Far Cry 3: An Open World Experience Unlike Anything Else
Far Cry 3 is a game that wasn't really on my radar. I had played the first two games and found them to be really ambitious but that ambition, i felt, came at the expense of the gameplay. This is not the case with Far Cry 3. It still maintains some of the ambitious ideas that the first two games had and make one of the most fun to play games of the year. The Story may fall apart towards the end, but that shouldn't scare you away from an excellent, open world experience.
Far Cry 3 begins with a man named Jason, a 20-something year old hanging out with his friends on a deserted island. You and your friends are having fun skydiving, hang-gliding, partying at night clubs, and drinking your problems away. You quickly find out that you have been captured by a group of slavers headed by a man named Vaas, a psychopathic drug runner who is basically running the show on the island. Jason and his brother Grant attempt to escape Vaas's compound but Vaas eventually finds out and he kills Grant. He gives Jason a few minutes to try and escape before coming after him. Jason actually does escape and ends up with a group of warriors known as the Rakyat who promise to help him find his friends. Its a story that starts off very promising, but the story kind of falls apart at the end leaving more questions than answers.
Lets talk about where Far Cry 3 really shines which is the gameplay. To the layman, the game may seem like a boiler-plate first person shooter with some open world elements. But there is much more to it than that. Most of the games substantial content is in the open world. There is a ton of stuff to do including side missions, finding collectibles, or my personal favorite hunting. Other games may have hunting stuff but they never really do anything with it other than you can sell skins for money. In Far Cry 3, however, hunting actually means something. The game has a crafting mechanic that requires you to hunt for skins to make items. These items include better wallets for holding more money or better holsters that allow you to hold more guns. If anything I felt that there should have been more crafting in the game. I found myself doing a lot of the crafting at the beginning of the game which left me with only a few crafting items left towards at the end of the game. The game also allows you to find towers to climb which fill in the map, similar to Assassin's Creed.
The game however does have its share of issues though. Like I mentioned earlier, the game's story does fall flat towards the end despite it having some really colorful and fun characters. It was extremely disappointing for the game to have such a strong start to end in such a tragic way. Also if you were to pick one version of this game to play, I would say play the PC version. Both console versions suffer from some serious frame rate issues. It won't hinder the game in any way but if you have a choice, stick with the PC version.
Overall, Far Cry 3 did not leave me indifferent. I had a great time playing this game and I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes to play a fun game. It is the complete package. Great gameplay, fantastic villian in Vaas, and an overall enjoyable experience. I leave you with one question. Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?
