Why you need to try Far cry 3
How beauty resonates within chaos and havoc
Far cry 3 is a game that is set on the serene island of Rook, with a modern tribe inhabiting the island along within pirates that have swept over the island with their guns, cocaine and death.The psychopath leader Vaas captures you and your friends hoping to sell you into slavery, leaving you (Jason brody) to escape and fight back against him with the help of the locals known as the Rakyat warriors. After escaping Vaas, you make friends with a local rebel prompting you on your quest to find your friends and explore the volatile jungle of rook, rich with wild animals and colourful plants for you to manipulate into helpful serums and ammo holsters with animal skins. Weapons are also a big part of Far cry, with you being able to go for a guns blazing fighting style obliterating pirate camps with flamethrowers and the grenade/rocket launcher, or sniping and stabbing stealthily allowing you pick off your targets like a russian spy, along with the added 3 skill trees that can aid your fighting style.
Exploration on a tropical paradise
Ubisoft makes great use of its capabilities within far cry, with an abundance of vehicles on land and water, allowing for different approaches to a dangerous situation whether you run over entire packs of pirates with a jeep, or zip around on a jet ski, every option is viable so no matter what you do the constant flow of mobility is only around the corner. Terrain and fighting can play a big role at times, with the open world forcing you to use hang gliders to swoop in on foes, or swim away from pirates with crocodiles that will make short work of you in Rook’s narrow rivers, presenting the ever growing opportunities that are shown making you change how you play on the go even if you have never tried something.
You always feel the sense to not just walk through the jungle, but to look at it at a different angle with survival making for some interesting experiences with challenges to kill ferals dogs and earn some cash or just race down a hill with medical supplies to help an islander in need, whatever it is you’ll be enticed by missions and exploration. Island life and culture feels challenging and blissful making you enjoy the chaos and explosions, but still being able to appreciate the sounds and music that suits the situation at time with fast paced beats during gunfights as well as slow melancholic music at somber moments within Far cry.
Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity? — Vaas Montenegro
Character’s and Psychopaths
Surprisingly Jason and other characters change slowly through the story of Far cry, with Jason becoming hell bent on killing and more focused on his own goals even when confronted by his girlfriend, who shows worry and sympathy towards him but, Jason disgustingly shrugs this off as he proceeds to walk away from her multiple times. In addition one of the main villains Vaas makes you question whether you're better than Vaas morally, as your just killing people purely due to the rage and determination of saving your friends, with Vaas often mentioning insanity when he encounters you implicitly, showing the player that your similar to him slaughtering anyone and anything in your way getting the same result from rescuing friends to trying to killing the villains of the story it ends up in bloodshed, which I personally see as really messed up mentally as jason also starts to enjoy killing people.
For me I just don’t see the justification behind the bloodthirst or the liking for others death when put into a realistic perspective.
Combat trees and Weapons
Skill trees serve a good purpose within Far cry tailoring to how you play as I have mentioned before adding a small, but impactful level of play. You’ll get to grips with the basic stealth system that works well most of the time, but fails on others, with you having to rely on a rock providing a temporary distraction, which I find really overrated and used especially when it’s the only thing you can use to sneak past guards with. Also weapons wise the tribal knife is perhaps one of my favourite weapons when it comes to stealth, with chainable kills or maybe wanting to stab someone and pull the pin on their grenade? That can be done! Jump from a zipline or cliff and knife two guys like a badass? that can be achieved as well!!!
Things that stood out to me
- The good mix of chaos and weapons makes it fun due to the destructive nature you can take, so missions never get boring unless you use one gun for ages
- Hordes of pirates can get quite overwhelming with you using the little shelter the island provides you a forced to hop on a mounted a machine gun making the same scenario with tons of pirate boring yet, I have the rocket launcher I fell in love with to obliterate that problem watching foes ragdoll across the sky
- Freeing locked up animals acts as the perfect distraction too instead of a rock, making it almost feel like you have a animal friend to help until they start trying to bite your arm off
- After taking damage from gunshots or shrapnel you would pick it out of your flesh or rip it out to heal-another little detail that was nice to see implemented within Far cry 3
My verdict
I don’t think I’d ever really do a numbered rating like many people have done on youtube or just websites like IGN, but I will round up most of the pro’s and con’s. Far cry 3 is a classic at its time in 2012 selling over 10 million copies and still is too many players. With fun mechanics and a vast open world it still provides plentiful amounts of hours and fun with decent graphics, even with the base game or remaster like I’ve tried.The upsides to this triple is the liberality presented in the open world and destruction that plays along with it, but considerable downsides can be seen with the anticlimactic villains you kill and repetitiveness of missions, putting you as the one man army to do everything on the island of Rook. It’s not too much of a big problem necessarily, but could’ve made for a more likeable villain like Handsome Jack. If you’ve the played the game previously you’ll see the same missions or challenges to complete and quickly get bored, with the addition of collectibles being relatively high, if your more of a completionist. In my opinion Far cry’s story and progression plays a more fun part compared to anything else as the game only gets more dangerous the further you explore and play.
Best & Worst
- Fun destruction and chaos on a tropical archipelago
- Characters transform over the course of the story presenting a not so cliche protagonist along with other characters
- Driving controls feel a bit sloppy, but still get the job done
- Nice selection of skills and weapons to work in harmony with them
- Anticlimactic villain fights and endings
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