PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal
Published by Ubisoft
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| The bow and arrow makes my little Predator heart sing for joy. Far Cry 3 (2012) |
Far Cry 3 has a strong narrative and sense of character along with solid game-mechanics that aren't difficult to master.
Far Cry 3 is a worthy addition into the critically acclaimed series. It is fun and offers a variety of gameplay however, it doesn't match the brutality of the second game that made it a classic.
The first hour of the game I found myself rather disappointed that it wasn't a different game, I wanted it to be more survival oriented. You play Jason, a twenty-something rich-boy who is kidnapped and in a pretty bad spot, he is shocked at the prospect of killing people, skinning animals and the like. I felt fear at first about survival, this guy isn't some invincible navy-seal or high-tech nano-suit, he's just Joe-schmoe. I was ready to have to worry about thirst, hunger, sickness, etc. but even on the hardest difficulty setting it's not overly challenging and is not really a survival game at all, it's just an open-world FPS. Once I got over the comparison to it's predecessor and what I wanted/thought the game was going to be though I started having a lot of fun.
There are some similarities to Just Cause 2 (2010) except this is less playful and insane but on a positive note, the missions and side-missions feel more purposeful than in JC2. There wasn't a real point or reward in doing side-missions there whereas here, every side-quest has an adequate reward for the player, either allowing fast-travel, more weapons, map of the terrain, etc.
Far Cry 3 has a strong narrative and sense of character along with solid game-mechanics that aren't difficult to master. There is a good 30 hours of gameplay with side-missions in the single-player campaign. The multi-player has a co-op mode with its own narrative but I've only played a few times because it wasn't as engaging as single player.
It's a fairly straight-forward FPS with open-world aspects but you also spend time hunting animals (or being attacked by animals while trying to do something else) which can be challenging and sometimes humorous. While playing in-game I was about to attack a group of soldiers who had a bear in a cage. My brilliant plan was to shoot the cage and release the bear who would then dispatch the guards for me and the guards would weaken the bear for me so I could harvest its valuable pelt. Right as I was about to shoot the cage undetected, a leopard attached me from behind which pushed me right into the guards path. I shot the cage to release the bear but that just meant I was being attacked by guards with assault weapons, a leopard and a bear. Needless to say I died fairly quickly.
You will learn to hate Komodo Dragons, Tigers and most of all: Deer; they are fast buggers which seem to be nearly invincible.
The bad aspects of the game is that dying is painful because the game only saves in certain places and often I have lost 20 minutes of gameplay because of this poor design.
One of my biggest dislikes of this game is that you are forced to use Ubisoft's UPlay which is their distribution, DRM and social platform. Personally, I hate having to install these garbage pieces of software the likes of which include Rockstar Social Club, Origen, Games for Windows Live, etc., and having to create yet another online account just to play. I'm ranting about this in particular because I re-imaged my machine half-way through playing this game and while I copied my game-saves, when I moved them to my new computer they wouldn't work. I opted out of Uplay's Cloud Save Sync as many people weren't able to access the game when their servers were down. This means I lost about 12 hours of game-play that I really didn't want to redo (but will).
I recommend a buy or rent if 30 hours of single-player gameplay isn't worth the full retail price. Personally, I can't see myself spending too much time in the multi-player.
BUY
Words by Trent Allgood
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