Introduction
Far Cry 3 is a first person shooter, open world game, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It saw a release in 2012 and then saw a re-release in 2018, when it was packaged into the Far Cry 5 season pass.
Review
When Jason and his friends decide to go on a crazy trip full of fun moments, extreme stunts, and skydiving, they end up skydiving right into their worst nightmares. Ending up stranded and tied up on Rook Island, Jason and his friends must try to escape from the crazy people, the insane mercenaries, and the civil war that’s about to break out. All this before they’re sold off to the highest bidder, or killed.
I didn’t play Far Cry 3 when it first came out. I loved all of the original Far Cry games, but Far Cry 2 ruined the series for me. It wasn’t until I watched my friend play this game, and help them with co-op that I decided to sit down with it. I immediately fell in love. Fast forward 6 years later, and I decided to play the Ps4 version of it, and it still holds up amazingly. You play as Jason Brody, who is the only one who managed to get away from the prison camp after being captured. The story is still a high octane joy ride, even from the start, filled with fun characters, even if they are a bit crazy. Like Buck, the fun Australian human trafficker who loves treasures and history. Sure he may be crazy, but he’s a fun little villain during an arc of the story. He’s funny, sinister, relentless. It’s hard not to enjoy his company.
Jason is a stereotypical protagonist honestly. He starts off as a scared little boy, freaking out when he has to kill people or animals, only to turn into a ruthless killing machine. Not even second guessing his decisions to do harm. The game features two different endings as well. The “bad” ending always stood out to me as a weird way to do an ending. If you’ve never seen it, I’m not going to spoil it for you. But I highly recommend you watch it on YouTube after you’ve beaten the game at least once.
The set pieces of the game are insanely exciting to play through as well. From escaping a burning house, to shooting enemies with a grenade launcher off the back of a truck, the fun never stops. But between story and crazy thrill rides, there’s two whole islands to explore. Mind you the second one doesn’t open until you’re about 2/3rds into the story, but that’s fine. The game is an open world adventure that lets you tackle the game in any way you’d like after the tutorial. You can explore the entire first island, collecting treasures, uncovering the map, and taking back compounds from the enemies hands. This is the route I went, and the route I honestly always go.
There is so much to do in the game. From hunting animals to craft bigger equipment that lets you carry more ammo, or explosives, or lets you hold more loot, to doing side quests. There are hunting quests that let you kill rare animals, or take out a wanted pirate. My favourite side quests, if not a bit frustrating, were the medical runs, that see you put in a car, while you race to the end, hitting checkpoints along the way. The main reason it was frustrating though, is because the driving sucks. The cars slide around so much, which kind of makes sense, because everything is a dirt road, but it makes driving more frustrating than it needs to be.
Although there is a good choice of weapons to choose from, I only ever really stuck with a variety of two. A sniper rifle for distance, while I silently picked off enemies in compounds for extra experience, and an SMG that tore through anything that was close to me. My choices ranged from shotguns, to LMGs, to grenade launchers! The best part is that when you explore the map, and uncover it by disabling jammers at the top of radio towers, you unlock weapons for free in the store, as opposed to buying them!
As you complete activities or kill enemies, you get experience. When you level up you end up getting skill points to put into one of three skill trees. There was a point though where I couldn’t unlock any more skills until I advanced the story. But when I could, I unlocked a ton! So I never had to decide what I should get. More health? Or the ability to chain my takedowns for more experience. In this version it’s unfortunate that there’s no co-op, as I really loved the co-op in the original release.
The one annoying thing that happened too much is that I was never sure when the game would actually save after things. The amount of times I had crafted equipment, just to die five minutes later, and have to recollect the materials was annoying. Considering the animals may or may not have been where I originally found them! After upgrading my ammo pouch and getting three extra weapons holsters, I never found myself caring to upgrade anything else, so I never hunted animals after a good eight hours.
Rating
Pros:
- Enjoyable Villains
- Rook Island Is A Joy To Explore
- Tons To Do
Cons:
- No Co-op
- Driving Sucks
- Jason Evolves To A Killing Machine Too Quick
Summary
If you’ve never played Far Cry 3 before, I can’t recommend it enough. It brought me back to the series, and it’s a fun time the whole way through! But if you want co-op, you may need to pull out your old consoles, but the experience was so worth it. Play this game!
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Game & Developer Information
Developer Website: Ubisoft Montreal
Developer Socials: Twitter
Publisher Website: Ubisoft
Publisher Socials: Twitter
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