Musings on... Far Cry 3

Far Cry 3 was released late in 2012 by Ubisoft to good reviews from the press, but it's certainly an oddity, and seems to have problems deciding on what it actually is. What I can tell you for definite is that it's a first-person shooter on a tropical island. Other than that though...

This may be one of the strangest games I've reviewed on here yet. Not in the way that Hotline Miami or Driver: San Francisco were weird, but more in that it's incredibly divided. The crux of the problem is that it attempts to splice a 100% linear story into a huge, beautiful, brilliant open world. Unfortunately it's done in the most heavy handed and annoying way possible, and really ends up being detrimental to the experience.



On the one hand, the island itself is a fantastic place to explore, packed full of wildlife and with plenty of enemies to hunt or kill. It truly is wide-open. Travelling around it is fun, with driving being done in first person and hand gliders all over the place letting you soar across huge swathes of land, taking pretty screenshots as you go.

The exploration is really good, and in general the outposts that litter the island are actually the most fun parts of the game, as they give you the option of attacking them however you want, from any possible angle. In that aspect it harkens back to the original Crysis, or even Far Cry 2, which took a similar sensibility in regards to its own checkpoints.

The amount of skills on offer to level up your character (of course it has skill progression) is impressive as well. These skills vary widely, from standard increases in health, to letting you throw an enemy's grenade after you mêlée kill them.

On the other hand, however, is the story. First off the voice acting is generally superb, and Vaas, the main bad guy for at least part of the story, is a really fun character to interact with. Unfortunately everything else about it is terrible. Completely scripted events take away any kind of player agency, as you just walk through set-pieces, being ambushed multiple times by a lone dude, despite having just mown down a hundred of his buddies 30 seconds ago.

The story itself is generally nonsensical and seems forced, not helped of course by the player not being allowed to make any decisions for themselves. You're there to have your character's motivations and thoughts explained to you, not left to make the choices for yourself. After the recent release of games like Spec Ops: The Line this is an enormous step in the opposite direction. Comparing it to Spec Ops may be a little unfair, as it is admittedly exceedingly difficult to craft a story that finely for an audience which is used to more standard shooter fair. Unfortunately the story is in fact also the only real way to unlock new skills - most of them are gated off until you hit a specific mission point. Yes, this is ridiculous and also sort of cheating, as it forces you to play through their mediocre story just to have fun in the non-linear parts.

The dichotomy between open world and linear story is insanely aggravating, and the frequent 'Don't leave the mission area' messages feel a little like a slap in the face when you're given a freaking hand glider to go wherever you want with. (This gets worse in the second half but I won't spoil why). It's a massive step back from Far Cry 2 as well. Even if you hated that game, it certainly did missions in an open world right.

When the missions do give you a little more freedom, they can actually be extremely entertaining. The weapons all feel weighty and fun to use, and the amount on offer generally allows for any play-style you could want. Fights aren't as deadly or tense as they should be however, as it seems like it's quite difficult to actually lose one unless you're either hopelessly outnumbered or in a terrible position.

Perhaps the key way of thinking about this game is that it's a power fantasy, whereas Far Cry 2 was a weakness fantasy (if that exists). This game wants you to feel like a badass, and generally it does a good job. But its other contender for 'open world game with a linear story set on an island which is also a power fantasy' is Crysis, and it doesn't compare favourably. If you cut out the last third or so of Crysis, it's a fantastic game. If you cut out all of the linear bits of Far Cry 3, it would be at least as good. As it is, however, it just feels like the developers didn't know what kind of game they wanted to make, so they tried to make everything at once. It's a problem you can see in the Assassin's Creed series, and it's a real shame because you expect to be given so much more freedom than it allows you to have.

I'm not sure whether or not to recommend this game to be honest with you. When I did my games of the year awards I put it down as runner up for best game of the year, but now I have a feeling I might have been wrong about it. It's very, very good in a lot of ways, but the linearity of the main missions is so subtractive that the further I got into it, the worse it became. This might be because I was trying to hammer through the story for review (and I still didn't quite manage to reach the end because of a stupid bloody escort mission) but considering that the story missions make up at least half of the game, it can't really be ignored. So - a recommendation, but maybe wait until it's a bit cheaper before you buy it.

Also, the multiplayer is fine if nothing particularly new.

Also, also, the decision to get rid of the hand-held map is the worst decision in the game, and pulls you out of the game so much it's unreal.