“I’m gonna need a faster card.” Those were my first thoughts in the opening scene of Far Cry 3, as an incredibly rendered antagonist Vaas taunted my caged playable character, Jason, and the protagonist’s older brother. Having recently had my once not-so-humble rig (dual GTX 480s, i7 X900 and 12GB of RAM) chastened by the Crysis 3 alpha on full settings, I knew a video-card upgrade was in order. But while I thought I could hold off until 2013 when Crysis 3 hits stores, it appears that the new game on the block to melt PCs is already here. The question of 2012 is this: “Can it run Far Cry 3?”
Unlike the usual tradition of porting to PC as an afterthought, Far Cry 3 has all the DirectX 11 trimmings on offer. Even when I dropped to medium settings for silky-smooth frame rate, Far Cry 3 still looked incredible; hell, when I had some DX11 lighting issues (reportedly set to be fixed with a day-zero patch) and had to revert to DirectX 9, the game was still stunning. If you’ve been hanging out for a reason to upgrade your PC, Far Cry 3 will reward that investment.

But back to that cage. Jason and his friends have been captured by insane pirate leader Vaas during an island-hopping vacation. At this early point of the game, Jason is understandably petrified, a shadow of the man he will be forced to become to survive the island and rescue his loved ones. What makes it an even ballsier character progression, for which Ubisoft Montreal deserves full respect, is the fact that even early on in the game, it’s clear that Jason begins to develop a certain attraction to the art of taking lives. On the surface, this is a unique point of difference as far as your average FPS narrative goes; beneath the surface, there’s a fascinating Cabin in the Woods-like questioning of Jason’s love of killing and the player’s love of the same. Papers could be written on this facet of Far Cry 3 alone, but that would be missing the point.
The point is that Ubisoft Montreal has set out to create the Skyrim of first-person shooters; which, for the most part, it nails. There’s so much to do in the world, and while not all of it will be appealing to every player, there’s bound to be more than a few distractions that will tempt you off the main path and into the wild. Driving off-road for the sake of it or hang-gliding off a mountain were just as rewarding for me as hunting both dangerous and harmless creatures, collecting flowers or lowering a pirate flag on an outpost and raising a friendly standard. Competitive types can have their names etched in stone in so-called Trials of the Rakyat: an etching that carries across to the games of your friends, should you secure pole position.
Hunting fauna and collecting flora is made all the more compelling because of how it ties into the gameplay. Plants can be used on the fly to create everything from syringe-laden medkits (which, granted, later become redundant with the right skill upgrades) to temporary buffs for longer swimming, animal spotting or dealing extra damage. I went out of my way to hunt down specific animals so I could use their pelts/skin for creating specific upgrades that drastically affected the way I played and looted. Animal by-products are essential for controlling how much loot and cash you can carry, as well as boosting ammo capacity by different types. As a lover of looting, these were essential steps for me. While hunting deer or goats for early upgrades may sound like a walk in the park, wait until you have to take on sharks for the higher-level kit.

Strangely, hunting animals for such upgrades was much more of a priority to me than using my easily earned XP on the three upgrade trees. My spare points often sat gathering dust as a bunch of the upgrades weren’t terribly exciting, beyond the essential additional health (I’m a run-and-gun player most of the time) and some super-classy takedown manoeuvres. Considering basically all weapons are available from the outset as long as you have the cash, it meant I could equally trick myself out with loud-and-proud or silent-but-deadly weapons as I saw fit. Having additional stealth takedown options became superfluous to using an upgraded bow that was silent as a whisper but the equivalent of an AWP in terms of stopping power.
In many ways, the upgrade trees were like pursuing the main quest: parts of the game I knew I was supposed to be most engaged with, but often fell by the wayside as I pursued things that were more appealing to my time on the archipelago. The main quest was so hit or miss it was heartbreaking, at times. Certain missions would be completely open, immersive and engaging in a way that is true to the Far Cry name. Others, though, involved hard-fail scenarios that forced me into a particular play style or path, while others still required me to run from point A to B to activate a cut-scene or quick-time-event boss fight.
Oh, yes, there are quick-time events in Far Cry 3—granted, not often—and they’re as ill-fitting as they’ve ever been on PC. Mashing the spacebar or attempting to perfectly time mouse-button prompts that don’t ever change is hardly challenging, and still feels like an odd thing to do on a keyboard. The main quest was, much like antagonist Vaas (whose portrayal by actor Michael Mando is nothing short of amazing), a bipolar experience. On one side there’s a wealth of engaging, well-written moments and evidence of Ubisoft Montreal achieving the nigh-impossible of cleverly grounding the many insane facets of the storyline all bolstered by terrific mo-cap performances. On the other side there’s some sloppy (or illogically missing) dialogue, sporadic absent plot logic and occasional weird stuff that feels too left-field, even for a game that’s all about tumbling down an insane rabbit hole.

But where the embedded narrative falls short, the emergent narrative shines. At the end of my 10-odd-hour campaign run, I was hungry for more Far Cry 3 because of the story in which I was actively and accidentally engaged. There were countless times where Far Cry 3 blew me away with how clever the sum of its parts really are. One instance was a mission where I was racing between points, the clock ticking down, only to be slowed by aggressive roaming cassowaries whose turf my shortcut had led me to. Dodging and weaving, I fired from the hip as they attempted to cut me off from my dash to a nearby jeep, precious seconds lost in my man-on-bird altercation.
Another instance had me (surprisingly) emotionally connecting with a caged bear after emancipating a pirate-controlled outpost. I felt pity on it and set it free, only to look on in bemused horror as it attacked the friendly soldiers who came to occupy the camp. I couldn’t bring myself to open fire on the beast, even after he tore apart two friendlies, but that didn’t stop me from taking his pelt when he finally fell; waste not, want not (bears were bloody hard to come by in my play-through).
It wasn’t just combat with animals that was exciting, either. Whether stalking foes, performing stealthy takedowns or going in guns blazing, Far Cry 3’s cinematic combat is a top notch and compelling experience. Enemy AI does a decent job of working as a group to take you down—throwing grenades, flanking, blindfiring and sliding into cover—it’s just a shame their intelligence is mostly neutered by the early warning HUD indicator that points in the direction they’re watching/attacking from. It would have been nice to have the option to turn that off. Furthermore, it would have been great to turn down the music volume to complement the otherwise wholly immersive soundscape. Far Cry 3 is a game best played with a decent surround sound setup or, better still, headphones; but as great as the music was, it did become a tad overbearing during combat scenarios.

One of the most impressive feats of Far Cry 3 is the attention to detail across the board; a neat touch that adds to the overall immersion. Trees sway in the wind, individual grass blades are everywhere and the sheer variety in environments is mind-blowing given the near absence of loading times. Granted, I did have some issues with frame-rate stutters between invisible loading times, but it had magically fixed itself about halfway through the game. Jason’s mystical and ever-expanding left-arm tattoo is a nice touch, particularly given that players can individualise it by choosing specific upgrades, and the way the wounded protagonist would self-heal by ripping a slug out of his arm with his teeth while driving had me nodding in respect. Furthermore, the automated cover system is both intuitive and practical in a way that keeps the action flowing when you’re on the move, and makes clever allowances for leaning over or around objects when you’re playing it stealthy.
Unfortunately, due to international time differences, I was unable to test out the multiplayer or cooperative portions of the game — despite trying to find matches on multiple occasions — but that may have been a blessing in disguise given the lack of dedicated server support. Suffice it to say, multiplayer hasn’t been taken into account for this review.
Far Cry 3 is a haunting experience, in a very good way. It’s a damn shame the main campaign didn’t live up to the potential of what was teased and the sporadic appearance of sloppy anti-Far Cry linear levels jarred with what the game achieves when at its emergent best. Faults aside, Far Cry 3 is an open-world shooter that’s not to be missed, and a dish that’s beautifully served on PC.
Posted 12:58pm 22/11/12
Posted 01:52pm 22/11/12
Posted 01:59pm 22/11/12
Posted 02:16pm 22/11/12
Posted 02:20pm 22/11/12
review sounds pretty promising to me... looking forward to "waking up in the jungle" :]
Posted 02:32pm 22/11/12
Good review, sounds like they got more meat into the gameplay this time round.
These reviews seem to be out super early, that always makes me suss on a game. Such a marketing driven decision. Did you play it at an Ubisoft review event, or did they just mail you a copy to play at home?
Also, f*** cassowaries.
Posted 03:43pm 22/11/12
Posted 04:01pm 22/11/12
Posted 11:03pm 22/11/12
Again, ppl talk about the driving and the repetitive side missions, but many many ppl love GTA games and Assassin's Creed, which were very similar in many ways; main story mission, side mission, side mission, side mission, sandbox game activities, then main story mission again. Repeat.
Not sure how much "transparency" there is in these ppl's comments; no doubt a lot of ppl just parrot what the other non-fans of FC2 say. Maybe they just didn't like the world it was set in, ie not as many random NPCs to unnecessarily bash or shoot as in AC or GTA.
Posted 12:26am 23/11/12
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-21-far-cry-3-review
As a result of personal tastes or different gameplay styles, this guy gave FC3 10/10 ... Im sold, just gotta wait until the 29th now, not everyone has the benefit of getting pre-release copies :( Hope my gaming laptop can handle it, it plays Skryim just fine in Full-HD.
Posted 02:05pm 24/11/12
The Eurogamer reviewer lists Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood as Ubisoft's last best game, which is helpful for placing the type of games he likes. For instance, I think multiplayer was the only thing that saved Brotherhood from being critically smashed (the MP was fantastic). While I agree there is a certain amount of push and pull when it comes to reviews and personal taste definitely comes into the final score, I can't possibly agree with this game getting a 10. In the same breath, 8.5 is still a solid score and Far Cry 3 game is definitely worth the price of admission.
Posted 02:01pm 28/11/12
Posted 07:37pm 28/11/12
Posted 07:54pm 28/11/12
Posted 08:54pm 28/11/12
Posted 10:26pm 28/11/12
Posted 10:34pm 28/11/12
Posted 07:12am 30/11/12
Posted 08:43am 30/11/12
My 570 OC seems to be handling it well, though everything is set on high with shadows off and anti-aliasing at 8. Looks damn good and plays damn well.
Posted 10:01am 30/11/12
Why not turn shadows back on and drop AA down to 2? Never understood why people crank AA so high, the performance hit is huge without it looking that much better.
Posted 10:57am 30/11/12
I've always turned shadows off in games, pointless drain on other potential eye candy. Seeing a shadow is quite 'meh' to me really.
Posted 11:20am 30/11/12
Really? Interesting. I find it does more for immersion for me than most other settings. If I can't see player and object shadows, the game looks instantly fake to me.
That's why I loved Doom3's engine so much at the time (even though they botched the gameplay with silly closet-monsters).
last edited by parabol at 11:20:04 30/Nov/12
Posted 03:24pm 04/12/12
A high point for me was burning a crop of marijuana and Skrillex & Damian "Jr Gong" Marley - "Make It Bun Dem" comes on. Never has a song felt more in tune with the game for me. Was such an awesome moment.
Posted 03:30pm 04/12/12
heh that's kind of odd.
Posted 03:38pm 04/12/12
EDIT - and now my saved game has been wiped somehow. F*** playing another 12+ hours to get back where I was. Uninstall.
last edited by DM at 15:38:13 04/Dec/12
Posted 05:58pm 04/12/12
http://i.imgur.com/s5vkE.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DYEmT.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Un5X3.jpg
It would be a little more interesting if the pirate guys tried to take back camps that you have taken over. So far you only find pirates in their own territory or a couple of randoms in areas you have taken. I find weapons too easy to get, a RPK machine gun should cost a heck of a lot more then 2.5k or whatever it is, Especially on a remote island in the pacific. I don't like the fact you also get free weapons when you take over towers. This all make the game a little too easy and console like. Maybe there will be mods to improve it later on. Aside from those grips its still a solid game, Developers need to harden the frack up.
Posted 06:36pm 04/12/12
Posted 06:46pm 04/12/12
Posted 07:18pm 04/12/12
Posted 08:18pm 04/12/12
Posted 09:16pm 04/12/12
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/733506-1-02-patch-notes-2012-12-04
last edited by parabol at 21:16:41 04/Dec/12
Posted 11:05pm 04/12/12
Posted 02:26am 05/12/12
This somewhat, but wait until you get to the harder parts of the game, really you should be playing on the hardest difficulty to get the most of it. LOOK for letters and relics and BUY ITEM MAPS, buying guns is pointless until you get the unique weapons you unlock from finding relics and letters etc.. There is a sniper rifle you get from finding the jap war letters and its just a beast, there are parts of the game where i though wow if i didnt have this it would be a total f*** around to get through this part.
I did this also. You will find that you can only unlock the top half of the island by doing this until you finish more of the story, it wont let you get on a boat and head south (out of bounds warning, like redzone running in BF3)
Im currently according to my handbook 46% through the game and im up to the part where i just rescued the blonde guy from the convoy. I have every radio tower open on the top half of the map and only 1 or 2 enemy outposts left. I have a s***load of relics, letters and SD cards.
My friend finished this game in 1 day and I was like man wtf?? You are missing all the totally cool s*** in the game and all he did was the story missions without doing anything else, infact he said he got through the whole game just by unlocking 2 or 3 radio towers and said it was extremely hard to do and the only way he got guns was by picking up enemy weapons.. I disagree with playing farcry 3 like this, the single player game can easily be a 100+ hour game if you do it the right way.
Coolest part so far imo is burning the weed fields mission, that dubstep song that comes on is totally suitable for that part of the game, gave me goosebumps actually. Awesome.
last edited by Rdizz at 02:26:19 05/Dec/12
Posted 10:58am 05/12/12
I spent about 90 minutes trying to take over a single outpost last night without being detected (with lots of savegame reloading) to get the bonus XP. Throwing rocks to lure a single enemy out of the base or to get them to face another direction, doing takedown+hide combos to get rid of bodies, uncaging the in-base animal (shouldn't do this too early!), trying to stop the nearby patrols and wild animals from interfering.
If one finishes this game in one day, then COD N+1 is probably a better choice in the future.
Also I accidentally drove into my allies, and then they turned and started shooting me (showing up as Red enemies on the map), calling me a traitor. Does anyone know if they permanently turn?
last edited by parabol at 10:58:27 05/Dec/12
Posted 11:36am 05/12/12
Yeah I noticed, at first the position I launched my boat made me think I might be cutting the corner one of the map squares, but nah it's just plain out of bounds.
The outposts are great to take over as every one is different. I cleared out the radio towers in one hit early on, a couple of outposts and then some of the more important path of the hunter quests (shark hunting with the recurve was a tough mofo). After that, because I had the entire map I cleared out I just kept doing all the outposts.
I only really switched back to the storyline because I got sad that I couldn't do more outpost takeovers until I unlock the lower island. Until then all the POIs that I can't get to are just taunting me.
Also, you're right, the weed fields mission was awesome. I loved the attention to detail where if you're standing in the middle of an untorched weed field the POV goes slightly fuzzy. :D
I've only ever done this once or twice out of about 20ish? outposts, but I felt like a f*****g boss when the plan came together.
The rest of the time I just camera tag everyone, sneak in & disable the alarm, stab the closest couple of dudes and then just go Rambo with the rest when no reinforcements are on the way heh. I learned early on that if you don't kill the alarms a bunch more dudes descend and unless you're holed up somewhere it's guaranteed you're going to have a bad time. Once I managed to disable the alarm just as a pair of dogs jumped on me and alerted everyone. I have no idea how I survived, only because of complete lucky bulls***.
Posted 02:42pm 05/12/12
Posted 07:16pm 05/12/12
8.5 is probably the right score for it, shame about the COD/Halo/hype-advertisements of the world that make it seem weak, especially given the review had only a single paragraph detailing faults.
Posted 07:46pm 05/12/12
Posted 07:47pm 05/12/12
Posted 09:59am 06/12/12
I am going to jump on the boat and agree with a few people - it did seem a tad easy obtaining extreme weaponry.
Don't read this if you haven't finished the game!
Spoiler:
The ending was thoroughly disappointing - both options left so many loose ends it's not funny - it really did seem rushed. I was left feeling 'Well - what happened to EVERYONE except me?' The last press space bar to win boss battle made zero sense... room full of guards - mid poker game - all of a sudden random drug trip with just him and all the guards are dead? What? How did that happen? towards the end Denis was also an entirely different character... I'm all for characters evolving but what the hell happened to him? The rushed ending really soured the experience for me after such an awesome experience getting there. Anyone else feel the same way?
Posted 09:55am 09/12/12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkYt18PD8oI
Posted 10:44am 09/12/12
Posted 09:50pm 11/12/12
And the "bad ending" choice was pretty silly, in terms of "story" i dont see why you would take it, especially when eariler on you told your GF to get on the boat and leave because you were staying.
No he was set up as a nut obsessed with citra a bit earlier when he was drunk.
I googled the bad ending though, lol.
Posted 10:18pm 11/12/12
Spoiler:
I found that according to the story it would only make sense to slit her throat.
In fact I was very disappointing they didn't use the drug sequences to do it. I was expecting, ever since the first drug sequence, to be captured and get drugged. Fighting enemies on the way out using the quicktime like battle, whilst being taunted relentlessly by Hoyt, getting you angrier and angrier. After killing about 10 enemies you finally attack Hoyt and kill him viciously whilst laughing hysterically and enjoying it all. Then you pass out, only to wake up and find you killed your GF whilst drugged.
At this point you fully lose the plot and blame everything on Hoyt, giving up nothing to kill him in vengence. Afterwards you are still angry and totally lost the plot at being a hard killer and go after the one that sent you on this path, Citra.
She then informs you of her plan and you decide where to go. The natural progression would be to kill her along with you. I'm not sure how the story would work to go with her plan though. Either way you should die at the end.
Posted 10:47pm 12/12/12
Hah, FC2 did that and it was f*****g ridiculous.
Posted 08:14pm 12/12/12
So I try loading the plain FC3.exe and it brings up uplay again but this time saying I don't have FC3 as part of my gaming library. The f***? If I want to run the game I have to start it in steam, to start uplay which then tells it I own the f*****g thing. After starting the game up in safe mode and switching over to dx9 it still seems to crash on start up giving me a dx11.exe error when I don't want to run that one. Yeah so glad I supported Ubisoft now. Never again. F*** their uplay crap. This is 1 of the reason pirates exist.
EDIT - I had to rename the .exe files to force it to use the dx9 one and now things are working. This is hardly something I should have to do because they refuse to use steamworks and want to use their s***** uplay bulls***. Sorry, in a real pissed off mood because of this when all I wanted to do was support a game I actually enjoyed.
last edited by DM at 20:14:55 12/Dec/12
Posted 08:23pm 12/12/12
Spoiler:
Either way you should die at the end.
Yeah all that you've said makes sense in terms of the story but this last bit doesn't in terms of the game. (FC3 excels at this it seems)
Also, they tried death of the player with Fallout 3 and it bombed badly. Dying at the end meant you couldn't logically continue and explore the landscape further and they had to retcon in order to make the DLC work correctly.
fwiw: I chose the good ending, because Citra's character seemed to go wacky at the end and it made me annoyed at the story writers for not foreshadowing it better or coming up with something that felt like she was still in character. I youtubed the other ending and basically to me it came down to boobs with guilt.
Did I want to avoid my friends blood on my hands, or did I want to sneak one final peek at cartoony tits?
Posted 08:24pm 12/12/12
Bit of a sad state of affairs when I'm actually suprised and impressed that a PC game works and doesn't crash all the time though.
Posted 07:04pm 02/1/13
Posted 07:26pm 02/1/13
Still good game though. Also, boobs.
Posted 09:47am 22/2/13
At first I was really disappointed, the interface and s***** porting of xbox to PC was s*****, then it was basically exactly like far cry 2 but on an island.
I've been playing it more and getting into it now, it is pretty cool and the story missions are really well done.
Vaas is like a bad bond villain, he keeps leaving you in a elaborate death traps that you obvs escape from!