So after however many months I’ve finally finished Far Cry 3. And my what a ride it’s been. Far Cry 3 is an open world first person shooter, released in November 2012 (so quite a while ago now). As always, there will be spoilers.
You play Jason Brody, a man who while out on vacation with a group of friends, parachutes down onto an island infested with 
pirates. You are captured by Vaas – a psychotic madman and leader of the pirates – but you manage to escape and it is up to you to become a warrior and save your friends from their fates. I won’t go through the entire storyline cos it’s really fricking long, but that’s the general idea.
You’re thrown right into this story, there’s no messing around, just wham and you’re sat in a slavery pen with Vaas staring through the bars at you. It is very intense, the story really drags you through at an incredible pace and I could barely put down the controller for a good week or so as I attempted to play through not only the story line but also the surrounding world – extra quests, competitions, loot chests etc. The goal is to become a Rakyat warrior, the inhabitants of the island who have been fighting against Vaas and his pirates for many years. You have three skill trees to level up in, and a tattoo on your arm that reflects your progress. Aside from the actual story you also have to kill animals and use their hides to craft new equipment, there’s random side quests to kill certain pirates with a knife, driving competitions with fellow players, all sorts of stuff.
There is, arguably, too much stuff. And this is the main reason people criticised Far Cry 3 because while I can find little negative with this game, the sheer amount of stuff to complete in the open world is ridiculous and frankly boring. The storyline itself you could probably finish in a few hours if you really went for it, but with all the extra bits it goes on for days and days and begins to feel ridiculously repetitive. Even the animation that happens when you loot a dead body (it takes perhaps 5 seconds) becomes absolutely infuriating after the 50 millionth time it happens.
It starts off fun, you have to try and work out ways of infiltrating places, taking people down without being spotted, decide what skills you want to level up. And then you get better and better, and it just gets really boring.
I feel like I’m giving the wrong impression about this game – it is absolutely amazing, perhaps one of the best I’ve played and certainly has one of the best bad guys I’ve come across aside from maybe Handsome Jack in Borderlands 2. Even though it can get a little boring, the characters, the open world, the plot, it’s all this fantastic heady mix that keeps you completely absorbed. Let me delve into a few reasons why this is absolutely fantastic.
Let’s start with Vaas, because he’s a pretty major part of the whole game. He is cruel, mad, childlike, oddly handsome (maybe it’s the mohawk. Or the accent…) and completely and utterly ruthless. He sells slaves and drugs, kills for sport and he has an absolute hatred of Jason Brody. Some of his dialogue, delivered in a slightly sing song tone, is mesmerising, especially the repeated phrase “have I told you what the definition of insanity is?” Until you’ve played the game, you won’t be able to grasp how fascinating this character is, and he is a constant source of wonder every time he appears on screen.
Other characters, such as Buck Rogers, represent perfectly how mad this island is. He buys young men from Vaas and uses them until he gets bored. Buck feels absolutely no remorse for his actions, because the island not only allows them but actively facilitates them. Some of Buck’s dialogue is surprisingly funny, as you must work with him in order to retrieve one of your friends from Buck’s grasp. A small thing that annoyed me with this was how easily the story got past the friend being kept as a sex slave by Buck – you get the friend out and, though the friend takes a few minutes, he’s back to normal pretty much immediately with no discussion or break down or anything. It’s more a sort of “well that happened, back to normal now!” I know it wouldn’t exactly make for pleasant gameplay but actually very little of Far Cry 3 is innocent.
The fighting itself is very clever, and the options are numerous when it comes to weapons or techniques. You can essentially be a 
tank with a machine gun, a sniper with long range, an assassin using just a knife, or you could just go with the flamethrower and incinerate everything. I preferred the knife most of the time, sitting and working out how to take down a group of four pirates without them noticing, hiding the bodies, throwing rocks to distract guards, it’s all quite a lot of fun. You also pick up abilities like a multiple take down or being able to pull the pin of a grenade while it’s in the pocket of a pirate and then kick the poor guy into a group of his friends. It’s all about being creative.
The open world is very well done, with you being able to explore pretty much everything, with caves and rivers galore. Some of it begins to look the same but they have paid a lot of attention to the scenery and how you interact with it. Something the creators didn’t pay as much attention to however was the NPCs that you come across. They all look the same. I mean, I know every single person can’t look different or it would take years to develop a game, but please have more than three faces for the masses.
Something that is a little annoying is how many drug trips you go on. People blow drugs into your face, you eat random things you probably shouldn’t, and go absolutely mad. It’s infuriating because you have no idea what is happening or why you’re doing it. I understand the idea, you’re experiencing the insanity of the island first hand, you wonder if this is how people like Vaas experience everything he does. But I’m not really a fan, especially as it decides to trip you out when you’re doing a really important part of the storyline so you don’t really know if you’ve done what you’ve just done or dreamt it. Also, when you wake, there’s usually someone tattooing you, which is just weird.
Here come the big SPOILERS.
Something I think was an oversight on behalf of the creators, and what made the game as a whole really lose momentum for me, was the point at which you kill Vaas. I understand why you, Jason, would hate Vaas and wish to wipe him off the face of the planet. He’s ripped apart your family, made you become something you don’t necessarily want to be, and generally he isn’t a very nice man. But once he’s dead you’ve still got a whole chunk of plot to complete, going after another man who you’ve had no interactions with so far and someone who I as the player don’t really care about. Hoyt as a character is nowhere near as developed as Vaas is, he doesn’t really seem crazy, and your interactions with him are limited. Everything I did from killing Vaas to finally meeting Hoyt was boring, unnecessary and simply so that I could get the achievement at the end. Vaas was the reason I was fighting, ending his life was the entire point of the game, and yet there’s still a huge chunk of the game after that point. Vaas is on the cover of the game for crying out loud – he’s the poster boy for the entire marketing campaign. Jason Brody’s face doesn’t get a look in.
The ending itself was pretty pants. I saw it coming a mile off, and Citra annoyed me intensely. I chose to kill my friends, simply because I’d already seen the alternative ending, but the whole thing was just poor. It’s a shame really, considering how good the first section of the game is.
Conclusion? Play it. Seriously, it’s awesome. If you don’t like blood, drugs, sex etc etc then maybe avoid. But otherwise, PLAY IT.
northernfool 