Genre: FPS, RPG, action-adventure
Available Platforms: PC, PS3, 360
Platform I played on: PC
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
“Have I ever told you the definition of insanity?” This one, now (in)famous, quote perfectly sums up the game that is Far Cry 3. It is pure, unadulterated insanity. It is the video game version of tripping balls on some high-grade narcotics mixed with copious amounts of alcohol. I think this adequately sums up my experience with the game. That, and a nonstop thrill ride from start to finish, only stopping when I took 2 major detours to go collectible hunting during the course of the game (one for each island).
Let’s try and describe the game though, shall we? It can be best described as an open world first person shooter, with a generous mix of role-playing elements thrown in for good measure. It is a moshpit of amazing gameplay mechanics just stirred all together into one huge game. You get satisfying shooting mechanics, with a variety of different guns (that are customizable to suit your play style), ranging from loud, fiery and heavy, to silent, deadly and just plain nasty (I personally went the silent route throughout the entire game, carrying my staple silenced sniper rifle and bow from beginning to end). You get skill points that are used to unlock skills that turn your character into a badass modern-day jungle warrior, with 3 different tiers you can invest in for different types of abilities. You get hunting that is actually used for something other than being a bullet point on the back of the box, using the skins of animals to upgrade your carrying capacities for everything from your backpack, to your wallet, to your bullets, and herbs that you craft into various drugs that boost your stats or imbibe you with special abilities momentarily, such as allowing you to see animals highlighted around you, be impervious to damage for a short time, and being able to literally walk through fire like a motherfucking avenging god of war. Health doesn’t regenerate like in most FPS games these days, you have to keep a few syringes of herbal medicine handy to heal yourself. This was probably the feature I enjoyed the most about the game, with the tides of battles turning from being a cakewalk to desperation and panic in a hail of bullets. It was immensely immersive and there was something interesting about feeling like your character is being held together in this hellish environment solely by dangerous amounts of herbal native drugs to numb the pain. A strong emphasis is put on playing the game stealthily, with a lot of rewards for doing this and a lot of features to help you accomplish it such as being able to hide in bushes, a camera to tag enemies and silent takedowns for every situation, but of course you can go in all guns blazing and still come out just fine at the end if you so wish. Now, take all these features and throw it in a game that is absolutely HUGE, with 2 sprawling, beautiful islands for you to explore and fuck shit up in.
Let’s touch on the story because it is easily the best part of this game. You play as a rich white boy called Jason Brody, who is on vacation with his friends and brothers in Asia when they decide to go sky-diving (cause it’s crazy and fun, right?!) and land right on a pirate-infested island and get taken hostage by a madman called Vaas (I’m sure you all know him by now). You break out of captivity with your brother, but before you can escape, Vaas kills him and you are thrust; alone, afraid and useless; into the savage reality of this world. You’re rescued by the native warriors called the Rakyat, who are fighting Vaas and his pirates, and they enlist you, giving you the tools and skills you’ll need to take down everyone who stands in your way. What follows is Jason’s quest to rescue his friends from the pirates, get his own personal vengeance on everyone who fucked with him, and many, many amazing hallucinogenic drug trip sequences that make this game so amazingly abstract, surreal and ridiculously awesome I find it impossible to articulate. You will meet a wide variety of interesting inhabitants of the island will help or hinder Jason in many ways during the course of the story. The characters in this game are all interesting and different, all unique and insane in their own ways. Little snippets of narrative from the Alice in Wonderland story punctuate the game’s loading screens and it is so appropriate for the narrative of the game: this is Jason’s own trip down the rabbit hole into madness. The characters and the story really draw you into this game. The character of Vaas is one of the best I’ve seen in video games, he really is the most unlikeable, psychopathic villain in a long time, equatable to Batman’s very own Joker in a lot of ways, but slightly more fucked up if that’s even possible. He is just a great villain and his monologues have become things of legend (they really ARE good), while being slightly metaphysical in nature. The story is fast paced, desperate and hectic and thankfully doesn’t feel like it’s bogged down by useless filler missions. Each mission is relevant and important in it’s own way, although there are a few twists you can see coming from miles away. And of course, let’s not forget those awesome drug-induced coma missions to keep things fun, edgy, trippy and are a visual treat to play through.
One of the other things I really loved was the way your character grows in the game. The island really changes you as a player as well, at least I felt that way. It changes you as much as it changes your character. You begin to LIKE the killing in the game, you become worryingly efficient and deadly as you progress. I kind of interpreted it as a smart way on commenting on the violent nature of video games and the way a lot of people are just drawn to the most violent, realistic “killer simulator” games, but that might just be me reading too much into stuff again (or hoping for another Spec Ops: The Line type game to come out sometime soon goddammit!). I have a strong appreciation of a game where your character starts spiraling slowly down the path to insanity and darkness, or in fact characters who take that kind of path, and this game perfectly captures this. Jason begins his descent into the darkness right from the moment he wakes up imprisoned by Vaas. There are a few optional dream/drug sequences you can find that show events from Jason and his friend’s vacation before they parachuted onto the island. Finding them later on in the game really let you see the juxtaposition of Jason’s character between before coming to the island and what he becomes over the course of the story. I also like the world that’s portrayed, which is very dark and dirty, dealing with subjects such as drug-trafficking, real-world piracy, slavery, rape and other topics that are all too real in this surrealistic, sometimes genuinely funny game (Jason is a really funny character a lot of the time, dropping pop culture quotes and one-liners all over the place). It is no doubt a very mature game, not intended for young audiences or the fainthearted, yet still so weird, surreal and humourous. It’s a strange blend that perfectly showcases exactly what this game is: insane.
The game world is just huge and beautiful, having you travel to a variety of detailed locations, from dense jungles to weird underground Mayan-like ruins to small settlements populated by natives and pirates alike. The missions are diverse and engaging, from challenging hunting, racing and assassination side missions, to story missions that are somehow introducing new mechanics and exciting moments every mission, each driven by the excellent narrative. Boss fights are handled interestingly, by way of dream sequence quick time events that are different, if a little too short. I only have 2 complaints about the game, that is: the collectibles are useless, especially the relics, and that I sometimes felt the story was TOO fast-paced. It just goes at a breakneck pace and I sometimes felt like I didn’t get enough time to bond with some of the side characters such as Citra and the mad Dr Earnhardt so I didn’t feel as much as I should have for them. Everything moves so fast that you sometimes feel like you’re missing something (similar to how I felt when I played Assassin’s Creed 3. Is this a problem Ubisoft was having that year?). The game also falls a little after the first half. Although still being interesting, it just didn’t reach the epicness of the first half. Oh and predatory animals are a motherfucking nuisance… Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the hell out of this game, one of the best I’ve played and definitely one of my favourites of all time.
Overall, this is just a great game that is well worth playing if you want something that is just simply amazing. Fun, interesting, beautiful, haunting and a blatant endorsement of frequent drug use, Far Cry 3 is everything you could ever want and much more. There might be so much more I just forgot to talk about, but I have to go take another handful of hallucinogens now because Ubisoft told me it makes you awesome.
Conclusion: 5 mysterious pills out of a possible 5
RANDOM MUSINGS 