You will get to fight more than you would like to, trust me.

@Pie said:

@GunstarRed said:

@Pie: Once you clear out an area it stays clear, so make sure you fill all skill requirements while you can if you want them all.

That's a bummer to hear. Say what you will about respawning enemies in FC2 but it meant you were never far from a good fight. Still a great game

yup, as much as I hated the respawns in FC2 I'm actually sitting here having finished the game and wanting to dick around more on the island, but there isn't really anything to do other than chase collectibles. I guess I could start over (which I actually feel somewhat inclined to do), but I'm afraid I'll come back to the same areas, with the same spawns, knowing exactly how to deal with them.

anyone know if the story pays off in the way that jeff wanted?

@mrfluke: Don't wanna make this into a spoiler-thread, but if you check out my post on page 5 you can see my reaction after beating the game.

@mrfluke: I don't know exactly how it ends, but there are a lot of reviews out there that say Far Cry 3 has one of the most satisfying conclusions of any game this year, so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it.

@zenmastah said:

You will get to fight more than you would like to, trust me.

Hahahah.. so true. Sam on the .50 cal.. that mission.. jesus. JESUS.

@Dezztroy said:

Vaas has to win character of the year. Everything about him is just spectacular.

I'd love to see the guy voicing Vaas playing a similar character in a movie or show of some sorts. The way he delivers his lines is incredible. It's difficult enough to create a credible antagonist but in FC3 I actually sympathise with Vaas in some weird way because he is so well realized. I'd love to see him turn on Hoyt for yelling at him or something like that (maybe it'll happen I'm only about one third of the way through).

God I want this game so bad! I just keep watching the quick look I love the intro.

i agree. game is awesome! Stabbing dudes is so satisfying. and once you unlock more skills for the knife, its some of the best knife action EVER in a video game.

I'm very reluctant to give in to all the hype. Seems as if a lot of the awesomeness is derived from seeing two AI's interact with one another and I can imagine how that works. Apart from going around the world and murdering everything is there much more to the game? I know it's a shooter and everything, but I didn't find Crysis particularly engaging and don't know how much more this will give me. Does the jungle vary a lot? Something else that I disliked about games like Crysis or Just Cause is that despite being so huge, the jungle in one area looks exactly as the jungle in another and the scope of the island is completely lost on me as everything tends to blend together.

One thing that is drawing me to it is the writing and the story - I'm kinda of close to just spoiler reading it, so is it good? Would you say the game is worth playing for the story alone all gameplay elements aside - or is the story OK but it's the gameplay that keeps it going?

@Humanity: There's a little hype definitely, but I think it's deserved.

The first thing that's impressive about the game is the voice acting of the antagonist. It's so good that you instantly pay attention to the story, unlike so many games.

The second thing that makes the game good for me is it's one of the open world games where it's actually fun to explore. If you liked Assassin's Creed 2's world then you might like this. There's the same sort of map, plastered with mini-objectives, except it's the jungle. I never liked Crysis so I can't speak to that.

The thing that separates it from Far Cry 2 is the ease and flow of the gameplay. It's not hard to do fun stuff and your gun never jams. Most fights are not hard or frustrating. It's the sort of difficulty that's satisfying because it's as challenging as you want it to be.

@Humanity: The enjoyment you get from the gameplay is how every enemy encampment is sort of a puzzle. This isn't a straight up FPS where you just run and gun your way to victory (although you can do that if you're good and stock up on healing items). I found myself often scouting out a camp from different angles, tagging every enemy, then trying to snipe (with a silencer) outsiders from a distance and finally sneaking into camp and doing takedowns on whoever was left. Sometimes I would fail horribly though and what's great about the game is that that's ok. Sometimes it's fun to just pull out an RPG and blow up the reinforcing cars too =) The story missions tends to go down the straight up FPS route more though, but there's also a fair deal of "not terrible" platforming.

As for the story, I wouldn't say it's all about great personalities and acting. Actually, as I've said earlier, I found the presentation to be the most entertaining. There are several moments through the story where they're doing strange/funny/amazing things with both how things are presented graphically and through sound/music.

And ofc on top of it all there's the whole collection/exploration aspect if you're into that. They do a good job of giving you many different things to do, and they also tell you straight up "if you do this, you'll get this kinda reward" etc, where most of the big collectible goals only requires a medium amount of gathering. The island also has a fair deal of varied features (like caves, bunkers, derelict ships etc), but you do start getting a "samey" feeling towards the end.

Anyways, this is getting to be too much of a review :P For a more direct answer to your question, I spent about the first half of my time with the game mostly just running around the island, hunting, climbing towers, clearing encampments, doing missions etc and had tons of fun with it. But when I started to feel a bit tired of it I went and focused on doing the story and I enjoyed that too.

Playing the game on a PC in the US....

I will tell you, my GTX 580 is handling the game terrifically. The optimal settings puts a lot of it at ultra, and it runs very smoothly.