Far Cry 3 moves away from the Saharan setting, and has relocated to a beautiful tropical island inhabited by what seems to be every single species on the planet. The game has two huge islands with sheer depth found in both, which will keep you going for endless hours. From the authentic wildlife to the ruthless pirates Far Cry 3 is so meticulously crafted you'll be amazed. Far Cry 3 has ditched the painfully punishing realism that made its predecessor such a chore and has replaced it with a gorgeous Pacific setting and a gripping, yet a cliche-ridden, story.
You play as Jason Brody, an innocent everyman that gets captured by evil, murdering, smuggling pirates whilst on vacation with his friends and two brothers. After his older brother is killed and his friends get scattered, Jason must join forces with local rebels fighting for freedom in order to get them back. Although the story sounds extremely cliched, it's in fact full of twists, turns, and too many people with their heads screwed too loosely. Even though it may feel a bit silly that poor Jason can instantly be such a handy shot after never having used a gun, but the immersive way that you slowly work through the game's deep progression system makes it feel much less far-fetched.
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| One of the game's precarious radio towers |
Unlocking the weapons wouldn't be so bad, but do they really have to be made free? All this does is make your hard earned cash redundant as soon as you buy all the necessary attachments, which are pretty cheap anyway, and even though you can eventually carry $10,000 I still spent more than half of the game practically capped on that 10 grand. Maybe I just didn't find the best way to dump your money, but it made more sense to me to have some sort of optional side quest where you actually have to seize the shipment of weapons in order to make them free (as I believe that's why they become free). At least then I would feel like I had to work for my free weapons, or would have something to spend my money on.
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| Far Cry 3 is incredibly beautiful and bursting with life |
Story missions have you exploring caves or holding off enemies in a style typical of modern shooters, but the varied side quests will have you hunting and skinning wildlife, helping the local non-pirate population with pirate pests, and delivering supplies to villages. There are also challenges that make you hunt down pirates with just your knife, and challenges where your scored is compared to others via the online leaderboards. Far Cry 3's optional content feels more fun and much more focused than the side quests in Far Cry 2 ever did, and the great structure of these side quests makes them lead to one another seamlessly.
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| Some outposts house caged beasts that you can unleash |
Across the two islands there are over 30 outposts for you to tactically capture, each of which opens up an abundance of extra content once captured. In the early stages of the game, taking over an outpost is pretty simple and usually requires you to kill a handful of pirates before the rebel flag is raised, but they slowly become more and more difficult. Eventually forcing you to carefully plan your attack and make sure you disable the alarms as bigger and better enemy types are added. Capturing these outposts has an effective difficulty curve that steadily progresses parallel to your own progression, and each one provides it own unique challenge. Far Cry 3 is truly in its element when you're capturing these outposts and this is where some of the game's best gameplay is found, as it perfectly mixes action and stealth that is extremely satisfying when pulled off without being detected.
Hunting the authentic and varied wildlife that inhabit these crazy islands isn't just for fun, the game's skinning mechanic is part of a much deeper crafting system available. Animal skins can be used to create bigger bags with more slots for Jason to carry more guns, more ammo, more money, and more consumables. Crafting also allows you to create a variety of different recipes that all have varied effects, from four more bars of temporary health to increased fire resistance. Creating these drugs requires you to hunt down the correct plants and harvesting their leaves. The crafting system leads well into some of the game's side quests, as some require you to hunt down rare animals whose skins are needed for more advanced bags.
Navigating such huge islands will often require a vehicle (or utilising your fast travel points, unlocked from capturing outposts) and there are quite a nice variation of these throughout the game. You drive via a first person perspective, which really helps to make driving over the bumpy terrain feel authentic and vehicles do control pretty well with nice little steering animations to go with it. However, the inability to change to a third-person camera can seem a little stupid seeing as bumpy terrain in first-person can feel pretty nauseating at times, and it would probably be easier to tell when you're about to fly off a cliff rather than just going down a steep road.
Unfortunately, Far Cry 3 just falls short of being one of the best games of this generation because of how its story falls off towards the middle. The story is good, don't get me wrong, it employs some effective storytelling techniques, and has some really memorable characters, but the story is notoriously bad at explaining things. The game frequently turns to over-used dream sequences to avoid actually explaining later parts of the story, which leave you wondering "what the hell just happened?". They feel like a lazy way to explain major plot points, but some would argue that Ubisoft have purposely left major areas of the story ambiguous to leave the door open for future content or just for mystery's sake, but I feel like it was just a lazy way to bypass plot points that the whole game has been leading up to. Its a real shame, because the story is really great early on but quickly falls off and the ending will leave you with a sour taste in your mouth.
Alongside the single-player experience, there's a co-op sequence of missions that are independent of single-player and a multiplayer mode. Co-op features a very Left 4 Dead-like four player short story starring a set of cliched characters, including a Eastern European Mobster and a young Scottish who looks like he came straight out of Trainspotting. These missions are a linear progression of kill enemies until you complete X objective and then move on. There is none of the classic open-world exploration and freedom found in single-player, but the shooting is pretty fun and there is a complex levelling system. Through levelling you unlock weapons, attachments, and a variety of area-of-effect abilities that feel very MMO-like. This co-op is a very average feature that serves to do nothing but add to the single-player experience, and the levelling system is shared with multiplayer so they go nicely together. The multiplayer is a very standard set of competitive game modes (TDM, Domination etc.) with some degree of customisation. On top of that, there's a map editor that allows you to create your own map, but there are limitations to what you can publish that may dampen the fun a bit. Both of these multiplayer modes and map editor are great if you're looking to squeeze as much time out of Far Cry 3 as you can, but otherwise can all be given a miss.
Overall, Far Cry 3 is an incredible experience and one of the best games I've played in a long time. The superb blend of stealth, action, and freedom of exploration make this amazing title something that you'll want to come back to time and time again.
Strengths:
-Beautiful, rich, and huge world to explore
-Side quests and challenges provide plenty of extra content
-Difficulty curve feels fair and gives a nice sense of momentum
-Ditched painful realism from Far Cry 2
-Large variation of weapons; 43 all together
-Combat seamlessly switches between stealth and action
-Intelligent AI makes the combat more authentic and more challenging
-Some of the best characters in any video game
-Realistic and believable animals that react convincingly
Weaknesses:
-Solid story falls off pretty quick due to lazy writing and unexplained plot points
-Free weapons leave you with far too much money and nothing to spend it on
Hunting the authentic and varied wildlife that inhabit these crazy islands isn't just for fun, the game's skinning mechanic is part of a much deeper crafting system available. Animal skins can be used to create bigger bags with more slots for Jason to carry more guns, more ammo, more money, and more consumables. Crafting also allows you to create a variety of different recipes that all have varied effects, from four more bars of temporary health to increased fire resistance. Creating these drugs requires you to hunt down the correct plants and harvesting their leaves. The crafting system leads well into some of the game's side quests, as some require you to hunt down rare animals whose skins are needed for more advanced bags.
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| The free-form combat really encourages you to play your own way |
Unfortunately, Far Cry 3 just falls short of being one of the best games of this generation because of how its story falls off towards the middle. The story is good, don't get me wrong, it employs some effective storytelling techniques, and has some really memorable characters, but the story is notoriously bad at explaining things. The game frequently turns to over-used dream sequences to avoid actually explaining later parts of the story, which leave you wondering "what the hell just happened?". They feel like a lazy way to explain major plot points, but some would argue that Ubisoft have purposely left major areas of the story ambiguous to leave the door open for future content or just for mystery's sake, but I feel like it was just a lazy way to bypass plot points that the whole game has been leading up to. Its a real shame, because the story is really great early on but quickly falls off and the ending will leave you with a sour taste in your mouth.
Alongside the single-player experience, there's a co-op sequence of missions that are independent of single-player and a multiplayer mode. Co-op features a very Left 4 Dead-like four player short story starring a set of cliched characters, including a Eastern European Mobster and a young Scottish who looks like he came straight out of Trainspotting. These missions are a linear progression of kill enemies until you complete X objective and then move on. There is none of the classic open-world exploration and freedom found in single-player, but the shooting is pretty fun and there is a complex levelling system. Through levelling you unlock weapons, attachments, and a variety of area-of-effect abilities that feel very MMO-like. This co-op is a very average feature that serves to do nothing but add to the single-player experience, and the levelling system is shared with multiplayer so they go nicely together. The multiplayer is a very standard set of competitive game modes (TDM, Domination etc.) with some degree of customisation. On top of that, there's a map editor that allows you to create your own map, but there are limitations to what you can publish that may dampen the fun a bit. Both of these multiplayer modes and map editor are great if you're looking to squeeze as much time out of Far Cry 3 as you can, but otherwise can all be given a miss.
Overall, Far Cry 3 is an incredible experience and one of the best games I've played in a long time. The superb blend of stealth, action, and freedom of exploration make this amazing title something that you'll want to come back to time and time again.
Strengths:
-Beautiful, rich, and huge world to explore
-Side quests and challenges provide plenty of extra content
-Difficulty curve feels fair and gives a nice sense of momentum
-Ditched painful realism from Far Cry 2
-Large variation of weapons; 43 all together
-Combat seamlessly switches between stealth and action
-Intelligent AI makes the combat more authentic and more challenging
-Some of the best characters in any video game
-Realistic and believable animals that react convincingly
Weaknesses:
-Solid story falls off pretty quick due to lazy writing and unexplained plot points
-Free weapons leave you with far too much money and nothing to spend it on
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