VideoGame Rambo: The Game
If you're in a hurry, here's a couple of quick tips about Far Cry 3:
1) This game kicks ass.
2) Play it on the hardest difficulty.
3) Don't stay on the island.
Far Cry 3 is a remarkable game, seamlessly blending open world sandbox style gameplay with stealth, shooting, and survival (the Three S's). If you ever wanted to go exploding tip bow fishing for bull sharks, or flamethrower cassowary wrangling, then Far Cry 3 delivers. If the most dangerous game is more you're style, the game boasts a robust array of takedown techniques, that are not only useful, but entertaining as all hell.
Right, that's the good stuff out of the way, lets talk shittyness.
The one part were Far Cry 3 stumbles the hardest is in the story department. Things start out promising enough at the outset, but take a sharp turn toward Avatar street about a third into the game. The story could have been more interesting if the tribal aspects were implicit rather than explicit, i.e. the tatau you receive at the start was from an eccentric expat a bit too into his adopted culture, the Rakyat are just modern day people defending their homes, etc. The story uses too many Mighty Whitey cliches and treads too much familiar ground to be compelling, and DON'T EVEN get me started on the ending. The ending isn't nearly as bad as Mass Effect 3 's, but it's still god awful. The binary aspect just feels contrived, and is in desperate need of a third choice, preferably one that doesn't end with a knife to the chest, or an unstoppable killing machine trying to reintegrate into normal society. Because I'd give him about three days before he starts turning household appliances into IED's.
VideoGame Welcome To The Jungle, We Got Fire And 'Nades
Farcry 3 is easily the best games to come out in the series.
The gun play is well done, and never gets frustrating or stupid. There's just enough variety to keep you amused, and running back and forth to sell loot for the next big gun. The upgrade system works not by increasing stats, but by buying new parts which adds new and important functionality to the game. Whats more amusing are the 'hidden guns' which unlike previous guns can't be modded, but instead have more than a few add-ons, like silenced versions of guns you can't get otherwise, overpowered rifles, and so on, most of which you use instead of your ultra expensive $34000 vanilla guns.
The World is fantastic, with many things to see and do, most of which you'll never finish off without hunting it all down, yet it rarely feels like a chore to go down into a hand crafted platforming section to get a collectable. The addition of short platforming sections to activate radio towers doesn't feel out of place, rather it blends in seamlessly. Outposts aren't the annoying frustration in Farcry 2, rather they're amusing challenges given and you end up looking forwards to them. Side quests are well written, and you never feel like they're wasting your time or are add-ons to lengthen the game.
The writing is fantastic and the animation crew really got on board, with the cast being beautifully animated showing a wide range of emotion and well voiced and written as well. the story is engaging and pulls you in and never lets go, with zany, fun, and outright insane people; the story can be amusing and then veer right into horrific without leaving you disjointed or confused, a very rare feat. Ultimately, however, the game has flaws. As you finish off the game, you find yourself becoming bored as there's less and less to do. Enemies begin to vanish, and the continuation (regardless of whatever ending you get) is really there just so you can do the last few missions. With no new game plus, the game has nearly no replay value whatsoever.
Go buy it, but don't expect it to amuse you play through after play through.
VideoGame The definition of insanity.
I'd like to offer a second opinion.
Far Cry 3 is a perfect example how introducing all those "cool new features" to the dying First-Person Shooter genre can turn into a feature creep completely ruining the experience.
Be it nowadays obligatory iron sights, enemy tagging or "an enemy sees you" notificator they practically ruin all fun for oldschool gamers. But one of the elements that takes the cake is the necessity to hunt wild game to expand your desperately cramped inventory. You need it to carry more guns, ammo and stuff. And since in the beginning you can hardly carry a single gun and two magazines and the designated target animal requires half of the magazine to go down, all while merrily prancing away faster than your disabled protagonist could ever run . . . you get the picture. I'd elaborate more but it'd take up the entire article.
Next thing is / are the ubiquitous quick-time events. It completely evades my mind how in this day and age can the gameplay rely on the shady Press X to Not Die mechanic.
Despite the game being R-rated it doesn't feature gibs which is incomprehensible given the amount of graphic detail. You can't blame it on hardware limitations because vehicles can be blasted to debris completely fine.
The Excuse Plot is idiotic and the protagonist unsympathetic. How are you supposed to relate to somebody, who looks and acts like a mentally challenged stoner? Both of his siblings look far more like people who you could identify with.
The prevalent "only one save slot" mechanic denies you all access to few memorable moments like the jeep chase with Lisa. If you want to replay it you have to restart the entire game from scratch. Have fun.
One of the few fun things to do is employing stealth when reclaiming outposts. But if stealth is a core feature what good is all the arsenal. Even though it mostly consist of stereotypical assault rifles that all do the same thing.
Fun fact: the Rakyat chieftain Citra has coincidentally the same name as a certain old brand of cleaning powder in Slovakia.