Review: Sci-fi cliches mar beauty of 'Crysis 3'

You probably don't have a state-of-the-art PC, but that's OK. I played "Crysis 3" on Microsoft's eight-year-old Xbox 360, and it still looks pretty good. If only all that beauty was in the service of something more interesting than another alien bloodbath.

Actually, "Crysis 3" throws two types of enemies at you: the alien Ceph and the human employees of CELL, a corporation that has built a giant dome over the ruins of New York City. As a supersoldier nicknamed "Prophet," your job is to get inside the Liberty Dome and figure out what CELL is up to.

Prophet is equipped with a "nanosuit," a combination of human and alien tech that has two primary functions, armor and cloaking. If you're the kind of player who likes to plunge right into firefights, you'll keep turning on the armor. If you'd rather avoid attracting attention from the Ceph, you can hit the cloaking switch for temporary invisibility.

The nanosuit's other major feature is a visor that lets you scope out the battlefield before you rush in, pinpointing enemies as well as locating ammunition dumps and fresh weapons. The visor also helps you hack enemy systems, so you can disarm minefields or turn turrets against their builders.

Of course, Prophet has the usual assortment of firearms at hand, from pistols and sniper rifles to assault weapons and missile launchers. You can also pick up Ceph plasma weapons, which are somewhat more effective at obliterating the aliens. The silent-but-deadly Predator bow is a little clunkier, but it does let you remain cloaked even while you're shooting electrified arrows.