Crysis 3 worse than Crysis 2, a bad trend for gaming.

Post » Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:58 pm

Hi guys and gals, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages –Erm, I mean, if you’re at least over 17! (Right? That’s the forum rule!)

I've finished Crysis 3 on a friend's PC (running the GTX Titan), and while I can say good things about the graphics of the 3rd iteration of the series... That's pretty much the only good thing I can say about the game.

I went back to my computer and booted up Crysis 2. With or without all the fancy graphics mods, like Blackfire 2 or MaldoHD, I have to say, I think Crysis 2 had the right SET UP for a great plot.
Why, oh why, am I so focused on plot, when everyone else is excited more for multiplayer, you ask?

Well, I’m the type of gamer who still believes in playing SP in a game like Crysis on the hardest difficulty before I hop into multiplayer. And I know I’m not alone in this way of thinking.

So that’s what I did for Crysis 1. I went through the SP campaign first before MP and thought "Wow, this has the potential to be a really cinematic, engaging experience!" The story may not have been the most dynamic, character development was weak, and the overall themes of the game were overly stereotypical if not just plain bland (military character doing basic military things, doing somewhat advanced military things with advanced armor called a nanosuit).

As soon as I finished Crysis 1’s single player campaign mode, I went straight into multiplayer. And for the most part, I enjoyed it. Sure, there were mistakes here and there. Suit energy was scarce, making some combat scenarios a little cumbersome to manage and felt more like the nanosuit was merely just a “perk” in itself for otherwise classic style gameplay.

So when Crysis 2 came out and it was revealed that Richard Morgan was stepping up to the plate to tell the game's story, I said to myself, "Whoa. Crytek is stepping up, and the directors of this game want to cater to a more mature crowd with a best-selling, cyberpunk, dystopian author!"
And that's what we got. We got a more fleshed out universe in Crysis 2 over Crysis 1. We got a world filled with conflict and doubt, OUR world, only a few years later in plot filled with bioviruses, private military contractors, a distressed public, corrupt senators and shareholders fighting to make life-threatening decisions, and the fate of the story rests on the Nanosuit’s driver: You.

Hargreave, who (SPOILER ALERT) we discover is really like a Laurens Bancroft straight out of Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon. If you haven't read this book, consider getting it. It’s cheap on Amazon and you can read it straight off your Android or iPhone if you’ve got Kindle installed. Hargreave is the manifestation of man’s everyday daydreams of wanting to live forever-- Hargreave has lived so long he thinks of himself as better than humanity, looking down at humans like they’re little things to play with. ”Death is just an inconvenience, nothing more. You’re a soldier, think of it as a necessary sacrifice.”

“YOU LIED TO US.”
–Prophet, in response. “WOW”, I thought to myself. “If the single player experience is this engaging, I wonder what they’ll do in Crysis 3? Bah, whatever, I’m going to play multiplayer in the meantime.”

So I did. I enjoyed the perk system, even if it was Call of Duty-esque. I didn’t like the lag, or the lack of real anti-cheat, or the tight, cramped maps. But I really liked the quick action gameplay, the chaos. Playing Crysis 2 on Post Human Warrior in the single player campaign REALLY made me ready for Crysis 2’s multiplayer.

You know what other digital media production made me feel this way? It wasn’t a game. Not even a movie. JUST a movie preview. Behold:



So when I finished playing Crysis 2 for the first time back in 2011, and then saw the community backlash towards the game, I was taken aback. How could a celebrated author of one of the best science fiction cyperpunk novels of all time have his work bashed down?

Well, we’ve already seen what caused this. Community backlash in feeling betrayed by the developers’ actions, that the franchise became more “Call of Duty”-esque with perk-based multiplayer gameplay and fewer controls, and console-quality graphics on all three platforms (until patch 1.8 and 1.9 on the PC introduced high-definition textures and a DX11 patch).
What could CryTek do, seeing that the community seemed more focused on stellar graphics and resented the game for its quick castaway of characters like Nomad and Psycho?
“Well, let’s just make a game that has really great graphics and has Psycho in it!!” –CryTek says! (satirical statement, somewhat).

And that’s what we got with Crysis 3. I went into this game thinking, “Wow, upgraded graphics! I hope they flesh out that world of conflict and doubt from Crysis 2 and make it REALLY awesome and treat Prophet as a messiah in this finale experience for the Crysis franchise as a whole!”

… Well, that’s kind of what we got. Well, actually, kinda sort of… Not really, at all. Oh sure, the graphics are great. That’s what I said in the start of this post. But the story we got was ludicrous at best. CELL has somehow economically taken over the world and sold free energy to people, that’s why there’s nobody anymore in New York City? What happened to character complexity, the cyberpunk dystopian universe filled with plots and subplots from Crysis 2? What happened to Prophet, who was supposed to represent humanity’s desire to be a better person—Why is he now your typical Michael Bay-esque “I just want to stop the Ceph” character? Why so plain? What was wrong with Richard Morgan's rendition of Prophet?

In Crysis 2, he was portrayed as the character who lost his humanity in being tossed and fought over like he was just some toy. The Marines, the government, CELL, Lockhart’s personal revenge quest, everybody was raging over the nanosuit, what to do with it. That’s why Prophet stopped caring. But somewhere along the storyline of Crysis 2, he got that humanity back. I know when it happened, it was at the very end of the game when Prophet speaks through the Nanosuit to Alcatraz, explaining to the player that his essence remains in the suit and will now be integrated into him. And he explains, in an all knowing tone, that the Ceph have been here long before humanity has. He almost speaks of the Ceph with respect, with acceptance of who he is.

And in Crysis 3, all he wants is to just destroy Ceph? He doesn’t care about CELL anymore, he doesn’t care about Psycho (until MUCH later in the plot), or the world filled with conflict and doubt? Why did the story get so dumbed down?

“Bah, anyway, whatever” I told myself. “At least there’s still multiplayer, that has to be at least somewhat exciting.”

Nope. Once again the game laughed at me like I was at a parade when I was five, expecting a shower of confetti and candy for my hard work of coming to the parade, instead, the parade handing me a pile of bricks as my reward.

The multiplayer is unbalanced, suit mechanics are so abused, people run around with the bow and everything is a lagfest.

“Well,” I said to myself. “Crysis 3’s SP and MP svcks. Nothing is great about this game. That means one thing for sure. I’m coming back to Crysis 2.”

So there you have it. I’m back to Crysis 2 for its engaging and gripping and relatable single player storyline, and for its fun, tight community of multiplayer excitement. I can’t wait to get back into this game and have a great time with you guys and gals.

I’m sorry if this post was too long, by the way. But I really needed to get this off my chest. I really enjoy games for its single player experiences, and I really think game developers should be valuing these still when they develop games. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the application of social media in video games, I totally understand that integrating social media into a game will boost sales and make shareholders happy, but if you anger the customer loyalty, that aspect of social media is equally karmic in nature and can come back to you.

And I think it already has. Everyday I read threads and posts of people complaining about Crysis 3. I read threads here on the Crysis 2 forums about people coming back to Crysis 2 in their frustration with the 3rd and supposedly the “masterpiece” creation that Cevat Yerli keeps professing Crysis 3 to be. This has nothing to do with the “impact” a game like Crysis 1, 2, or 3 should have on consumers. It has to do with the developers becoming disconnected with us. The developers of Crysis I fear no longer see the game as we the gamer see it.

I hope CryTek can come back and connect with us. I’m not talking about talking to us on the forums. I’m talking about seeing games how we see it. You can sell a lot more that way and make more customers happy.
Just my two cents.
Happy gaming, Crysis 2 gamers ? See you in action!
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Sasha Brown
 
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