, a dark area which features some abandoned and destroyed buildings set in a swamp-like setting and a lot of areas for platforming. The second map, Airport, is a daytime map which features abandoned buildings, a wrecked airplane, a sewer system, as well as a lot of overgrown vegetation.

The Crash Site mode really shows off the new nanosuit features I mentioned before. Zipping, and jumping around the map to get to a new crash site is fun, especially since you don’t have to pay attention to your nanosuit’s energy pool while traversing. The game has become faster but that’s acceptable, especially when it makes the end product a much more enjoyable experience. The experience I had playing Crash Site was very reminiscent of older arena style games such as Unreal Tournament.

Sneaking up behind your opponents is always fun, especially when you can take a few of them out 

Crytek has made changes to the Crysis formula by making it much more streamlined and that may not bode will with some purist but rest assured it makes the game much more enjoyable.

I recorded some footage of me playing the Crash Site mode. Check it out to see how the game plays.

Some screenshots I took while playing the game can be found here

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