Crysis has always been about the graphics, the explosions, the tech and most of all the Nanosuit. The exoskeleton made with the help of alien Ceph biomaterial that grafts itself onto the skin and adapts to provide protection, strength and speed when needed. Sounds like something that could make you unbeatable in an FPS. Even better than that, it adds the need for strategy and planning.
You see, the best thing about having advanced tech and capabilities is throwing yourself into a challenging environment that forces you to use it all.
In
Crysis 3, after what is believed to be the destruction of the alien race Ceph, you play as Prophet. The last person to remain fused into a nanosuit who keeps having visions relating to the Ceph and a link to them that's stronger than he realises. He knows what the Ceph's motives are and why they have covered our cities in giant domes and knows that stopping them is going to be more complicated than anyone realises.
Prophet is rescued from by Psycho, a British soldier who used to use a nanosuit until he had it torn from his skin. This grim memory motivates him to get the job done, keeping you covered while he has nowhere near as much protection or strength as you do.
The nanosuit grants enhancements and abilities like jumping higher, sprinting faster and hitting harder. It runs on energy that quickly depletes while used but quickly recharges afterwards. It has a stealth mode which renders the user practically invisible.
In this mode your cover will be lifted for moments while you're shooting and attacking - except with the Predator bow. It also drains energy more quickly if you move faster. Walking or crouching lets you use this cover over more distance than sprinting, making it pretty useless in a rush or a panic.
Staying concealed is easy, but getting to your objective while staying concealed is where you're going to need strategy. I always play stealth if it's an option, I find it much more fun that just walking into a room, shooting everyone and taking all their bullets like the Hulk. That said, you could walk in with armour mode activated but you're still going to need to think on your feet as your energy will be gone after a couple of seconds of taking open fire.
You can plan ahead using the Visor - activating this lets you see a mark for each enemy and item lying around in the entire map. The markers will disappear when you take off the visor unless you lock them by aiming directly at them for a second. By doing this you can see what kind of enemy they are and what weapons they're carrying. By holding the visor button you can use Nanovision, which is really nothing more than thermal vision.
Using the visor, a padlock shows something that you can hack, like a sentry turret or a minefield control box, the sole purpose of which is, conveniently, to be hacked. To hack something you have to position yourself so that it's in your line of sight. Then when you activate hacking you have to beat a tricky little rhythm puzzle where you have to press [A] at the right times to match up oscillating points against a set of waves.
Once you're done, the door is unlocked or the sentry turret now attacks every enemy it can see. This is a fun and easy way to bite a chunk out of the offense, but it will alert survivors of your presence.
The nanosuit is upgradeable in the form of perks. You have four perk slots, for each of which you can choose one of four perks. Unlock these perks with upgrade points retrieved from old discarded nanosuits found lying around.
Each perk can grant multiple improvements of a similar nature, like making aiming, reloading and switching weapons all happen 20% faster. Others offer help with sneaking, like making the activation of stealth mode happen quicker and making enemies' footsteps light up on your Heads-Up Display (HUD).
