Faaaaarrrrrrr Cry 3

Good day to you homogenous masses, behold my basically above board Far Cry 3 Review.

This swashbuckling FPS/RPG adventure comes to you courtesy of  Ubisoft Montreal in conjunction with Ubisoft Massive, Ubisoft Red Storm, Ubisoft reflections, and Ubisoft Shanghai and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

First impressions We've been bombarded for months with a plethora of mindboggling trailers, sort of giving you this ‘Beach meets Rambo’ the game feel and to be honest I was really excited and my expectations were through the roof. I kind of expected there to be this long set up intro where you travel to the island, look about a bit, meet some shady characters, then you get taken hostage.
 You know, give you some time to get to know the characters and the island itself but no, ten second intro video and bang, you’re in a cage. It was trying to be vaguely shocking but the only thing shocking is that they expect you to care about characters you've never even met. The person tied up next to you is supposed to be your brother, how am I supposed to know and like characters and care what happens to them if they’re just dangled in my face and thrown away as if they mattered? Seriously games designers know exactly nothing about setting up stories.

Stories to them are just a means to an end and that is why they will always be subpar as long as they play second fiddle to the game-play. It’s as if games designers don’t want a real audience just a studio audience that laughs and cries on cue. Not really impressed. It’s just a waste of a character and a waste of time. Why do I want to get his girlfriend back when I’ve never met her!? I mean literally never met her, just saw her for like 10 seconds in a video which didn’t even establish she was your girlfriend, now I should care about what happens to her? It’s literally like someone just wheeled someone into the room and said; “This is your girlfriend now, commence loving her in five, four...” This set up is just lazy. I mean the ‘save the princess’ plot is the oldest in the world but at least when Mario does it you know who the princess is, you’ve met her on a previous occasion, in this game you have a girlfriend she’s somewhere in the jungle go get’em tiger.

  As first impressions go this is the worst by far.

 It’s almost like Ubisoft see story as something to be gotten out of the way to make way for the ‘awesome action’, (commence grumpy old man gamer mode) I blame this COD generation, they have ruined the world of gaming, turned games into just another series of crappy movies made for mass consumption, neither good nor bad, just alright which is worse in my opinion. It’s created a generation of gamers who just don't care about anything but shooting at faceless foreigners.

  Rant Over

Far Cry is an open world FPS/RPG hybrid set on a tropical island crawling with pirates and animals that want to eat you. You play Jason Brody an all american boy kidnapped with his friends by pirates and forced to become a tribal warrior to kill the pirate leader Vaas and reclaim his friends before they're killed or sold into slavery.

  Ok I like how you play the sissy younger brother who says “eww” when he skins animals, rather than the hard-boiled soldier older brother, makes the action seem more believable and shows progression. So you start off as this privileged prissy college grad twenty something tossed into hell and end up as this hardened guerrilla fighter. I hate it when you start a game and go into a gun shop and there’s only one gun you can buy, seriously what’s the point, why don't you just give me the gun? I know it’s trying to introduce to the shopping mechanics but once you’ve seen one shop you’ve seen them all.

 Although now I mention that, the shop in this game is quite nice because there are like gun vending machines in each safe house so you don’t need to keep going back to one gun shop but it also eliminates the possibility of introducing eccentric gun dealer characters saying things like “Stranger, stranger, now that’s a weapon!” but to each his own. I do like the weapon customization, paint jobs for guns have always seemed pointless but in this game it adds a little something if only painting your gun camo actually made you harder to see but it doesn't it just looks cool.

 On the other hand you can get silencers for almost every gun except the shotguns and the flame-thrower  which is something they could improve on for next time, because I want to burn people alive quietly.

  Skin to Win

It may shock you to hear I absolutely loved this game, I wouldn’t say I was a massive fan of the series I played the first game and thought it was a little daft, the second game was a pretty decent way to kill an afternoon but it was nothing to write home about really, it was fun but you want a little more from a game than just fun and I really think this game has that little extra something.

 The last games alluded to a stealth system and neither of them really delivered, this game really delivers. The stealth system is amazing, which is quite a feat for an FPS. You can hide in bushes and hunt with a bow, stealth kill dropping from a ledge or emerging from water. The stealth system works really well, you can mark targets from a vantage point and look for the perfect way to strike, which in an open world game like this is immeasurably fun.

 I also like the way you start off only able to carry one gun at a time and then you hunt animals to craft more intricate holsters to carry more weapons and ammo. Hunting and skinning and crafting aren’t new, Assassins Creed 3 to name a recent game did that to death, but the RPG elements and the gun customization really sell it to me. It allows you to customize your own experience, you can run in flamethrower blazing or you can hide in the bushes with a bow, or a do a little of both. I forgot to mention I love the fact you can take guns off dead guys and keep them, it drives me crazy how in some FPS/RPGs you have to make a pact with Zeus to get a new gun or you can only buy them.

Whereas it’s more realistic just to kill a guy and take his then you save money which can be used customizing the hell out of it, also it gives you time to experience each gun individually rather than just saving up for the best one. The levelling system is fairly straight forward there are three skill trees and you kill pirates to unlock skill points, the only thing novel about the concept is that the skills are symbolised by 'magical' tattoos on your arm, the only downside of this levelling system is there is no replay value as this game is an FPS hybrid there are no classes, so you can gain all the skills in the game in one play through.

  Round up

Although the game stumbles at the first hurdle and completely fails to immerse you into the world. The game play pulls it right back from the brink, it’s intensely fun and the story and characters do redeem themselves somewhat and I feel a little heart of darkness peeking out of the shadows not to mention the soundtrack is pretty cool and adds that little extra something. Overall I thought the length of the game was good, I find games like this can overstay their welcome and others can just have ridiculously short campaigns and just pack them full of really tedious padding and fetch quests. I’m not saying this game ticked all the boxes for me but I certainly don’t regret buying it, I just hope the next instalment puts more emphasis on story and character development, rather than gun paint jobs.

  Pros; The game is by no other words absolutely beautiful, the visuals are stunning and are juxtaposed masterfully with the brutality of the animals and people that inhabit the island, which literally brings the island to life. Cons; The storyline is a bit hit and miss and the introduction is a joke, the characters fall a little flat and after all the hype around Vaas, I think he ends up sounding like a nutter at a bus stop talking to his shoes. I just think the game set out to make a point that it couldn't decide on.