The HUD can be a bit confusing. It gives you so much information like energy, a minimap and ammo status etc but doesn't show anything about health. You just have to guess with that (like with most First Person Shooters) until you're half a second away from death and a warning message appears, effectively saying "WARNING: By the time you read this message you'll be dead".
Then there's the ammo indicator, for your equipped weapon, with an icon underneath it displaying your unequipped weapon. This confuses me every time, especially in stealth mode when I can't even see which weapon I'm holding.
Holding the Back button raises the weapon you're holding, giving you a full view and letting you customise it. It's a well-designed approach, each face button corresponds to a different slot and pressing one cycles through the available attachments for that slot. When you pick up weapons from enemies the available attachments are different every time, sort of forcing variety onto you. In a good way!
The Predator bow is perfect for when you don’t have a silenced weapon to hand, it's very long range and when you use it in stealth mode it doesn't drain your energy like guns do. It takes time to draw, which forces you to take proper aim and not rush, but it's a silent one-hit kill so for the patience stealth hunter it's bang on. You can also retrieve standard arrows, so ammo doesn't have to be a problem unless they end up in obscure places.
The bow can be equipped with special arrowheads too, things like Thermite explosives or electric charge tips to burn through armour or stop fast-moving enemies in their tracks. I have so much fun with the bow and would love to just use explosive tips all the time but al of the special kinds of ammo are a bit scarce. For this reason I only really use it when I can't get hold of a silenced weapon or can make good use of the fun special effects.
You can change the draw weight at your will. Making it lighter lets you draw an arrow in an instant but with less impact damage - it's best use is for special arrowheads, enabling you to swiftly pin an explosive or electric carge onto someone. Making it heavier takes a couple of seconds to draw but grants massive impact damage and the ability to pin enemies to walls if close enough. With this you won't need special arrowheads - at least for regular soldiers.
It is also the only weapon that doesn't have aim assist. All of the guns have it though, and it works a treat if you can get used to trusting it to hit where it needs to hit. Even though some might consider it cheating I use it free from guilt because it is technically a feature of the Nanosuit, I think. Don't correct me if I'm wrong, you'll ruin the magic!
Maybe I've been playing too much
CoD but the
Crysis 3 controls seem a bit clunky, perhaps laggy. It's as if it takes effort to swing your aim round to your target. To me this doesn't fit with the idea of the Nanosuit giving the user super strength and control. This is just a minor niggle though, it's not really a problem once you get get used to it.
This is a beautiful looking game with lots to do and a secretive underlying story. It only has a couple of minor confusing issues but is mostly just either sneaky stealth fun or shooty action fun. I will definitely be playing this for a while and hopefully it will live up to big hype.
+ Lots of fun with the Predator bow
+ Visually impressive
+ Stealth and action well combined
- Controls are a bit laggy
- HUD can be confusing
SPOnG Score: 8/10
