REVIEW
Written by: Petron Wasps

Far Cry 3

Warning: Minimal Spoilers Within

(Spoiler-Free Summary at End)

            How is Far Cry 3 you ask? Well, my dear friend, let me tell you! It is simply a fantastic game. It has a huge variety of gameplay that is very player-driven.  It has a huge open world to explore that is unique throughout. It is fun and creative!

            First of all, let’s talk about the gameplay. In Far Cry 3, most of the gameplay is composed of taking control of outposts, upgrading your gear, gathering collectibles and playing through the story. All of these aspects of gameplay are very well done. Taking control of outposts is kept fresh and fun by making how to approach them totally up to the player. You are given a wide variety of weapons to choose from with radically different uses. The player can go loud and charge in their guns blazing, they can snipe from a nearby mountain, or they could stealthily enter the outposts and quietly take everyone out. While taking them quietly will net you more experience for leveling up, experience is plentiful and so the last few outposts should be free to take out free from worry. Plus, there is now an option to reset the outposts in your game, ensuring that there will always be an outpost for you to try something fun on!

            Upgrading your gear is continuously fun because of the diversity of the island. If we are talking about upgrading your weaponry, new weapons can be purchased at a shop or unlocked for free by activating radio towers. What makes this fun is the unique platforming of each radio tower. They are old and decrepit, so there is plenty of jumping and ledge-grabbing. They are simple, short and effective platforming elements in a genre that usually doesn’t have much of platforming to speak of. On the other hand, if we are talking about gear like your character’s ammo packs, these are made from hunting animals. Each ammo pack has multiple upgrades that require you to have skins from more dangerous animals. At the end of each upgrade path for the gear, there is a special animal that has to be killed and skinned. The regular hunting is actually nothing special, but the hunts for the special animals are good fun. These special creatures are just unique versions of the other creatures in the game, but you have to take them out using specific weapons and at special areas. It is another fun way that the gameplay is varied.

            Gathering collectibles was also surprisingly fun. A huge part of this is, again, the great design of the islands. With everything from sinkholes, waterfalls, and bayous to Japanese WWII bunkers, ancient temples and caves, there is a huge amount of different areas to explore. It is fantastically fun to see what’s next in your exploration and finding out how to get where you need to go. Some locations are pretty tricky to get into! And they could also be quite dangerous, like in the water. Ohhh…. Those shark-infested waters….

            Now let’s talk about the story. First of all, this game is very correctly rated as mature. However, the story actually seems to have a message behind it and uses the mature themes to explore it. Indeed, rather than telling a story that just serves the gameplay, the developers seemed to explicitly create the story to reinforce the message. It is well placed, so it doesn’t feel preachy and actually, sometimes some of the themes dealing with the message are dealt with nonchalantly, which occasionally weakens the message. The story also creates a mission layout that leads to a great deal of variety. This, along with the great voice acting and dialogue by the major characters, leads to a fun story that you want to play through to the finish. Sadly, it is not perfect. The plot occasionally suffers from wanting to fit in unique gameplay at the expense of realism.

            The multiplayer component of Far Cry 3 is also decent. There are 2 modes, a competitive mode like in Call of Duty where you pick your class and try to take out other players and a cooperative mode where you play through a unique story with everyone being one of four characters. I noticed nothing special with the competitive component, but the co-op component stood out as especially good. The unique story is a very nice touch, and in between some segments, there are more arcade-like parts where you compete to get the high score doing a specific activity like sniping from a bridge far away from the targets or machine-gunning from a boat.

Review Summary

Gameplay	10/10 (Many hours of varied fun!)
Story	9/10 (Tells a message creatively, but inconsistent)
Multiplayer	6/10 (Only the Co-op is truly special, but the game is in the single-player)

Total: 9/10 GREAT GAME! Woohoo!