Developed by Ubisoft Montreal
Published by Ubisoft
Released for Xbox 360 (12/2012)
Also on PC/PS3/PS4/X1
Backwards Compatible on Xbox One
Four years after Far Cry 2, Ubisoft released the third entry in the series in December 2012. Ubisoft Montreal took the open-ended nature of the second game and went all-out with it this time, dropping the player onto a giant set of islands and letting you explore at your own will. The island is massive and many dangers await, including hostile enemies and a large variety of wild animals. Far Cry 3 received positive reviews back in 2012 from both critics and gamers alike, so let's take a fresh look at the game and see how it holds up after all these years.
Far Cry 3 starts off with the main character, a dude named Jason Brody from Los Angeles, with his friends on vacation in Bangkok. When they decide to partake in some skydiving, the group makes the mistake of landing on a an island with a severe pirate problem. Soon after they are captured and taken prisoner by Vaas, a pirate-lord on the island.
There will be spoilers in the following paragraph, so if you haven't played the game yet you may want to skip to the next paragraph. Far Cry 3 is without a doubt a worthwhile gaming experience, though the game is far from perfect. The main storyline uses the "white man shows up to save the natives" trope that we've seen before in movies like Dances with Wolves or the Last Samurai, and while it works well enough to give you a reason to shoot people it all feels a bit contrived. The main character is a generic "dude bro" guy (though he is from Cali to be fair) and it's quite a stretch to think he's the one carrying out the player's actions. Jason's group of friends that are stuck on the island with him aren't particularly likable either. It's not a game-breaker, but you'll likely find yourself more interested in the villains and side-characters than the main ones, which leads me to feel that the game could have benefited from a silent protagonist. The most interesting of the bad guys, Vaas, who is also the guy featured on the game's cover-art, is taken out about halfway through the game, causing the campaign to lose some steam in the second act, due partly to the fact that repetition starts to settle in but also because Hoyt and Buck (the other 2 villains in the game) are nowhere near as interesting as Vaas. Despite a somewhat cliché story and a non-charismatic hero, Far Cry 3 still manages to throw the player into an interesting world that is a blast to explore.
Far Cry 3 was a great looking game on high-end PCs back when it came out. While the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports were watered-down in the graphics and performance department, the game still looked good when stacked against others on the respective platforms and delivered a solid open-world experience. The Rook Islands, the setting of the game, makes a good use of bright, vibrant colors in an era where most games were obsessed with using darker palletes. To help the world feel even more alive, there is a day and night cycle and even the occasional rainfall. Far Cry 3 also boasts some impressive fire effects, with an awesome flamethrower that can spread out and cause some serious damage.
In addition to the already mentioned flamethrower, Far Cry 3 features a large variety of weapons to choose from and is quite a step up when compared to earlier entries in the series. There's a nice range of assault rifles, submachine guns, sniper rifles, handguns, machine guns, shotguns, launchers and special weapons to choose from, allowing you to mix up your encounters by switching up your arsenal (since you can only carry a few weapons at a time). This was the first Far Cry title to feature the awesome Vector .45 ACP, an awesome submachine gun with a high rate of fire that has been featured in every game in the series after this one (with the exception of Far Cry Primal of course, which doesn't feature firearms). Special weapons include the flamethrower, flare gun, repair tool (used to fix vehicles) and the recurve bow. Also new to the Far Cry franchise is the weapon customization, which allows you add stuff like extended magazines, suppressors, scopes and even paint jobs. There are also signature versions of select weapons available, which come decked out with accessories and are definitely a step-up from the vanilla version of that gun. Far Cry 3 does a great job providing a wide variety of weaponry to play around with and was a big improvement when compared to the previous games.
One of the coolest features of Far Cry 2 was the inclusion of wildlife and Far Cry 3 brings it back, offering a nice variety of animals you'll come across while exploring the Rook Islands. There's over 20 different types of animals, ranging from boars, cougars, bears, deer to snakes, crocodiles and fish. The more aggressive animals will attack you on sight, so you'll always have to be mindful of them as you move about. The plus side to this is that the animals will also attack any other bystanders, allowing you to easily take out enemies without any direct involvement. Enemy outposts (more on these later) will frequently feature caged animals and it's always fun to release these beasts upon their captors. The animals in Far Cry 3 really add an extra element to the game that help set it apart from your average open-world game of the time.
Most open-world titles have a skill tree of some sort and Far Cry 3 is no exception. There's a large skill tree that will allow you to unlock a bevy of different perks. There are survival perks for improved sprinting, first-aid enhancement, underwater breath control and health boosts. There are weapon perks for stuff like steady aim, holding more ammo and quicker reloads. There's also a nice variety of perks to help with stealth encounters including several new takedowns. The chained takedown is definitely a favorite, allowing you to link your takedowns when there's another guy in close proximity, making quick work out of unaware groups.The perks do a good job adding a sense of progression to the game as you get stronger the more you progress.
Besides the standard campaign missions, there's quite a bit to do while killing time in the Rook Islands. Almost as important as the story missions are the radio towers and outposts. Radio towers are scattered all around the islands and will unlock more of the map for you to see when unlocked. Radio towers must be scaled, which will require some platforming, and once the power box at the top is destroyed another chunk of the map will be unveiled, revealing points of interest and nearby outposts. The outposts are enemy encampments that can be found across the map that will grant you a spot you can fast travel to on the map once you clear them out. Clearing enemy outposts is always some of the best fun in Far Cry titles, allowing you to choose from a variety of tactics to take care of business. If you want to go in guns blazing you can, but I always find it more fun to try and sneak about to clear the outpost undetected. Once a tower or outpost has been cleared, that location will be available to fast travel to from the map menu. There are alarms that can be disabled if your sneaky, but if the enemy sees you and activates the alarm then you'll have to fight against additional reinforcements. While the towers with their platforming aren't really anything special, the outposts are easily a highlight and among the most fun you'll have with the game.
In addition to the outposts and radio towers, there are several other types of side-quests you'll unlock as you clear the outposts. None of these missions are required to complete the game, but they will get you some nice XP and rewards. There are general side missions where you assist the locals, path of the hunter quests, supply drops, trials and wanted dead missions, so there's no shortage of extra stuff to do here. Most of these are just your standard "go here and get or kill this" type of missions, but there's a little variety. Supply drops have you racing on a quad, trying to reach a destination before a time limit runs out. Path of the hunter quests will have you seeking revenge on animals that have killed some of the locals. The side-missions add a decent amount of variety and will grant you some nice XP if you choose to take them on.
The control layout in Far Cry 3 utilizes all of the buttons on the pad, but once you become accommodated it works well enough. The Y button serves two functions, which at first I thought would be problematic. Pressing the button will switch weapons while holding it will heal your character. I warmed up to this rather fast and it really wasn't an issue. The weapon wheel, a common thing in modern shooter games, works good and it's easy to switch up your arsenal on the fly. Aiming and shooting with the weapons feels good, which is of course very important in a shooter. When driving, the game forces a first-person mode which helps a bit with immersion but takes some getting used to. Later on in the game, you'll obtain the wingsuit which allows you to glide around, making traversal much quicker. The controls in Far Cry 3 are solid and it shouldn't take long to get used to the layout, as it's not all that different from your standard first-person shooter.
There are some other negatives to the game besides the already mentioned story/character issues. The missions leading up to the boss fights are fun, but when you actually go head-to-head with them it tends to result in a quick-time event, which was a bit of a let-down to me, though I'm sure some people don't mind or enjoy these. Also, some of the boundaries imposed on you while your on missions feel a bit restrictive, taking away from the open-world aspect of the game. Looting dead enemies can be a pain due to the fact that they drop their weapons on the ground next to their body, making it difficult to select whether you want to loot the body or swap weapons since both actions are assigned to the same button. The fall damage is way too unforgiving, with Jason losing several bars for dropping what feels like a few feet and death coming from falls way too easily. There is a perk you can unlock to help reduce the fall damage, but even after unlocking that I still found the fall damage far too exaggerated. These gripes are all rather minor and aren't enough to stop Far Cry 3 from being an enjoyable experience.
It's also worth noting that Far Cry 3 features a few additional modes, which include a co-op campaign and map editor. The co-op campaign allows for 2-4 players to team up against the pirates. The co-op campaign's story takes place before the vanilla campaign and it involves the featured characters being scammed out of their money while on a cruise ship. The action picks up when the crew decide to attack the pirates that stole from them. The co-op campaign features 6 missions, with an additional 2 that were released exclusively for PlayStation 3 which were obtained through the Ubisoft Club (which would later turn into Uplay). The co-op campaign was a bit rough around the edges but was still fun to play. These days you'll likely have a hard time finding random players and would have to coordinate a session with friends if you wanted to play it. There was also a map editor, which was quite a bit more advanced than what we'd seen in previous entries, allowing you to place enemy AI and wildlife with options for editing the terrain. There was enough to let your imagination let loose a bit, so kudos to the developers for including both the co-op campaign and map editors as nice bonus features.
While the earlier Far Cry games were good, the series really found its stride with Far Cry 3, establishing the formula that every game after it would follow. While the gameplay tasks can be a bit repetitive, the gameplay loop in Far Cry 3 is enjoyable enough that it was always fun to dig back in and continue exploring. The Xbox 360 port really struggles to keep a steady 30 FPS, usually averaging around 25 FPS and dipping even lower when there's a lot of action on-screen. It doesn't make the game un-playable by any means, but if you have a decent PC you can probably get this game running smoother and looking quite a bit nicer than these old console ports. In addition to an inconsistent frame-rate, both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ports both suffer from screen-tearing, which is quite easy to notice but at the same time many games of this era had the same problem. While not the most optimal way to play Far Cry 3, the Xbox 360 port is still a fun game if you have no alternative way to visit the Rook Islands.
Final Verdict: Far Cry 3 is a fun open-world experience with a colorful tropical environment to explore. There's a lot to do here and while the Xbox 360 port doesn't have the best frame-rate, the game is still a blast.
Purchase Links:
Buy Far Cry 3 (Digtial) on Xbox 360 - Microsoft Store
Buy Far Cry 3 (Disc) on Xbox 360 - eBay
Buy Far Cry 3 Classic (Digital) on Xbox One - Microsoft Store
Buy Far Cry Insanity Bundle (Digital) on Xbox One - Microsoft Store
Buy Far Cry 3 Classic Edition (Disc) on Xbox One - eBay
Related Links:
Ubisoft Montreal - Official Site
Ubisoft - Official Site
Far Cry 3 - GameFAQs
Far Cry 3 Xbox 360/PS3 Frame-Rate Analysis - Digital Foundry
Far Cry 3 - True Achievements
Far Cry 3 Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
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