More varied than Crysis 1, less linear than Crysis 2 and with an aesthetic that melds the most interesting aspects of both, Crysis 3 is one of the more interesting upcoming shooters of next year. Charles was impressed by its single-player on Monday, and its take-back-the-jungle theme extends into its multiplayer in a new game mode that encapsulates everything that’s unique about this third entry in the series: Hunter.

We saw a quick few minutes of Hunter mode at EA’s Gamescom press conference, but it’s impossible to really know what a multiplayer mode is like before you play it. But Hunter is these things: tense, terrifying, and very, very satisfying. In an 8- to 16-player game, two players begin as Hunters in powerful nanosuits – silent, invisible, deadly, wielding the game’s signature compound bows – and the rest are CELL operatives, vulnerable and conspicuous, who crash-land inside the nanodome covering the overgrown New York City.

Every time a Hunter takes down one of the soldiers, they too become a Hunter, until there are nine compound-bow-wielding assassins versus three terrified soldiers hiding out in some corner of the map, staring in panic at the rain water pooling on the forest floor in fearful expectation of seeing their pursuers’ footprints. To win as a Hunter, all the CELL operatives must be eliminated. For the CELL team to win, just one person has to survive for two minutes.

The tension and fear that you experience as a soldier makes it one of the most intense FPS multiplayer modes I’ve played in a long time.

It might sound like stalking around as the Hunter would be loads more fun, but trust me, the tension and fear that you experience as a soldier makes it one of the most intense FPS multiplayer modes I’ve played in a long time. Watching the clock count down to zero as your proximity alarm is going crazy and hunters are closing in on you is a terrifying experience. Never has crouching behind something been so much fun.

As a soldier, you have very limited ammo, and the fact that you can’t really see your opponents means that you’re tempted to spray bullets at everything that looks like it might be moving, which very quickly leaves you with no defence against them. Very quickly, my fellow players and I learned that teaming up is by far the most effective tactic, finding somewhere on the map with only two or three possible entrances and posting two or three guards at each one. EMP grenades mess with the hunters’ active camouflage for long enough to let you see where they are and, hopefully, eliminate them, but you only have one or two of those each, so there’s strength in numbers.

You can pick up and use bits of the environment like car doors as shields, too. One of the best moments of my play session was when I was cowering all alone in a room, behind a shield, listening to my proximity alarm beep faster and faster, and accidentally flung the thing across the room – whereupon it hit and killed an invisible hunter who had been about to fire an arrow into my face. From then on, the riot shield became my weapon of choice. Turned out I was much more effective as a coward than I was as a hunter.

Teaming up is by far the most effective tactic, finding somewhere on the map with only two or three possible entrances and posting two or three guards at each one.

Multiplayer has always been a key part of Crysis, and naturally some old favourite modes return as well, including straightforward deathmatches/team deathmatches and Crysis’ own take on Capture the Flag, called Crash Site. In Crash Site, alien pods land at random points on the map, and your team has to claim them for as long as possible before they explode and the next one arrives somewhere else. It’s a very fast-paced, violent mode that shows the nanosuit off at its full capabilities.

There are now separate energy bars for sprinting, camouflage, armour boosting and other nanosuit superpowers, meaning you can sprint like hell across a map and leap across impossible gaps to reach a firefight without worrying about the fact that you’ll have no energy left to power your armour when you get there. Stop and stand still for a minute during a Crash Site match and you’ll see suited-up superheroes flying all over the place, leaping between foliage-covered buildings and slide-kicking each other into walls.

Crash Site’s newest selling point is the ability to actually drive the Pingers – alien mechs, basically. He chaos that erupts when one of these appears on the map is spectacular. Alien weapons can be found around the place, too, on strategically-hidden dead Ceph aliens in corners of the map; find one, and you can be very disruptive indeed when you rock up to the next crash site.

Crysis 3 will have 12 maps and 8 different game modes altogether when it launches in February next year. It’ll support 16 players on PC and 12 on consoles, and Crytek is dedicating its resources to making sure its servers will be totally stable by that time. It’s good to see that the multiplayer is still as resolutely Crytek’s own as the single-player has always been.

There are now separate energy bars for sprinting, camouflage, armour boosting and other nanosuit superpowers, meaning you can sprint like hell across a map and leap across impossible gaps to reach a firefight without worrying about the fact that you’ll have no energy left to power your armour when you get there.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!

Crash Site’s newest selling point is the ability to actually drive the Pingers – alien mechs, basically. He chaos that erupts when one of these appears on the map is spectacular. Alien weapons can be found around the place, too, on strategically-hidden dead Ceph aliens in corners of the map; find one, and you can be very disruptive indeed when you rock up to the next crash site.