So while Far Cry 4 sits on the horizon with its gyrocopters and its psychopathic pink suited boy-band member of an antagonist - I figure now would be the best time to start talking about Far Cry 3. Partly because I recently played it and its quality surprised me, and partly because its sequel will probably generate interest in it, and partly because talking about it now (nearly two full years since its release date and right before Far Cry 4 is released) would further cement /Skill as the most out of date video game review site and make us known to the world as something.
I was first introduced to the Far Cry series by Far Cry 2, a game made with the misguided belief that you can make an open world, throw some guns, goons and grind in there and call it a day. Naturally I went into Far Cry 3 with as much negative bias and intent to crucify it via a review as possible. Shockingly, I left the game impressed and wanting more.
Far Cry 3 was released in late 2012 for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. It was published by Ubisoft and developed by Ubisoft’s Montreal studios with help from Ubisoft Massive, Red Storm Entertainment (the makers of the Tom Clancy games) ,Ubisoft Shanghai, and Ubisoft Reflections (best known for the Just Dance and Driver series’). It is currently selling on Steam for thirty dollars. This review covers the PC edition.
Far Cry 3 is about a group of affluent american socialites getting kidnapped by a slaver on some remote polynesian (or indonesian, possibly micronesian; honestly I’m not sure) island. You play as Jason Brody, a member of the group who escapes from the slavers and teams up with some of the island’s natives to fight back. The game’s combat features shootouts in jungles broken up by exploring one of the most beautiful open worlds of 2012 and well executed stealth mechanics. It all adds up to one superb experience.
I think that easiest way to sum up the quality of Far Cry 3 and it’s superiority over it’s predecessor is to compare the gameplay. While Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 stuck to a FPS combat style so generic that Activision is currently considering pressing charges (with the exception of having a life bar instead of playing as Wolverine), Far Cry 3 actually tries to use those mechanics to engage the player. What I’m talking about here are the little things: more than one enemy type, skill trees, special takedowns, missions that focus on achieving something instead of grinding yourself silly. In addition to that Far Cry 3 has a great stealth system. Yes, it isn’t a true stealth game and you can just take a LMG and hold the trigger down until your enemies are reduced to a red slurry, but the alternative is just as fun and more rewarding (in terms of in-game XP and your own self worth). Overall, I found the gameplay extraordinary.
In between your frequent and bloody murder sprees Far Cry 3 offers a great world to explore. The game has some of the most beautiful graphics I’ve ever seen and it’s two years old (then again, I ain’t rich enough to buy the newest Crysis game and a PC that can run it on the highest settings nor stupid enough to put up with Electronic Arts’s bullshit)! Actually graphics aren’t the thing I should be praising, that would be the game’s aesthetics. The game stands out among the many gray-brown FPS games of the 7th generation (including Far Cry 2) with it’s lovely palette of greens and blues (or greens, blues, and reds depending on whether or not the location in question recently experienced a severe population decrease) The world truly manages to feel massive while not spreading itself too thin. It’s also filled with stuff to do, like animals to hunt, car races, enemy outposts raid, random sidequests, and collectables.
Oh yeah, unlike Far Cry 2 (I keep bringing up Far Cry 2, maybe I want to convince people who played it and got turned off from the series as I was to give it another shot, maybe I’m just out to create another drinking game for the suicidal. This installment of the series actually has a story though; and a good one at that. As I said before - it’s about rich suburban white boy Jason Brody having to rescue his friends from some bat-shit insane slavers; particularly their leader, (the guy on the cover) Vaas. To save his friends Jason fights off Vaas and his goons while slowly descending into a drug and trauma induced psychosis. Overall, this was much better than expected. Everything just worked and the game had me by the short hairs the whole way through. I honestly believe that if Spec Ops the Line didn’t come and fuck everybody sideways then Far Cry3 would have had the best video game narrative of 2012.
There were only a few problems I had with Far Cry 3. The first and most glaring is the Uplay DRM. It’s required for the PC version so I think that anybody who doesn’t want to deal with that should be forewarned. Besides that, there isn’t much to say in the way of criticism other than I thought that the PC version was a little unstable as it crashed a few times. It wasn’t anything that really got in the way of my experience, but it was noticeable.
Far Cry 3 is a game with brains, heart, and balls. It doesn’t compromise and it has quite a bit going on under the hood. I can say whatever I want about this, but one thing matters above everything else: I want more. That is a universal rule in game criticism that if you feel that way by the end of the game then it was good. I rest my case.
