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I felt there was a nice experience of playing this kid who starts off scared, has no idea what is going on but is forced into a situation that makes him either decide to be a stronger person and fight back or run like hell. Of course being the protagonist he decides to be a super badass.
The amount of content in the game is impressive. I was amazed at how much stuff in the game there was that I actually wanted to do. I also never felt forced into it, but I know other gamers did.
Missions A-Plenty
You have hunting missions where you’re assigned to kill specific rare animals with a specific weapon. The rare animals are just alternate’s of the normal ones you run across on the island but for that specific mission they have different colors or traits for you to hunt. I thought it was pretty neat. In one case one of the animals I had to hunt simply had one horn instead of two, that made me laugh. You’re rewarded with special skins of the rare animal that you need in order to craft the highest quality of your upgrade-able items.
Besides hunting missions there are outposts full of bad dudes that you can either go gunning in for or kill silently and take it over. The outposts become your rebel friends base’s making it also yours where you can resupply on ammo, sell your loots, buy new weapons and even open new missions to perform. There are also stealth kill man-hunt missions and all mission types are plentiful!
Crafting System
I really liked the crafting system because I didn’t feel like it was forced on me. Sure, it’s definitely convenient and there are a couple things you’ll want right away like a bigger wallet and inventory space but it’s completely unnecessary, leaving it wide open for you to do at any time. Of course the further you get in the game the more you’re gonna want to start upgrading your equipment through the crafting system. The progression of the game felt natural to me.
You make bigger wallets to carry more money, slings to carry more weapons on your body. You can only carry one gun at a time when you first start out. There’s several things to upgrade, but honestly, I didn’t feel a huge need to get most of them right away. Guns are plentiful from all the bad guys you kill, so I didn’t care about having the ability to carry four guns on me at one time. You also need to make bags in order to carry more items. All of these upgrades you craft are made with animal skins so you have to go hunting. I haven’t hunted sharks in a game in a long time, but that was pretty freakin’ cool!
So Big You Get Lost
Due to the island being so huge and there being so many things to do I actually got lost in it and I really enjoyed it. The setting is what made it perfect. An island full of beautiful scenery that always rewarded exploration. If there weren’t so many different outposts of enemies, so many wild animals to come across, caves, radio towers to climb, it would have been boring.
To top all that off there’s treasures to find, mysterious letters (that were really cool!) and relics spread out all over the place. Just having an island that is pretty wouldn’t have kept me entertained without the amount of content it offers. There was always something to do, and I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. That actually encouraged me to do random things. I love a few different open world games, but this one is definitely my favorite when it comes to the openness itself.
Do Anything Just Because You Feel Like It
I found myself just going for a joy ride on jet ski’s and boats and taking gliders for a fly just because it was really freakin’ cool. That’s not usually something I care to do in a game, but this one just made it so much more fun. Gorgeous scenery and an abundant amount of optional content made this a truly wonderful experience. The day and night cycle made it that much more amazing. Sunsets and rises are so beautiful, night sky’s full of thousands of stars. It is glorious.
One of my favorite things about exploring was randomly coming across tigers and bears eating my enemies, it was quite entertaining. One time I was just driving along and got to watch a bear tear up three dudes.
I thought there was a nice amount of different enemy types. Of course you run into the same ones over and over, but it was some good fun. The big dudes with super heavy armor always gave me some entertainment and laughs. I loved throwing grenades at their feet because they were so slow. Stealth kills and chain kills, as usual, Ubisoft has their own style and flare. The action was really great.
I’m doing my best to keep this review short and it hasn’t worked, lol. So I’m not going into anymore specifics on the combat, it kicks ass.
The Story
I have a bad memory and I took my time going through the game so I don’t remember how the story played out exactly from start to finish. The only reason I rushed to beat it now was because Raptr was doing a giveaway sweepstakes thing for each specific game you beat on their list in the month of May. I probably would have put twenty more hours into this game before beating it if it wasn’t for that. I have thirty-two wonderful hours invested into it. =p
What I do remember of the story is really freakin’ good. There are very many emotional driven parts in it. It was really beautiful and the music really set a great tone for it. Also it gets really trippy sometimes. It is one dang cool, very interesting story.
Far Cry 3 is like putting the Tomb Raider reboot in an open world making it a much better game. I mean no offense by that, Tomb Raider blew my mind so when I started playing this game imagine how I felt! If you have experienced the new Tomb Raider and loved it as much as I did and you have not experienced Far Cry 3, trust me, you want to. Far Cry 3 is a masterpiece.
Graphics
The graphics are absolutely gorgeous even on medium to high settings. I had to customize my settings up quite a bit. If you’re interested, I took a bunch of screenshots throughout my adventure. =) My screenshots
Closing Thoughts
Let me finish this off by saying what I hated about it, because of course there were some issues. I am not exaggerating when I say, pretty much every single staircase, every single platform that’s barely a touch above the ground was impossible to just walk onto. I had to jump in order to move up staircases, jump to move onto platforms because I kept getting stuck on some invisible nonsense. It was maddening. Looting bodies was also sometimes a pain, standing right over them and having to adjust position to be able to loot them, even more annoying when their guns are in the way, which can end up in an accidental weapon swap. The game was incredible though, it really was, the issues I had with it drove me up the wall, but the game is just so damn excellent. It would have been perfect if Ubisoft’s testers hadn’t failed them so miserably. It is shameful how much they let slip through.