Review Scores: 9.0
Far Cry 3's intelligent and elegant open-world structure balances
exciting action with the joys of free-form adventuring, making it one of
the best shooters of the year.
Far Cry 3 is a delightful and harsh tropical wonderland, crawling with
wildlife and threatened by the pirates and drug runners that disrupt its
peace. The troubled paradise you explore is colorful and wild, enticing
you to investigate its ravines and discover new ways to enjoy the
open-world playground sprawling in front of you. This is a game that
ignites the desire to complete every last challenge and check out every
last icon on your map. You gradually journey across the entirety of two
sunny and sinful islands, hunting for rare game, speeding medicine to
needy communities, and skinning sharks so that you might craft new
wallets with their hides. Far Cry 3 is an excellent game, marred mainly
by some irritating design elements and an inconsistent story that often
defaults to generic "tribal" cliches to make an impact.
When the story leaves those cliches behind for deeper territory,
however, it does manage to communicate ideas of substance. It takes many
hours for its themes to come together in a coherent way--yet in certain
aspects, the incoherence makes sense. As protagonist Jason Brody, your
initial quest to rescue your friends from a chaotic and truly frightful
pirate named Vaas turns into a personal journey blurred by drugs, and
fueled by the desire to follow a new and exciting spiritual path. Those
friends are too shallow for you to care much about them, which keeps the
story at arm's length for a good half of the game. But his friends'
shallowness ultimately allows Jason to take a guilt-free look inward, as
he grows further mesmerized by the customs of the local Rakyat tribe
that takes him under its wing. You might see the narrative curveballs
coming after a while, but the trippy manner in which certain events
unfold effectively blurs the lines between reality and Jason's
occasionally drug-addled imagination.
Nonetheless, narrative oddities stand out. Some of Jason's friends are
strangely unaffected by the horrors inflicted upon them. The game
quickly glosses over an event that would make most of us emotional
wrecks, making Jason's proclamations that the issue was harder to deal
with than he expected ring hollow. Some moments seem made to be shocking
for the sake of shock alone--not because they develop the world or its
characters--but Far Cry 3 isn't so much about story as it is about its
world, and the ways you exploit it for your own personal enjoyment.
Story missions have you navigating caves and holding off enemies in
modern shooter fashion, but out in the wild, you have an entire paradise
to tame.
And it's that lush and menacing world that makes Far Cry 3 utterly enthralling. The game is big, certainly, but where Far Cry 2
could feel aimless, its sequel feels more focused without ever losing
its sandbox appeal. One core activity may sound familiar to returning
fans: you shoot up enemy outposts so that you may liberate them, turning
them into safe zones where you can load up on ammo and other supplies.
These camps also serve as quick-travel points, lessening the tedium of
driving from one objective to the next. Early on, freeing an outpost can
be remarkably easy: you shoot down a handful of pirates, and the flag
is raised declaring the camp as the Rakyat's. Further in, however, you
must put Far Cry 3's diverse possibilities to intelligent use.
One consideration: you must be aware of an outpost's alarm. Should a
pirate trigger it, reinforcements arrive in a matter of seconds, so you
might want to sneak in and deactivate the alarm system. Or, you could
snipe the individual alarms, though shooting one does not deactivate
others. Caged leopards and bears can be freed with a single shot,
granting you a temporary ally in your quest for vengeance. Consider
using a C4 charge and luring a small group of pirates to an explosive
demise, or using a flamethrower to char evil henchmen to a crisp. That
same flamethrower can lay waste to vegetation and effectively create
moats of fire that can keep combatants at bay. (Well, some combatants,
anyway.) Near the end of the game, your foes can put up quite a fight,
and be great in number, so Far Cry 3 doesn't just give you the tools to
be creative; it ultimately demands you use them to survive.
You don't have to conduct your business so loudly and dramatically,
however: Far Cry 3 gives you ample opportunity to be stealthy and
sometimes outright requires it. Forced stealth, such as that seen in a
later-game mission that fails you the moment you are discovered, isn't
that enjoyable. Fortunately, sneaking about is usually a blast, because
it pays off in a brutal takedown of your unsuspecting target. Such
moments are even greater once you have earned certain powerful
abilities, such as the one that allows you to assassinate a pirate and
toss a blade into another's skull in a single, effortless move.
Liberating outposts is only one of many activities to pursue in Far Cry
3. To reveal more of the map and gain access to free weapons, you climb
radio towers and hack their transmitters. The entire concept is clearly
inspired by the Assassin's Creed series, and no wonder, considering both
games were created by the same development studio. First-person
platforming is a frequent frustration in shooters--but Far Cry 3 makes
it a delight. The tower creaks and groans as you climb ladders, make a
few well-timed leaps, grasp some ledges, and ultimately arrive at the
pinnacle. After you make a few hardware adjustments to the transmitter,
the camera zooms to several points of interest, and you can make a
breathless descent to the ground via zip line.
