[sub][sub](It took an act of will to resist calling this thread "So close, yet so Far Cry 3".)[/sub][/sub]
Far Cry 3 can basically be summed up as "what you would get if The Elder Scrolls was a shooter on a pacific island." You have a great big wide open island with tons of sidequests and challenges and main story missions if you really must. You are given some guns and then you jog across the land shooting everything that looks at you funny.
It's a kind of antithesis to those linear corridor shooters you always hear people complaining about. You are free to choose you objectives and your approach. You can hunt animals with a bow, silently stalk enemies with a knife, or charge around with a machine gun and flamethrower.
The world is lively and colourful. It's the only open world game I can remember where I avoid fast-traveling everywhere because traversing the map can be interesting in its own right.
That's the "so close" part. Now for the "yet so far".
The story is shit. You run around rescuing your non-character friends (they each get literally five seconds of screen time before being kidnapped) while a bunch of numbskulls yammer on about "the path of the warrior" with painfully straight faces. It plays out like a movie made by a pack of LARPers armed with a video camera. It is however somewhat redeemed by the fact that you get to meet some very fun and colourful characters along the way. Yes, Vaas, the "definition of insanity" guy, is a complete riot.
Despite being a FPS, they decided to go with a talking protagonist. Cool with me. Sadly, they also made him sound like the biggest pussy in history. Don't ask me how, but he manages to come across as a complete wet towel even as he guns down pirates with one hand and wrestles a shark with the other.
The game is piss easy. Yes, even on the hardest settings. And that's coming from someone who really isn't particularly good at games. If you've ever played a FPS before then you will blow through FC3 with one hand tied behind your back. The vast majority of enemies present little more than an annoyance and you essentially have endless health kits. (When you run out of kits, you can still heal, it just takes a second longer.)
The map design suffers from the same problem as most open world games. In order to produce a huge explorable area the designers are forced to spread their attention painfully thin. As a result, nothing feels crafted or unique. It all just feel the same, endless iterations on the same few trees, shrubs and tin shacks rearranged in slightly different but equally forgettable ways.
The weapons are, well... the exact same weapons you see every where else. A few pistols that go "pop pop". A bunch of SMGs/LMGs/ARs that spray bullets at whatever you point them at. A couple of shotguns, a couple of sniper rifles... blah-de-blah. Neither interesting, inventive or particularly satisfying to use. The only notable standout is the flamethrower.
Coupled with the dull weapons is a complete dearth of enemy variety. You have animals that try to bite you and guys in red shirts that try to shoot you. That's it. Bugger all variation in behaviour or abilities.
Thus we come to the game's big weakness. For all its openness and options, you spend half your time shooting a boring weapon at a guy in a red shirt or an animal trying to bite you. The other half is spent travelling to specific locations so when you get there you can shoot guys in red shirts or animals trying to bite you.
Far Cry 3, I want to love you, but you're a one trick pony and it's a trick we've all seen a thousand times before.
Far Cry 3 can basically be summed up as "what you would get if The Elder Scrolls was a shooter on a pacific island." You have a great big wide open island with tons of sidequests and challenges and main story missions if you really must. You are given some guns and then you jog across the land shooting everything that looks at you funny.
It's a kind of antithesis to those linear corridor shooters you always hear people complaining about. You are free to choose you objectives and your approach. You can hunt animals with a bow, silently stalk enemies with a knife, or charge around with a machine gun and flamethrower.
The world is lively and colourful. It's the only open world game I can remember where I avoid fast-traveling everywhere because traversing the map can be interesting in its own right.
That's the "so close" part. Now for the "yet so far".
The story is shit. You run around rescuing your non-character friends (they each get literally five seconds of screen time before being kidnapped) while a bunch of numbskulls yammer on about "the path of the warrior" with painfully straight faces. It plays out like a movie made by a pack of LARPers armed with a video camera. It is however somewhat redeemed by the fact that you get to meet some very fun and colourful characters along the way. Yes, Vaas, the "definition of insanity" guy, is a complete riot.
Despite being a FPS, they decided to go with a talking protagonist. Cool with me. Sadly, they also made him sound like the biggest pussy in history. Don't ask me how, but he manages to come across as a complete wet towel even as he guns down pirates with one hand and wrestles a shark with the other.
The game is piss easy. Yes, even on the hardest settings. And that's coming from someone who really isn't particularly good at games. If you've ever played a FPS before then you will blow through FC3 with one hand tied behind your back. The vast majority of enemies present little more than an annoyance and you essentially have endless health kits. (When you run out of kits, you can still heal, it just takes a second longer.)
The map design suffers from the same problem as most open world games. In order to produce a huge explorable area the designers are forced to spread their attention painfully thin. As a result, nothing feels crafted or unique. It all just feel the same, endless iterations on the same few trees, shrubs and tin shacks rearranged in slightly different but equally forgettable ways.
The weapons are, well... the exact same weapons you see every where else. A few pistols that go "pop pop". A bunch of SMGs/LMGs/ARs that spray bullets at whatever you point them at. A couple of shotguns, a couple of sniper rifles... blah-de-blah. Neither interesting, inventive or particularly satisfying to use. The only notable standout is the flamethrower.
Coupled with the dull weapons is a complete dearth of enemy variety. You have animals that try to bite you and guys in red shirts that try to shoot you. That's it. Bugger all variation in behaviour or abilities.
Thus we come to the game's big weakness. For all its openness and options, you spend half your time shooting a boring weapon at a guy in a red shirt or an animal trying to bite you. The other half is spent travelling to specific locations so when you get there you can shoot guys in red shirts or animals trying to bite you.
Far Cry 3, I want to love you, but you're a one trick pony and it's a trick we've all seen a thousand times before.
