4/5 ★ – Yojimboi's review of Crysis 3 Remastered.

I really enjoyed Crysis 3. If we're being honest with ourselves it was really more of the same from Crysis 2, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing on its face. This game puts you back in New York City (or at least what's left of it) but brings back in some of the more natural elements from the jungles of the first game. In my opinion it's the best of the atmosphere from the first and second games combined into one. The sprawling city overrun by vegetation really sets the atmosphere of hopelessness that this game wants you to feel in the middle of an invasion. The game is also just flat out gorgeous. I know that's almost the entire point of these games (see "can it run crysis"), but it really goes above and beyond. It had my GPU sweating but I actually didn't have any performance problems in this game, which was a welcome improvement relative to the last two entries. A new mechanic to the franchise is the ability to hack certain mechanical enemies and doors. While I had initially thought this would be a bit of a gimmick, it can prove to be a surprisingly effective way to cut a combat encounter short or even skip it altogether. The combat, and even the weapons are more or less copy and pasted from Crysis 2, and handle the same. I enjoyed them in the previous game, so it didn't bother me too much, and they give you far more variety to play with far sooner in this one. This makes enemies feel a bit less bullet spongy, one of my primary complaints with the previous game. One counterweight to the bullet sponge problem is the ability to use alien weaponry against them but these are pretty few and far between until the end of the game. Speaking of the combat, my largest complaint with it, frankly, is the bow. The bow you're given almost at the very start of the game fires silently from stealth, one shots most enemies if you use the correct ammo, and the arrows can be retrieved. In 95% of cases there's no reason to use anything else. I know this seems directly antithetical to my bullet sponge complaint but maybe there could be some form of middle ground. I even played this one on a higher difficulty and the bow trivialized almost every encounter. But yeah, all in all, I really enjoyed this game, it had a similarly engaging story to the second game, the same upgrade system (though more streamlined with presets) and absolutely gorgeous level design and optional exploration. I'd highly recommend this to someone looking for an interesting shooter that doesn't do a ton to break the mold, but handles itself well, even in the modern day.