Crysis 3 Multiplayer Beta Review
“…but does it run Crysis?” Stop if you’ve heard this before. If you are a PC gamer, I am sure you are. This is the typical response about some PC build referring to the fact if that PC is powerful enough to run Crysis at the highest resolution. It’s been a known fact that the CryEngine was/is the pinnacle of performance, graphics, textures, physics that all the other crap that pushes your PC graphics card and processor to the limits to produce spectacular visuals. Unfortunately, I am playing the Crysis 3 multiplier beta on a console…an outdated one at that.
I finished Crysis 2 on the Xbox 360 and dabbled a little bit in the multiplayer. It was a good single player game but the multiplayer just never grabbed me. The graphics have been decent but never to the level of PC. It’s just impossible on the console. I played the beta for a few hours solo, with Hockey Glory and with M1GO.
Graphics, Sound and Presentation
- Pretty cool looking menu system. Very slick and polished. Has that futuristic sci-fi feel. Easy to navigate although some items were greyed out for the beta.
- Setting up your squads is a bit confusing at first.
- Looks and plays very similar to Crysis 2 from what I remember. To be honest, unless I play them both side by side, I couldn’t tell you if Crysis 3 is any better graphically.
- Nice looking environments with bright palette. Things, especially trees/foliage look a bit washed out. Nothing mind blowing though as I think we have reached the limit of being impressed for consoles this gen. For a game series that touts itself as “amazing graphics”, it disappoints at least on the console.
- The gun sounds a bit weak and tinny. There’s lots of ambient noise and typical army/marine type chatter.
- Runs around 30 FPS at best but drops significantly and goes all over the place when there’s certain action on screen
Gameplay
This is basically a futuristic Call of Duty with a nano suit. Here you have special armour abilities and you can leap and jump huge distances than normal humans.
- The MP beta includes 2 maps: Airport and Museum.
- Airport: A small map with a crashed plane in the middle of some small buildings
- Museum: A large vertical map based around swamps and some larget tower like structures
- It takes a lot of bullets to kill people. Be ready to reload quick or switch to your secondary if you want to take on multiple enemies at once. Melee is 2 hits from head on, and 1 hit from behind and sometimes performs a cool assassination kill sequence.
- There’s the standard custom classes, gun and ability unlocks or progression system that we come to expect in FPS that are based on XP you gain.
- During the class customization screen, when you select an ability (quick reload, better hip fire, etc), and it includes on screen a short video that shows you exactly what that ability does. Very cool add on.
- There are standard “kill streaks” included however I didn’t notice any options to customize them.
- The MP includes 2 came types:
- Crash Site which is a changing location that you must capture and defend for a certain time before it explodes and you then move to the next site.
- Hunter which is an infection game type where one team is invisible and equipped with the bow, and their goal is to kill the other team. When that person dies, they become invisible. It’s gimmicky, ends too quickly and pretty boring.
- The controls are similar to CoD so very easy to pick up. They even provide alternate controls to switch the melee (RS button) with crouch (B button) if you choose to. There are however, some unique power armour abilities triggered by LB and RB. Grenades is equitable via the d-pad first then thrown using fire trigger which gets a bit confusing especially during fast gunfights.
- Pretty cool highlight reel once a match is over that displays some of your kills during the game you’ve just played. This is the best part of the game by far.
Watch M1GO and evilenger play the beta:
Watch Hockey Glory and evilenger play the beta:
The Old Guy in Me Says
If you’re a Crysis fan, this is a no brainer. The previous single player story and graphics were pretty solid. I imagine it to be the same for Crysis 3. However, the multiplayer is nothing special. When I first played it, I wasn’t really enjoying it much. I was sort of meh on the game. To be fair and give it a decent chance, I put in some more time into it where I gained enough XP to unlock custom classes, gun attachments, etc. and started to have decent games where I was top on my team a few times. Then I started to have some more fun with it….just not enough to convince me to pre-order or buy the game.
If you are looking for a more futuristic type FPS that isn’t Halo, Crysis might be your game, just don’t expect stunning visuals or anything new. For me, there’s too many other shooters that do it better that I’d rather spend my time playing. I might pick the game up later down the road to play the single player but I kind of wished they’d have just waited and released this on a next gen console to really take advantage of the CryEngine.
2.5/5
Hockey Glory’s Take
Firstly, it’s about time Evilenger got this beta review up! LOL. I’ve been bugging him all week to post the gaming he did with M1GO. I played a few games with Evil and bolted. I’m not going to go into huge depth about the Crysis 3 beta, since I only played two matches, but I know a stinky pile of shit when I see it.
If you don’t want to read my text then I’ll summarize it for you in 5 bullets:
- The
- Crysis
- 3
- Beta
- Sucks
The Good
- Nice slick looking menus
- Game seems to have good stats and features (I think), since lots of stuff is locked with greyed out menus
- In the tree map, there were big mechs wrecking havoc on my team. Good to see some variety, instead of strictly infantry
- After you finish a match, the game shows you a mini-montage of kills you did. Basically a short highlight reel
The Bad
- Everything else
- The menus look nice, but it’s almost as cluttered as that other crappy EA game called Medal of Honor: Warfighter. If a friend invites you to a match, you don’t get a pop up box where you open up the dashboard and accept. Instead, you have to use ESP and assume your friend sends it to you, you have to go to a different menu screen, go to the Invite Tab, and then hope the invite is there to accept. When Evil said he sent me an invite, I was sitting there waiting. I only saw it because as I was waiting, I was thumbing through the menus and saw the Invite Tab by pure luck
- Now you’re in the game… is this a game releasing in 2013 or is this a year one Xbox 360 game?
- Terribly muddy textures, lots of jaggies, bad screen tearing is what you’ll notice right away
- Then when you move your guy around, have fun with an atrocious frame rate. It fluctuates wildly too, so expect anything from the teens to around 25 fps. Do any of you have a frame rate recorder? I’d love to know what the frame rate is for 360′s beta. If it actually hits 30 fps that’s a miracle
- Combine the two bullets I listed above and that’s the game engine you’re dealing with
- There are two maps to play, a dark tree-filled map and the other one. That “other one” has the brightest, bloomiest and most blinding sunlight ever. I thought BF3 was bad
- When you get killed, your screen blacks out for a second, followed by a true killcam replay
- For certain deaths, you see a slo-mo head shot close-up
- Hunter Mode is among the dumbest modes I’ve played in a shooter. Some guys are cloaked like Predator running around trying to kill uncloaked soldiers. The match was maybe a minute or two long. As a solider, don’t run around, but hole up somewhere and keep a good eye for Predator like movement. Hunters aren’t 100% invisible. It’s important to take a slow approach, since the game engine is so choppy it’s hard to notice the Predator guy unlike smoother playing games like CoD or Gears where you can notice enemies easier
The Old Guy in Me Says
Have fun playing an ugly shooter whose frame rate hovers in the 20-25 range. Crysis 3 tries to combine Halo and Call of Duty. You have the sci-fi, high jumping, armour and whiz bang of Halo with the gritty modern looking guns, iron sights and killstreaks of Call of Duty.
Recommendation: Skip this 1.48gb beta. Pure garbage. If you really want to play a shooter, play something else. Games that try to merge other ones to become its own creation are usually bad and this is a good example. If you are really desperate to play Crysis 3, get a decent PC and play it there.
1/5
GamerVets Overall Rating
Crysis 3 should be lucky to be getting a 2/5 score from us. Evil gives it 2.5/5, I give it a 1/5. The avg score should really be 1.75/5, but we have to round up.
2/5
A note on our rating scale: We rate things out of five, but don't confuse it with ratings from other publications. We’re not professional reviewers who do this for a living, we don't get sent free copies of games, and we don't have the luxury to play a ton of games during our work hours - we buy/borrow all our games and do this during our off-time, outside of our jobs and families. Our ratings take into account the time and money spent, and are here to help you make an informed decision on whether this game is worthy of your hard-earned cash and limited time.
5 – An almost flawless game with good graphics, sound and gameplay. You might even want to replay it many times, despite your busy schedule. A must-buy.4 – It has some flaws, but it’s still worth a playthrough. Buy it if you like this type of game.
3 – An average game targeted to specific niches. It has its redeeming factors. Buy it on sale or if you fit its target demographic/niche.
2 – The game sucks, but some will get enjoyment out of it. Play it at your own risk.
1 – Broken, ugly game with few redeeming qualities. Probably shouldn’t have been made. Leave this game alone and don’t even look at it.
0 – Worse than garbage. Game companies should pay you for the time you spent playing this trash.
