Incredible game, breathtaking surroundings, pure action/stealth combination with an average storyline. The game was popularized by Vass and boy it was amazing to experience such an unique antagonist in a first person shooter. The game is an awesome combo of adventure and action and takes a lot of skill to master. Its a fun game which takes you back to the very first version of forest survival, but this time it’s better. Though I loved the change of scenery and plot in Far cry 2, i Still loved the third installment despite of it being in a familiar surrounding.

Really refreshing take on a cinematic FPS, lots of fun, EXTEREMLY well done cut scenes and characters, VERY long journey but worth it in the end. Only thing is it might have been a little too easy, but I’m not complaining too much.

Score Breakdown

“The Tale”
Story- 7
Pacing- 9
Characters- 8
Originality- 7
Linearity- 10
Length- 9
Epicness- 8

“The Presentation”
Visuals- 9
Display- 8
Music- 7
Sound FX- 9

“The Mechanics”
Ease of Use- 8
Innovation- 8
Replayability- 7

Far Cry 3 is first-person shooter with open world features that let’s you get the illusion of freedom within a island dominated by a local guerrilla.

Like Alice in Wonderland, which is quoted at the beginning of each chapter, Jason follows the white rabbit, falls into a hole, and finds himself in a surreal place, losing the sense of who he is. His allies are eccentric, he is as lost as a junkie.

The game symbol is the mirror image of a gun. The game tries to reflect the image of the player back to him, showing the absurdity of expecting to be a hero killing countless people.

The game is also about colonization. Vestiges of the Japanese presence on the island tell about the legacy of the atomic bomb, and an agent of the CIA demonstrates an exaggerated patriotism that it’s comical. The game criticizes the American ethnocentrism, but his main criticism is about the ease with which the players accepts the violence around them.

One of the highlights is when Vaas talks about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. There are a lot of metaphors about that. The writing is so good it reminds me of Bioshock.

Conclusion: I recommend this game for people who like to discuss violence in games. It features anthropological problems, insanity, lots of references, and dark humor. In this game you follow the white rabbit, fall into a hole and get crazy. It’s a game that really deceives and traps you. You end up asking questions about yourself.

Up there you thought you had it all, but down here, you hit the ground.
“Far Cry 3” opens with a very short little music video (by short I mean under a minute) introducing our main characters and showing their arrival on Rook island, and their little get together with the main antagonist Vaas Montenegro. During the intro sequence you escape Vaas’s encampment and meet up with the Rakyat, the natives of Rook Island. They tell you that you are the chosen warrior that will defeat Vaas and bring glory to the Rakyat. And basically after you complete a couple of tutorial quests, you can go on and explore the island (to a certain point until you have to progress the main plot).

So what do people do for fun around here?
Well quite a lot of things can be done here. The two main side objectives would be the outposts, which need liberation and radio towers, which need activation. After doing one of those two things more side quests will open up and complete enough of these and you will get recreational activities such as: knife throwing, target practice, poker and island racing. Which are nice ways to make a few bucks or just have fun. In addition to these activities you also have Trials of the Rakyat, a total of 12 challenges in which you must use a certain weapon to kill as many enemies as possible before the timer runs out. This is the competitive leaderboard portion of the main campaign.

Why have one island, when you can have two?
The game is split into two large islands, which are both beautiful and detailed to make for a great exploration experience. The northern island populated by the Rakyat and Vaas’s pirates and the second controlled by the troops of Hoyt Wolker. Visually it’s more of the same and gameplay wise the only difference between them is that the enemies on the southern island are a bit tougher. In a nutshell, the first/northern island is where you gear up and the second/southern island is where you put that gear to good use. Even though this isn’t bad, most of the elements from the first island will be forgotten on the second one for most players. By the time you reach island number 2, you will have gathered most of the equipment you will need and will have crafted all of the holsters and bags.

Have I ever told you the definition of insanity?
It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, a pretty simple definition, but it’s also how I would define the gameplay in “Far Cry 3”. Now, this doesn’t mean the game is repetitive, far from it, it means that it offers new ways of approaching old objectives. The best example would be the outposts which you have to liberate, of which there are a total of 34. Basically you have to reach the outpost and kill all the guards, and that does sound repetitive, but “Far Cry 3” offers you multiple ways to do that. You can stealthily take out all of the guards before the alarm is sounded, charge them head on, lure wild animals to attack the guards, or just burn that motherfucker to the ground while listening to “Make it Bun Dem”, and many more ways you’ll have to find out for yourself, either way you’re going to have a lot of fun doing it.

Once you clear an outpost you will not only be rewarded with experience points and money, but with new missions, three types to be exact. WANTED: Dead, a straightforward, find the target, eliminate the target, but you must always use a knife when doing so, such is the tradition of the Rakyat. Path of the Hunter, hunting mission in which you hunt various animals with a predetermined weapon. And finally Story quests, these are short little missions, which are given to you by certain NPCs and are always something different.
Another element that offers a great deal of variation is the modes of transportation. On Rook Island you have the option of using cars, trucks, boats, jet skis, hang gliders or the awesome wingsuit to travel around the island.

Full synchronization.
While there is an uncanny resemblance to “Assassin’s Creed” in the way that you can climb atop tall radio towers to activate them to reveal a portion of the map during which you get a little cutscene showing off some of the landmarks in the area. There is also one element in which “Far Cry 3” reminds me of “Assassin’s Creed” and that’s in the stealth elements. Now, while there aren’t haystacks in which you can hide or conceal bodies, stealth plays a major role in the game and is encouraged more often then one would think. Which can be seen by the increased amount of experience points you get when completing a mission stealthily, as oppose to completing it loudly. This is something that could have been rushed or poorly executed quite easily, but it wasn’t. Stealth has a certain depth and variety to it. You can use silenced weapons, the bow, or just takedown enemies up close, and over time when you get newer abilities you will be able to adapt your strategies and make them better and more efficient. Use the foliage as cover and sneak by enemies, cause distractions by making loud noises at certain points, disable their alarms so they can’t call for backup.

Now the question is, are you motivated enough to do all this?
Yes. The game does a good job at motivating you with its fine story and interesting characters. While the main plot is straight forward; save your captive friends and get off the island, the depth comes from its cast and character development. Vaas is easily one of the best villains I have had the pleasure of facing in any game, although he was underused, having more of him wouldn’t have hurt the game, and it would have actually made it better. Jason, our main protagonist, is just an average rich boy looking to have fun with his friends, but Rook Island changes him in ways he would have never imagined. Driven by the psychotic mind games of Vaas, the manipulation of the Rakyat, the pure adrenaline that comes from all of the near death experiences, and the difficult choices he must make to save his friends. Citra, the “leader” of the Rakyat, promises you power with which you can fight Vaas, but it all comes at a price, which will ultimately decide your fate. Hoyt Wolker, Vaas’s boss, feels a bit underwhelming, rushed and not developed very well when compared to Vaas, one of the less memorable characters “Far Cry 3” has to offer. Now without going into detail/spoilers about the ending I’ll just describe how it turns out, essentially it’s just press LT for this ending or RT for that ending, this is the only time you get a choice like this in the game, and feels very out of place and just slapped on to make players feel like they have a choice in the matter, which really wasn’t needed at all. Unfortunately, whichever ending, I found them both a bit unsatisfying in comparison to the whole game.

You don’t have to go it alone.
“Far Cry 3” offers multiplayer along with it’s great singleplayer experience. The multiplayer aspect consists of competitive and cooperative modes. I didn’t play the competitive mode so I’ll only be talking about the cooperative portion. The co-op mode is comprised of six missions in total and can played with 2-4 players (2 – player local split screen and 4 – player online/system link), and this really came as a surprise to me. I didn’t think the game needed co-op, but that was before I had a chance to try it out. Across the six missions I found that the same variety that was available in the singleplayer campaign made an appearance here as well. The missions have different objectives, which you have to complete, but also have a small competition section that is different in every mission. This really came out of nowhere and added a fun way to complete an objective whilst competing with your friends.

Conclusion: “Far Cry 3” is easily one of the best FPS singleplayer experiences I have ever played, with the variations in all of the gameplay elements it offers, it certainly shows how an open world game should be, and if it had a few more elements in certain areas, it might have even been called an RPG.