Crytek: Crysis 3 is our “masterpiece,” better than Crysis 1 & 2 in “all aspects”

While Crysis 3 has only been out for a week, it’s plainly obvious it’s not getting the same warm reception as its two predecessors before it.

This fact is not lost on Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli. In an interview with Gamasutra, Yerli reveals that he considers Crysis 3 their “masterpiece,” and even thinks it’s better than Crysis 1 and 2 in “all aspects.”

It is better than Crysis 2. It is better than Crysis 1. Technical and creatively, and storytelling — all aspects.

Even if Yerli believes that, he concedes that he anticipated lower scores across the board for the third entry in their sci-fi first-person shooter, as he reveals, “”about 20 games that we analyzed that got hammered, sequels or three-quels, where number two, number three, or number four got significantly lower ratings than the previous iterations.”

So if he really thinks Crysis 3 is the best among all three, what has caused this sudden downshift in ratings, then? For reference, Crysis 3 is sitting at 78 Metacritic score for PC, while the original achieved an impressive 91, with the sequel netting 86.

Yerli blames two factors for the score slipping. Chief among it is that the current console generation is creating “fatigue” in players.  ”Some games have lost up to 20 percent, despite the fact that the games are quite good still,” Yerli notes, and adds, “people’s expectations are much more radical than the current generation of games are doing.”

The second reason is he thinks that the original Crysis came to the market “free of any burden,” and comments, “it was so different to others that the relative impact it created was so much more bigger than Crysis 2 or Crysis 3.”

He does have a point, but there’s also the possibility that, y’know, Crysis 3 just isn’t that good compared to the first two games in the series.

Does Yerli’s explanation make sense? For those who’ve played all three, do you agree with his reasoning or is Crysis 3 the weakest one out of the bunch?