Visuals-95/100 (Beautiful Game All Around. Hampered slightly by weird facial animations and minor technical hiccups)
Story-90/100 (Exciting Plot Anchored by an great cast of characters)
Sound-95/100 (Excellent Voice Acting, music, and sound effects)
Game Play-100/100 (Utterly Intoxicating sandbox style shooter with echos of open world role-playing games)
Multi-player-30/50 (Generic, boring Multi-Player. I'd recommend against buying Far Cry 3 if you were solely interested in multi-player)
Lasting Appeal-100/100 (With all the stuff to do, you can easily spend around 40 hours or so. Not to mention it's a game you WILL want to play more than once)
If Far Cry 3 has taught me anything, it's the fact that the FPS genre is far from dead. Yes, the genre is over cluttered these days, but there are those certain titles within the industry that aim to provide the genre with innovation and excitement. Far Cry 3 is one of those games. Far Cry 3 finds its own identity through its own niche gaming experience. Even better, Far Cry 3 ends up being even more ambitious and unique than Far Cry 2, while being absent of the big missteps that plagued the second game. While Far Cry 3 is yet another FPS that features worthless MP, its single player is worth the price alone. For me, it's definitely the best in the Far Cry series, as well as one of the few FPS you should care about in 2012 regardless of your genre preferences.
Far Cry 3's story has certainly been one of its tantalizing aspects all throughout the game's numerous previews. The plot itself isn't going to turns head by itself, but its characters drive the plot to a point where every action has weight, and everything is shrouded in thick human vice. It all boils over into complete depravity, and its been quite the experience watching these personalities come into play. Sure, we've seen characters like these all over the media spectrum before, but there is something about them that transforms them from yawn inducing pot boiling shlock, to something that feels credible and downright dangerous. It's also delightfully engrossing watching these characters because they are so interesting. Populated with sociopathic pirates, volatile and terrifying crime lords, primal, dazed yet strangely idealistic drug dealers, and more, Far Cry 3 makes sure the personalities all play important roles throughout your journey. Voice acting in particular is excellent, making sure the characters come alive. It's a great tale to be sure, and I can't wait to see how it ends.
At its most basic level, Far Cry 3 is a sandbox open-world FPS. Huge sandbox maps let you tackle objectives in numerous ways, and this is only complimented by a open world packed with locations and space that all adds up to the game's immense depth. Even better, Far Cry 3's weapon and health systems both recall the days of BioShock/Half-Life 2 than the Halo/COD model we're all sick of by now. Health does not regenerate at first (you can later, however, get a skill that adds some regenerating power), and the weapon wheel at hand lets you carry more than two weapons at a time. Your character grows to be agile and able to of nifty features you eventually unlock that make combat a joy to converse with. Finally, the game offers plenty of ways to make your character do more than just shoot. Far Cry 3 offers both currency and experience points to make sure the game play experience is more personalizing and diverse than it previously was. You can use currency and experience points to offer your character a plethora of options and opportunities to create better weapons, inventories, and items, as well as honing your own skills in general.
Far Cry 3 uses its huge (and I mean huge) open world, emergent systems, animals to turn on your opponents, diverse customizations, and RPG elements that gives Far Cry 3 a huge advantage over its staid contemporaries. Far Cry 3 uses its pedigree, Far Cry 2, as inspiration, without the poor design choices that bogged down the aforementioned (no guns jamming, no malaria, no enemy re-spawning to infinity, no horribly placed checkpoints, etc). Much of the game's revisions has been made on fan feedback, and as a result Far Cry 3 is a much better game compared to the second. For example, once you capture a radio tower, it's yours. Ditto for any of the point locations you capture. Once you capture these, you can use them as save points, which also double as fast travel points. I hated the absence of this in Far Cry 2, and the inclusion of all of these makes Far Cry 3 much better to play. The environment also comes into play, such as fire and the animals. Also, like Far Cry 2, fire spreads, and you need to use that to your advantage. Far Cry 3 is not a game that encourages you to stick with a few weapons and tactics. Use everything you have, and play as creatively as possible. If you do, Far Cry 3's game play possibilities will unlock for you.
Far Cry 3 takes some lessons from modern RPGs with a skill system, organized into the form of three skill trees. While the Skill trees available are not in abundance as they are in a proper RPG, as only three exist in total. However, while there are only three, it more than makes up for the amount of satisfying and useful skills available. As you progress more and more into the game, you'll find yourself eventually chaining knife attacks in succession, moving around with the agility of a seasoned hunter, selling and trading at a lower price, managing weapons like a trailed warrior and a lot more as you slowly become master of the island. What's more, I've heard from many players (from professional reviewers to my European counterparts who got the game before us Americans and finished most of it) is that it's possible to max out every skill through the course of the game. All of the skills I've acquired so far are useful, and they make the game all the more . Aside from the skill system, Far Cry 3 also has a heady dose of crafting and gathering to offer news ways to engage in game. These promises offer tons of reasons to gather, hunt, and collect cash from the island at large.
You know all that open land available? There's a reason why it all exists. If you don't gather and hunt, your not going to make it very far in the game. Luckily, the rewards are vast and interesting. With around animal species to hunt, and tons of material to collect (plants, mushrooms, the works), hunting and gathering is addicting and leads to many memorable encounters as a bonus. Hunting is used for gathering essential materials and you can use these to craft ways to hold more ammo, and other materials. Gathering plants is like gathering materials for magic. You'll end up being able to use potions for enhancing various aspects of your own human ability. The ability to use cash round it out, and the numerous shops around the island let you customize and purchase weapons. You'll be able to get standard such as cross-hairs and suppressors, as well as much more interesting things like grenade launcher attachments. It's a blast exploring to beef up your arsenal, and it's as rewarding and fun as some of the best open world games I've played.
Aside from the combat related exploration, Far Cry 3 offers some fun things to do. The mini games have an echo of Red Dead, and even though I'm not much a fan of mini-games in my games, there's some pretty leisurely fun things to do. Also, be on the look out for pieces of back-story information around the world, which very much works like Dishonored did with its numerous books, papers, letters, and so on. With so many things to complete, PLUS the desire to play through the game again thanks to the fact that you can do same tasks in different ways, there is more than enough reasons to get Far Cry 3 as a single player game. The general consensus from both professional reviewers and our European counterparts is the main story lasts around 15-20 hours. With all of the other content, it can easily be much longer than that. This is one single player game that does not fall short on providing value.
Now, to multi-player. As much as I hate to admit it, the MP doesn't come close to the single player game. Unlike the unique single player experience, Far Cry 3's brand of MP ends up being the weak link of the package, both in terms of co-op and regular MP combat. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad feature, but there is little to nothing new Far Cry 3 does over other games. Little of the open world and emergent aspects of the single player experience are transferred over to the MP experience, and as a result, you get the same brand of death match/"Capture the point!"/destroy parts of the base/whatever else counts as MP. Play matches, level up, use perks to upgrade your overall load out. Haven't we seen all of this before? Sure, it's a fun mode, but my god, there's NOTHING new. It doesn't help either that the maps you play on are cramped as all hell, making sure the game's amazing core game play is lost. Even with better designed maps, though, Far Cry 3 does nothing new with competitive MP, and it's not really worth tinkering about with.
Co-op is a *little* better, but not by much. It tries to sell itself upon its storyline, but unlike the single player, the story falls flat. The characters are completely unappealing, the plot is generic, and nothing compelling happens. Aside from that, game play is just bland. Much like the competitive MP, it falls flat due to a lack of identity. The same objectives, the same game play models, it's just so overwhelming bland. Even worse, you almost need to rely on almost four people. If you don't, be prepared for an absolutely miserable experience.
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