Since the release of Crytek's rather dramatic and visually stunning Crysis 2, we've all been eagerly awaiting a sequel to the Crysis story. Well that wait is over, or rather the wait for the wait, as EA announces that the game is slated for release in Spring 2013, with some retailers now offering pre-orders for the special 'Hunter Edition' of the game.
Crytek will be returning us to its well-established sandbox gameplay in the third instalment, a key feature of the original Crysis game and other Crytek titles such as FarCry. Crysis 2 had deviated away from sandboxing in order to offer up a heavily cinematic and scripted experience; we hope that the firm is successful in its return to a sandbox environment without losing too much of Crysis 2's cinematic flare.
The new story sees the protagonist placed into a post-apocalyptic New York City, overtaken by nature, in the year 2047. The city is encased within a nanodome constructed by the corrupt organisation, Cell, under the pretence of protection and preservation. Prophet's roll is to hunt down members of the corrupt organisation in order to surmise its true objectives, whilst combating humans and aliens on the way.
The new NYC will be an open arena, featuring seven districts, each with unique art styles, "Crysis 3 is a thrilling mix of sandbox gameplay, advanced combat and hi-tech human and alien weaponry that shooter fans will love,” said Cevat Yerli, chief executive officer of Crytek. "Leveraging the latest CryENGINE technology, we’re able to deliver seven unique themes that offer stunning and visually loaded gameplay experiences. We cannot wait until people get their hands on the game.”
With recent improvements to the CryENGINE, with untold new features currently in the pipeline, Crysis 3 will no doubt be one visually stunning title. We expect to see even more DirectX 11 goodness from this iteration than in the DX11 patch of Crysis 2, as sales of NVIDIA GeForce 680 and AMD Radeon HD 7xxx graphics cards remain strong. The new game will also be released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, though, we're starting to wonder if the dated DirectX 9.0 graphics and limited memory of current-gen consoles may be beginning to hold back PC game development.
Roll on Spring 2013.
