Get Good: Crysis 3 tips for success

Something of a mix between Call of Duty, Halo, and Battlefield, Crysis 3 is a fun shooter with some even more entertaining tactics. While there’s no one good way to play, yet, there are three main concepts you need a grasp of if you want to succeed: suit control, environmental knowledge, and damage output.

Here’s a breakdown of how to master each.

1. Wear the suit well

The Nanosuit is Crysis’s biggest addition to the shooter genre. No other game gives you the ability to seamlessly jump between invincible tank, invisible stalker, and Olympic high jumper quite like you can in Crysis 3. Your finite cloak and armor, however, means you have to spend a good deal of time without the protection of either. Add the fact that you move significantly slower cloaked or armored, and your incentive to use them sparingly increases.

Invisibile is a relative term

While cloaking does make you harder to see, you aren’t a ghost. Up close you’ll show up as a faded red outline of a super-soldier in an expensive cyborg suit, and you’ll be prey to many different kinds of bullets. Attacking while cloaked drains its meter completely, forcing a lengthy recharge, so how is it best used?

Simple: for escape. Approach cloaking situations in Crysis 3 like, say, an Assassin’s Creed 3 chase. Your job is less about not being seen as it is getting away. While cloaked, you should always have at least two viable exits handy. As you move around the map, keep in mind which one is closer and how to best reach it if you have to make a quick get away.

When you need to escape, armor to sponge the flurry of bullets and quickly shift to cloak, putting distance and obstacles between you and your aggressor. Many of Crysis 3’s maps have good line of sight blockers, and much like Spy in TF2, these combined with cloak make getaways much easier.

Divert all power to the shields

You’ll spend a lot of time in armor mode. In fact, every single battle in Crysis 3 will come down to two things. First, player skill. A very close second, whoever gets their armor up first. When you first crack open multiplayer, one of the stock classes has a perk called Auto Armor. Pick that one, as you’ll automatically armor up (fancy that) after taking a specific amount of damage. Auto Armor will get you out of several pickles before you take it off, but it serves a more important purpose. It teaches you timing.

While I advise entering any fight with armor already enabled, sometimes reaction times win over preparation. It’s true in AC3 and TF2, so its try here in Cry3. Use Auto Armor (AA) and watch when the perk activates. Listen for the audio queue, watch your screen for when the armor overlay goes up. Sometimes you’ll forget to armor for whatever reason. If you’ve trained yourself through AA, putting up your defenses should quickly become second nature.

After you’ve played for a few hours, three tops, take AA off and replace it with something like Weapon Pro or Point Fire Enhance. The perk becomes more a hindrance than a help once you have a handle on how you use armor best.

Playing in the sand

Crysis 3 is a sandbox, and multiplayer is, for the most part, no different. Map knowledge is important, as is knowing where the power weapons are. Understanding when to use the giant robot armor and how best to destroy it are valuable as well. More important than all of those is understanding how to use the environment itself to your advantage.

Every Crysis 3 map is filled with changes in elevation, most of which is reachable either by jumping and climbing or more conventional means like stairs. Abilities like the Air Stomp and armor mode alleviate fall damage, and the first is lethal within a small radius. There are gun emplacements and bits of debris scattered throughout the maps, both of which are handy in a pinch. Your job as a player in Cry3 is two-fold when it comes to navigating the maps.

• First, understand traffic patterns. I’ve given this tip before, but I’ll repeat myself till I’m blue in the face. Go into a private match and learn the maps. Don’t watch videos, but don’t jump right in. Have at least a working guesstimate of how a map will play, then jump into a ranked match.
• Second, know what you can and cannot do with a jump. The parkour-style climbing present in Cry3 combined with the superjump ability, your best defense is always in the air. An overhang could give you valuable time to escape using cloak or prepare a counterattack. A crash site might be somewhere reachable only through parkour, or you might want to spring a nasty bullet surprise on someone from up high. The options when it comes to verticality are endless.

Aim for the head

The damage model in Crysis 3 is more specialized than it is in other shooters. Shots to the feet will do much less damage than those to the upper chest and head, and headshot are huge. Armor reduction values are also keyed to each damage area, armor isn’t a flat value.

You don’t need to study the damage charts to get a feel for what kills and what doesn’t, but you will need good accuracy and reaction times. Headshots are between three and five shots depending on how long it takes you to get an enemy’s armor down, but without armor on they are always one hit kill shots. The multiplier is that high.

Don’t be afraid to put a few bullets into someone even if you know you can’t kill them. Provided you’re in a position to evade any return fire, softening up someone’s armor or putting them on edge can mean the difference between victory and defeat, espeically if your foe is on your level or above.

It’s back to psychology then. Break your enemy’s morale by turning on them with an armored jump. Evade them with a clever cloak and run. Pester them from afar to make them easier targets. Generally make yourself a nuisance.

Games are more fun that way.