Dateyourgame: Attila's community blog about Video Game – Walkthrough – Gameplay – Reviews – Tips and Tricks

Far Cry 3 is the latest addition to the series and the question is, is it really a Far Cry proper successor?

It’s a challenging question to answer since the original Far Cry was made by Crytek who now focus on making Crysis series with their own Cry Engine that started it all. So engine wise, since Far Cry 2, the feeling is different from the original Far Cry in nearly all aspect thanks to the Dunia Engine that Ubisoft developped for the game. The only thing similar is the offer of putting you in a wild wide open world with amazing graphical experience and a fast paced action that isn’t extremely realistic but entertaining none the less.

So as you may imagine this new Far Cry 3 is much closer to Far Cry 2 since it’s using the same engine, but that being said, there is very little relation with FarCry 2 story and while Farcry 3 does keep a few gameplay element of FarCry 2 the feeling, the pace, the visual and the interaction with the world all feel different.

That raise the question what is Far Cry 3 about?

Well unlike The original Far Cry and Far Cry 2 your not a Mercenary or a soldier of any kind as you start. Your an innocent White American teenager with rich parent that are living the dream of traveling in a the Pacific island that end up being taken hostage with many of his family and friend after jumping in parachute on a island plagued by pirate, drug, mercenaries, many very weird characters and a war between local native people and the unwanted invaders. In clear you end up in a place that really deserve a far cry for help.

The Weird Main Story

After escaping from the Pirates cages and losing your brother, you are saved by an ex-marine that became part of the native resistance and have the bright idea to put a magical tattoo your arm without asking your opinion about it and as a result this Far Cry 3 Tattoo will grow by itself as you unlock special abilities providing an RPG element to this fps shooter game. So as you can notice right away, the game gets kinda wierd very early on and it gets from weird to very weird. You will meet up plenty of strange character including, a psychopath pirate leader, a drugged doctor that is constantly stone, a leader of the native people that drug you constantly, a questionable CIA agent, a creepy guy that follow you arround and is likely a pervert, a crazy undercover agent that fool people for being a german mercenary and so on. So in clear the story of Far Cry 3 is funny, well acted and extremely well executed with great psychedelic moment. It’s really enjoyable for the first run at it no question about that.

Far Cry 3 an open World to Explore?
While the main story is a great fun Far Cry 3 open world has to offer many smaller scale experience that make the gameplay evolve into many smaller games that can result in facilitating your experience. So you can climb many radio tower to reveal map part with the content that you can loot around it. You can clear small Pirates and Mercenaries camp that then get claimed by the native and these will allow you to fast travel to a location and rearm yourself there. You can play poker, do many small side missions, some weapons challenge with high score shared with your friends. There are also many items to find around the huge map that will give you experience as a result as well as a limited story around the object that may interest a few peoples. There is also a wide variety of random event and encounter as you move around the map that can be entertaining in some occasion.

Are Side mission that important?

That being said you are under no obligation to play the side missions and if you actually finish the game story, there is very little interest in continuing to explore the world. The more enemy camp you clear, the less enemies you will find. The random items don’t really provide much information worth searching for. The random encounter become quickly meaningless because of an AI that aim very badly and a stealth system that is over generous toward the player independently of the difficulty level. So in clear. Far Cry 3 offer an amazingly big environment, that doesn’t provide much long terms entertainment once you getting out of the main story. Some people may compare it to a first person shooter skyrim experience but it’s certainly doesn’t have the dept or the story that skyrim provide around the main quest. This mean that other then the main story you will mostly have to create your own form of entertainment if you want to continue to play with the same character, because it’s a game design in a way where, the more stuff you do, the less stuff there is to do or the more worthless the remaining stuff that you can do is.

Can you finally feed you hunter ambitions?

Far Cry 3 also offered a lot of attention around the wild life on the island and many people ended up dreaming about random encounter with Tigers, Sharks and all these very dangerous creatures. Well Far Cry 3 does offer some good Hunting and Wild life can end up offering some originally fun moment. At the same time wild life is extremely common all over the place. As a result by the end of the game seing a Tiger won’t be much of a excitement and killing an animal becomes quickly banal experience even when you don’t really need to kill them. The only need for killing animal is to make bags and that kind of stuff that allow you to have more weapons ammo and that kind of stuff and kinda raise the question about why can’t you buy these instead of having to feel like a psychopath killing everything that move to skin them with a huge machete that make you feel like a savage from the stone age.

Is it all about money in a pirate infested island?
Speaking of buying something, as you move arround you find money in random box and you can loot dead bodies to find a wide variety of items that you can then sell. While it could be an enjoyable experience to loot the entire place, you rarely find much money and most items you find have no physical representation or use in the world other then being sold for very little money. As a result looting dead body is time consuming and doesn’t pay of much but even if it did pay more the result would not change much to the gameplay of Far Cry 3 since nearly all items get unlocked by the story, the money then become a very limited way to improve the guns or buy special guns. For the most part it’s to buy a good ammo refill and maybe some map part for convenience not that you really need it. In the and the economic element of Far Cry 3 is extremely limited and without much value compare to the time it may take you accumulate the amount that could help you. As a result you may very well no longer bother to search for money toward the end since it’s not particularly usefull once you have the loadout you like.

In the End is it worth it?!?
To conclude, ahhh Far Cry 3 Far Cry 3 Far Cry 3… It’s a game with an amazing technology that provide a very well design gameplay that offer very entertaining moment fill with a great randomness. The Main story is very well executed with very good characters development. While offering an open world the fun element remain focus on the linear experience of the main story and while side missions are present they are rarely worth exploring other then for a few more xp point that you can live very well without. Far Cry 3 is a game that is worth getting if you want an entertaining singleplayer experience but once you are done with the main story the interest fade away quickly. Fortunatly at 49$ at release it’s reasonably priced compare to more expensive fps that cost more, if you download Far Cry 3 it’s 10 gig, so it may be worth it to get it on DVD if you have a slow internet other wise Steam is a fine way to download Far Cry 3 from online purchase.

Note concerning the Multiplayer and Coop:
The game use Uplay a practical system when it comes to keep up to date you games and is fairly similar in term of functionality with Steam, raising the question, why do we need that? The game also use ports used by servers that should NEVER be used by GAMES, so I’m literally unable to even try multiplayer. This is a MAJOR and very BAD game breaking element of this game that simply can’t be justified and probably explain how dead are Ubisoft games in multiplayer on PC. Ubisoft is an amazingly talented company that keep messing up the Multiplayer element of it’s games on PC and Far Cry 3 for PC once again didn’t fail at frustrating me on that aspect. Far Cry 3 for xbox 360 and on play station 3 network may not have that issue, but farcry 3 on PC could have easily avoided that by allowing to choose custom port of using a tunneling system.

My ongoing walk through / adventures in the game Far Cry 2 for the pc. Enjoy!

Far Cry 2 …even though i haven’t played the original that much i can see that these 2 games are a sequel in name only.

Far Cry 2 is definetly one of those games that literally requires you too SHOOT everyone…no seriously I mean it everyone that isn’t in A ) a house , B)one of the people you talk to ,WANT’S to kill you…it has to make you wonder….how the hell does everyone know that they NEED to shoot you it just doesn’t make sense and just by the fact it makes you wonder…is there any story to this killing of hundreds of black and white people …Why yes yes there is.

You get to choose one of several characters that mainly serve for looks but its still nice to have a bit of an option. You enter an unnamed country in Africa that is like probably the rest in a state of chaos and war with 2 rivaling factions going at each other’s throats like dogs but your not here cause of them your here for the Jackal a mysterious arms dealer that cant seem to be captured unless he wants to .Oh and lets not forget you also have Malaria so you will need to try and find medication through out the game Malaria will rarely appear but you don’t want to be caught with it in the middle of a gunfight do you ?

SO… what does one need as a mercenary thats hunting a mysterious figure ? Guns ,guns and MORE GUNS (insert small sample of killing people and blowing stuff up here in video)…why do you need them cause just as mentioned before EVERYTHING wants to kill you cause pretty much everything has a gun with them…and thats why its always a good idea to use the flamethrower and burn them….as well as sometimes the environment.

You have to buy most new guns since the ones you get from enemy’s are used,dirty and will often jam and if overused break down all together ,you pay for the guns in diamonds and there are only 2 ways to get them work as a gun for hire or try to find them …although the first option is more preferable since you’ll only find 1 or 2 in each brief case and rarely 3 but its sometimes good to try your treasure finding skills since the game has an interesting way of trying to find them sometimes just trying to find them is a reward by itself .Before I forget to you have to buy the weapons from a Arms Dealer that when your not on a mission he can give you a mission that will unlock some new toys to purchase you can also purchase upgrades such as manuals to increase accuracy on certain weapons or getting certain equipment that increases ammunition storage for certain weapon types.

Why is it a reward by itself to explore you ask well thats simple the game’s world just feels stunning and great and full of life as tree’s and grass go gently with the breeze ,during the daytime its preferable to use the boat since those pesky checkpoints are a lot more rare on the river and its just relaxing to drive the boat through the jungle with the sun up atop at some points I wished I was there so i could take a nap cause the environment seems peaceful…and trust me when I say this if you have a computer that can run the highest setting set it to that cause I have been playing the game one medium setting and it SIMPLY looks gorgeous ,the animation is fluid ,everything resembles a living breathing Africa…well if you take away the part where factions do war with each other …well anyways back to the topic at hand the game also comes with a nice array of vehicles but you’ll find yourself useing technicals since having a mounted gun for protection is always an option..the game could have profit more from a more quicker and safer traveling system such as an instant jump to a location if your in a vehicle but the games environments more then makes up for traveling through the dangerous checkpoints where the africans shoot at you on sight.

If you get shot and lose a lot of health and your on your last line of blood you can preform a quick self surgery…viewer discretion is advised though ,and patch yourself up ,in case you DO fall in battle an addition to what makes the games realism better and keeps the game less frustrating is the buddy system basically if you have a buddy thats rescue ready you will always get a second chance at the battle and he will support you and drag you away from the hot zone but not to far of course.
But die a second time after that and your done for. The vehicles in the game handle great you’ll find yourself mostly using the technical a vehicle with a mounted gun since it will probably offer a lot more protection from the random encounters of other patrolling technicals and yes I forgot to mention this early .There are also gliders which will at times definetly give you a nice view of the surroundings some of them can be found at safe houses the games besides towns ONLY safe locations there you can go and get some sleep and make sure that some time passes since the game has a 24 hour day night cycle which translates from day to sunrise to night very smoothly at times you will hardly notice that the sun is going down until the environment looks a bit orange but its always nice to have a look at it.

One of the things you will see most of are explosions and FIRE fire adds realism and danger to the environment it can scare off enemy’s ,you can light a whole field of grass and watch it burn fire will also catch on fire..he he other building and object to and it will char everything just like in real life another cool deatil is is that you can light or shoot the cannisters where ammo or rockets and grenades are stashed and they will blow up and probably kill some people if they are close its always fun to watch this firework go off even if you didn’t shoot it intentionally.

The games MP is most seen is in the map creator you can create nearly any kind of map go to the site to see the crazy map editor trailer for the game …damn it sure did impress me I mean someone made the pyramids and Venice like maps…thats really impressive in the video you see here I tried my own hand a bit the map still isn’t finished but its for demonstration purposes only so far.

Overall Far Cry 2 is a fine looking and fine working game and with its map creator tool its a creative one too….even though all you do is kill people and torch things but that only adds to the fun
and after all you are a mercenary ,and if you like any games where you are a mercenary and blow shit up then this game is a must buy .

Pros:
-beautiful environments and fluid animations
-intense combat and fun weapons
-approaching your targets any way you want is fun
-and it has a crazy map editor
Cons
-could have been better with a quicker travel system
-AI simply shoots only you the 2 different factions never seem to be fighting each other
-getting shot by everyone gets annoying especially since there are a lot of checkpoints on the roads