Far Cry 3

I'm an old man who's new to video gaming. I wanted to see what the state of the art and all the hype is about. It ends up that I purchase 3 or 4 games for every one that I truly enjoy. I have abandoned many very popular, highly-rated games after less than an hour of play.

The Very Good: The main story is set in the present. That means: no stretches into unrealistic Sci-Fi worlds. I can enjoy Sci-Fi games, Deus Ex Human Revolution is one example, but the interminable popularity of the "Star Wars" series seems to dictate that we must endure comically-voiced robots in every futuristic game. Please.

With a very good story and superb voice acting, this game comes the closest I've found to dramatic realism -- like a good movie -- only interactive. It's still a "first person, shoot 'em up" game and requires a very high level of suspension of disbelief -- more than I would like and greater than most cinema requires -- but this is getting closer to a quality of dramatic storytelling in a game.

There exist fewer gaming clichés here. Gamers seem to hold past clichés as icons, dearly, with expectation, and here I think the developers felt a need to satisfy expectations. Fantasy/Sci-Fi seems the rule in gaming. However the very good aspects of this game demonstrate that the writers/developers were not limited by imagination or expertise. BTW, when I say the voice acting is superb I really do mean superb, at least in the main story line and among the primary and most supporting characters. Allow me repeat: Superb.

The Mediocre: The original, incidental music is mostly percussion and synth, is often repetitive and droning and is just fair overall. The licensed songs (real pre-existing songs used in the game) are generally better. That licensed music plays over certain quests or sequences and whenever you are driving a vehicle. The game takes place on a tropical island and so the licensed music gave a very good sense of location. In that vein however, I, for one, kept wanting to hear "Israelites," the 1968 Top 40 reggae hit by Desmond Dekker. One particular licensed song that makes its way into the game is a truly inspired placement though.

The Bad: For such a good game, the thought put into the side quests seems lazy, like an afterthought. Even the superb voice acting is diminished in the side quests, as though the main quest and the side quests were written by different teams or were hurried. I know, the development time and budget would have cost xx% more to integrate them more closely and realistically into the main quest. Even among all the video games I truly enjoy the lazy side quests are always apparent and sadly there is little exception here.

With that said, there is an ongoing public debate concerning "can a video game be art?" It is these things like the worn-out clichés and poor integration of side quests that will continue to make the skeptics say "No." I very much want that answer to deserve to be "yes." Soon graphics technology will advance to permit a true confluence of games and movies allowing a new and true interactive cinema. Will the game writers and developers be up to the story task? Based on the evidence so far the answer is "no" but Far Cry 3 is as good as it gets. The best motion pictures, throughout the history of cinema for example, never compromised at all but video games compromise too easily and too frequently. That is the difference between games and art and is something I wish game producers would learn.

The Bugs: Even on my 4 core, 16GB, Win7x64 PC with 1GB graphics there exist too many bugs and glitches to list. Outright crashes occur occasionally. Numerous glitches occur that require a restart from the beginning of a quest or at the most recent checkpoint. The system of one saving one's own progress is the worst I have yet encountered, nonsensical, nonexistent. The game auto saves checkpoints well enough and the game is enjoyable enough so that, although annoying, I can dismiss them. It's worth it.

Perversion: so, so many video games, especially FPSs are violent but I have trouble gauging whether the more perverse aspects of Far Cry 3 are gratuitous or not. For the most part they advance the story and create a heightened sense of dread so I'm inclined to say 'no' but this is very definitely adult material. I was somewhat taken aback at a few points and so I felt it is worth mentioning: Adult Material.

Conclusion: The cliché-ridden "Half-Life 2" is often held up as the contemporary milestone in good game development. Yes it is almost a decade older and the technological eras they were created in are vastly different but Far Cry 3 leaves Half Life and most all other games in the dust on the basis of story and voice acting alone.

As of this writing Far Cry 3 as a whole is the state-of-the-art, the best of the best. Given the long time period the Valve company has been taking in the development of Half-life 3, one holds hope for it to be another new milestone, if only Valve can escape its C3PO/R2D2 mentality to somehow find a mature story. Fingers crossed.

Let me begin by saying this game is truly something else. Two very important elements set Far Cry 3 apart from nearly every other FPS out there, those elements being story and gameplay. I'll start off with the story. The story for this game is truly unique. It starts off as clichéd as your typical B action movie but it eventually changes into something completely unexpected. The game's primary focus in the beginning is to save your friends from some evil pirates but the plot twists about half way through and begins exploring some dark and very uncomfortable realms. Without spoiling anything, you'll want to replay this story due to the sheer amount of possibilities the game allows. That's where the element of gameplay comes in. Far Cry 3 has your standard FPS mechanics and a plethora of weapons and attachments, alongside amazing enemy AI, dangerous wild animals, and a huge tropical island to explore. The missions can all be done in different ways, whether you prefer stealth with silenced weapons, or go in guns blazing with a rocket launcher and grenades, player choice is a key element. Besides the story missions you can also hunt wild animals (deer, buffalo, tigers, boars, pigs, deer, dingos, sharks, and alligators just to name a few), take over enemy pirate bases, engage in side quests for the Rakyat tribe, compete in races, fly on hang gliders, skydive, or just explore the island at your leisure. The only negative aspect about Far Cry 3 is that a couple of the missions drag on at a few points, but that's such a minuscule complaint compared to the greatness of the rest of the game. Far Cry 3's story will really make you think about what you're doing and why you're doing it, the main character delves deeper and deeper into uncomfortable realms and insanity, which I will not go into detail about in this review, but they're definitely worth playing through the game to see. Jason Brody's transformation is one that will leave you questioning yourself at certain points, especially at the game's ending.

An amazing game, featuring stunning visuals and game play.. Far Cry 3 is an exceptional FPS with fun mechanics and excellent characterization.. The freedom and power is intoxicating.. A new standard for the genre.. In Far Cry 3, you find yourself stranded on a tropical island, a lawless place ruled by piracy and human misery. You dictate how the story unfolds, from the battles you choose to fight down to the allies or enemies you make along the way. There are 18 radio towers to scale as you make your way through the game, each of which highlights new objectives on your map and opens up new weapons to buy at local shops, and each tower is a unique first-person climbing challenge - a peaceful ascent through a creaking spiral of steel that's fraying at the edges, revealing beautiful panoramic views before sending you back down to earth on a thrilling zip line .

"Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?"

This game was sitting in my HDD for a long LONG time, finally got around to playing it. And I friggin loved it.

Far Cry 3 is an immense open world/sandbox style FPS game taking place in a tropical island. The premise is that a group of friends, while on vacation, are kidnapped on this island by pirates. The protagonist, Jason, gets free of their hold and now must try to save them all.

The story didn't interest me at first. Just felt like something tacked on to get you into the island and explore stuff. But after a while, it picked up the pace and got good. At one side, you had this quest to rescue your friends while on the other, you were fighting a psychological battle. In both ways, there was this satisfying presence of evolution and the more you played, the more apparent it became and more development the protagonist got.

The friends remained uninteresting throughout though. Would have liked it a lot if they got better development because we ARE trying to save them after all, more motivation would have been nice. It was the other side characters that help you along the way that made the story interesting. Most of them had great voice acting. Also, the villain(s) were great. I'll admit that I was disappointed in seeing that Vaas didn't had that many scenes in the game considering he was advertised like hell throughout. But whenever he appeared, he owned the scene.

Now, the island was VAST. And really dense. There was tons and tons of stuff to do around every corner. It felt really alive as well. Every where you go, you would encounter different animals going about their business. Predators hunting their preys. Pirates patrolling here and there, often fighting with the locals or other animals. This all made exploring the island a lot more fun. The side quests do get boring after a while though. It was all just, kill that pirate, hunt that animal, deliver those goods etc.

Doing missions and fighting enemies gave you experience points, which were used for upgrading your skills and making you a more proficient killing machine. You could craft syringes for various temporary boosts and for health since the game featured health bars. Different pouches could be upgraded to hold more items, ammo, etc via hunting and collecting various animal's skins. This I really liked and it compelled me to hunt A LOT early on since I found it annoying having less items on me. Also, in Ubisoft's fashion, you have to remove jammers from radio towers to unveil the map and unlock more items at the shop. And pirates controlled territories could be cleared to make places safer, which also acted as fast travel points.

Great thing about this game was that you had mostly full freedom to deal with enemies. Some times I used stealth, sometimes natural elements, sometimes I just rushed it guns blazing. Always kept experimenting with different stuff. One really annoying thing though was that enemy A.I kept firing at me even if there is a smoke/fire in between and I cannot see them. This often made me to not use fire. And speaking of fire, it was pretty dynamic. Lighting one thing could very well put the whole place on fire.

There were some true breakthrough points in the game. Two of my favourites were burning weed farm while listening to 'Skrillex' and riding a chopper with 'Flight of the valkyrie' being played. Truly awesome moments.

Graphically, the game looked good and surely had its moments. Tropical setting made for some awesome sightings. The draw distance wasn't too shabby either. Climbing a tower and just looking around always felt mesmerizing.

Soundtrack was great. It varied a lot too. Somber, sad and/or personal scenes had beautiful similar score while fighting/action scenes had fast paced adrenaline pumping music.

A great open world FPS experience. Had a lot of fun with it. Definitely a must for ever gamer.

8.8/10

I have been waiting for a game like this for a long long time, it has all the elements of a great FPS RPG that most people look for. Great characters, great story, absolutely BEAUTIFUL graphics and gameplay that is out of this world.

This installment took a different direction than the first two, it takes the level design elements of the first Far Cry and the RPG aspect of the second but with a lot more interesting stuff added, just about everything you can do in the first and second, you can do in this one which it makes it that much more fun when it basically brings back the level design of the first one and adds the elements from the second as i said before. The game is simply amazing with a lot of fun stuff to do and a whole different game experience unlike any other, the weapon selection is fantastic! and the game definitely brings back nostalgia for the farcry fans.

sure there are some flaws like screen tearing in the consoles versions , however it is only noticeable when your looking for it...the game otherwise is all around fantastic!

be sure to pick this beauty up! don't miss out!