1. Ubisoft gave this and a bunch of other older titles away last year in an attempt to get people to use Uplay, proving people still don't want to use Uplay even when it's free.
2. This was released in 2012 but still has graphical settings such that you can see the individual hairs on a tiger from 500 meters away allowing you and your friends can have conversations that are like, "GTX, Ultra, Ultra, 60 FPS." (Your friends are boring, by the way.)
3. The setup here is you and some chill, white bros are partying with your chill, white girlfriends on an island paradise. Because something bad needs to happen, you skydive into a nest of brown-skinned, red shirt wearing pirates that speak only in heavily accented English even to each other. You and your chill, white bro attempt to escape but your bro gets shot by the mohawked, brown-skinned, red-shirt pirate captain right as you are about to get away. Fortunately for you, said red-shirt pirate captain gives you a running start because he's unaware that he's the villain in a video game in which you are the protagonist. Naturally, from here you run into a group of islanders who were apparently just waiting for a chill, white bro protagonist to lead the way and you all begin to diligently work together to save your friends and kill everyone else. You go from being squeamish about your bro's violent and decidedly un-chill methods during your escape attempt to killing human beings with a machete in less than ten minutes real time. Also *spoilers* as you play through, you find out all the people really pulling this strings on this island are white bros (but not chill).
4. Honestly, all this terrible shit just becomes background when it comes time to sharpen the old explosive arrows and murder everyone in a red shirt.
5. There are a lot of extras thrown on but this is a tactical shooter at heart. The series started on PC but is now fully console-ized w/ fully console-ized controller support. Playing feels really good w/ either controller or mouse and keyboard--though some of the button combos on controller get confusing in heated firefights--so use what you like.
6. This is a game set in an open world sandbox. It is not really an open world game. The story missions are completely on rails and nothing different happens based on how you go about things. This is fine. The story is really secondary anyway. Sure you are off trying to save your friends or whatever but you don't go about that in any way that makes even remote sense. You are never given the option to even try to go radio for help--and repairing radio towers is a major gameplay mechanic. You never get to try to steal a boat to get away and come back for them--and you do steal boats. You can't try to just keep your head down and sneak them out or raise the money to ransom them.You face the villains head-on and try to overthrow their massive slavery and smuggling ring. This is your only option to save your friends in Far Cry 3. It all kind of works out in the end. While I guess it is always cool to have the option to do a pacifist run, I will not fault a developer for focusing on what is, realistically speaking, the way most people are going to play.
7. The most interesting thing about the story is that your friends as you rescue them--not to mention you, yourself--notice that you are going through some pretty drastic personal changes. This would actually put it above your standard action movie as far as that goes so, you know. huzzah for games! It is a bit disappointing the developers never really move try to push this into a meta-narrative about the player and why a person might wish to spend their limited free time pretending to kill hundreds of red shirted brown people but I'll take what I can get.
8. In the end, the game is more about general mayhem than story anyway. You can churn your way through the story in a
dozen hours or less but you are kinda missing the point if that's what
you do. The most fun to be had in this game is in taking down enemy
encampments, running supply missions on various vehicles, murdering specific people, revealing the map by climbing radio towers or searching the island for relics.
9. Taking down the enemy encampments provides the most variety of these things. It rarely works just to charge right in like an idiot but there's a variety of things that do work and things don't necessarily work out just how you planned them. The enemy AI is sort of gloriously stupid and trigger-happy so you might try to distract one by throwing a rock so you can sneak up behind him for a stealth kill as he yells something about getting venereal disease from a hooker only to have the dumb bastard fire his machine gun in the general direction of a caged tiger which then manages to escape and maul everyone in camp (and sometimes you too). When things do go as planned, it is deeply satisfying but it's almost better when things go awry and you can scrap by by the skin of your teeth.
10. The crafting system in this is an outright horrorshow of dreariness and busywork. You collect random animal skins for random upgrades and you never know what you will need in the future so consequently half your inventory is full of skins because you don't want to go shark hunting again. You wonder if Ubisoft just failed to playtest this element or if it was added under duress from the marketing department.
11.The skill trees are kinda cheesy too and, again, just feel like something tacked on because it's something games are supposed to have. You can can chose what you upgrade but many upgrades are locked based on your progress in the story of just your character level so it's impossible to focus on making a build based on stealth or a sniper build because you can basically just take every upgrade available to you at any given time. So why not just give people these skills from the outset and let them decide how to play based on how they want to play? I dunno. Skill trees are the shit I guess.
12. After getting on my high-horse about the treatment of brown-skinned people in this earlier, I feel like I should squeeze in a bit on the treatment of women. There are three main women characters in this game. Two of them exist only to be rescued. The third is thankfully more difficult to pin down and is actually the only native islander who is really in charge of anything. I suppose we live in a world where one out of three ain't bad but that is still not exactly ideal.
13. I can't help but feel like I've really overthought this one. It is really a super fun game. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to have super fun. I genuinely looked forward to pouring a beer and grabbing the controller every evening when I got home from work while I was playing Far Cry 3. I think what it does right, it does so right that it draws you into the game. That's a good thing but it does make you care all the more about its flaws. The RPG elements and the compelling but set-in-stone story telling don't feel like an extra bonus you get but missed potential at a bigger, much more engaging experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment