Survival Of The Invisiblest: Crysis 3's Hunter Mode
Among modern videogame story structures, "The hunter becomes the hunted" is a pretty big one. Crysis 3, however, is embracing the lesser-known but perhaps even more emotionally resonant "The hunter becomes the hunted, but then gets killed and respawns as the hunter - who then hunts the other former hunters who are now being hunted." In short, they, sir, are being hunted. So basically, it kicks off with two cloak-happy nanosuit supersoldiers attempting to prevent 14 Cell commandos from reaching an evac point. Then chaos ensues, lives are lost, and the cycle of reincarnation is set to "fast forward" and "hilarious irony."
Crysis 2, of course, tried to leverage the skins-vs-nanosuits idea, but erred too much on the side of balancing things by limiting nanos' demigodlike powers. This time around, however, the tech-infused cyborg men are basically part-Predator, part-zombie. Odds are, you'll still have to play smart and pick the right times to strike, but this mode seems to be embracing the idea that a person in a nanosuit's the king of the concrete jungle. Even with those lopsided numbers, they need only pick off a couple soldiers to significantly swing the odds in their favor.
It still sounds like fun, though, I think. I'm not of the opinion that everything needs to be perfectly balanced, and in a lot of ways, that type of "Balance comes before all else" mentality shackles developers' ability to dream up atypical modes like this one. Plus, only one Cell soldier needs to survive for that side to claim victory. So who knows? Maybe it won't turn out to be as one-sided as it sounds. Hopefully our very old friend Time (not the magazine) will have something to tell us in the near future.