“Far Cry 3″ Review: Not Skyrim With Guns

“After you’ve…spent a couple of hours chasing after deer, “Far Cry 3″ starts to lose its luster.”

If you’ve seen the Official Trailer then you’ve seen the game. The trailer promises an amazing intro, gorgeous graphics, and an enormous island to explore. It delivers on all three; unfortunately that’s about all it delivers. Don’t get me wrong the island is beautiful. It sports dense foliage, great distant terrain textures, vibrant colors, and beautiful water. It absolutely paints a pretty picture; even if the technology doesn’t feel ground breaking or frankly even new. It feels like the graphics engine we’ve been using for the last couple years used in a much better location. The introduction to the game is very, very compelling. In the first two hours or so, (for a first timer) you get to feel like you are living the experiences of this poor American trapped on the island. You get to briefly explore the island learning to hunt, collect flowers, test out the games vehicles, and even shoot a couple of pirates. After the first couple hours you really just get to keep doing the same thing with enormously less dialog and direction.  Unfortunately for Far Cry the story line just doesn’t keep my attention the way I would like it to; and the side quests are even worse. Side quests are completely composed of, “go here, kill this” scenarios with nothing even added for flavor. Besides that, the game sports MINI games, where you throw knives, play duck hunt, race across the island and more, for money.

Speaking of making money I have another beef; this one is about their economy. If you spend any time actively hunting animals for bigger bags, hunting relics, or trying to secure pirate bases, you will be able to buy everything in the game in eight hours or less. To be honest that’s not that big a deal because the guns get that much better. Your most powerful instrument is whatever you’re best with. The first sniper works perfectly fine. The second assault riffle lasts me the whole game, and the only time I feel like I need a flame-thrower was when I really just want to watch things burn. Although the game plays at being a role playing game with their tattoo based skill tree, (which is a really cool idea) combat difficultly is 100% based on your FPS skills from second one. At the end of the game the first pistol you ever find will still head shot anyone.

For being an FPS it’s strangely much harder to aim in this than any other FPS I’ve played this year.The controls are not terrible they just aren’t good. Baring the times that you die while circling a body trying to loot, or die while watching your character perform the worlds slowest take-down, you can move along fairly easily. But driving is more difficult than it should be, shooting is more difficult than it should be, and steering a hang glider is absurd.

All-in-all the combat is fun and the island is impressive but after you’ve killed your seven hundredth pirate, or spent a couple of hours chasing after deer (God I hate chasing after deer), the game starts to lose its luster. Clearly they they really wanted to make a modern “Skyrim” but “Skyrim” was about more than making absurdly powerful potions riding around beautiful Terrain and hunting random animals for crafting. I mean in “Skyrim” more people than just the main character could talk. You feel invisible walking around town. It’s really strange, nobody seems to notice you’re there at all.

The bottom line is that this game is worth seeing and worth playing, but not worth the price of admission. With little to no replay value this game will soon be forgotten.