Far Cry 3
Seriously
Might have been the best game of 2012 and I totally missed it that year.
I had good reason. I played Far Cry 1 and thought it was amazing back then. Smart AI, nice graphics, good control - and then for some reason.... Monsters?? Broke the game for me for all the good it was doing up till that point. Far Cry 2 seemed great, but the constant fixing of cars and fighting off malaria really drug it down despite it having a solid open world experience. So when Far Cry 3 was walkin' around talking about how it was "Skyrim with guns", all I could do was think "uhh... That's Fallout right? Ah well, game will probably just be ok."
Obviously I was wrong.
Despite it having an amazing outing at (I believe) 2010's E3, I for some reason just kept writing it off. When they sent me a copy (as a GameStop manager's gift), I was sorta excited to give it a go. When I started playing it, you instantly meet one of the best antagonists in a game that year, and are shortly put into the game; where surprisingly, the mechanics .... surprised me. When I pulled the left stick to aim, and the right stick to fire, I actually felt that the controls felt like some of the better competitive multi-player titles - it felt right. The platforming in first person was done very well, the graphics were amazing, and then I got introduced to the best part of this game - the stealth.
See, stealth usually is not something people get pumped about in a game; especially one like Far Cry where it's guns and killin' everywhere. Frankly though, this is easily one of most polished stealth experiences in a while. At first it's just a simple stab through the back or throat slice via a melee button, but when the upgrades start kicking it, it becomes this perfected art of murder. After a while you will go from just taking a dude out and moving to the next to jumping off a higher platform to stab one dude and round over to his buddy to get him too and then training that sweep to the next guy while grabbing his knife and throwing it at another farther away. If it's all hectic and people started shooting if you had a blunder, trade throwing a knife to grabbing his pistol and tagging head shots.
The best part about all of that is the feel of it. Honestly, I've never played a game where the controls just felt this nice - and I don't mean like sensitivity and layout - it's hard to explain, but when you hit these options in the game, you just get this satisfied and certain feel from it. Just play it ok? I think this has better stealth and assassinations that any Assassin's Creed game.
Now while the stealth is fantastic, the gunplay as mentioned earlier, is also very well done. I would always get silencers upgraded to my guns to just sneak in a camp with head shots after scouting the area and tagging enemies. This of course was if I couldn't get the stealth kills; man those are great. Every gun had nice weight, different feels, and all had different attachments that complimented their play styles. One nice feature that I plan on getting into more later is it's cover system. A lot of games are adapting to this idea, but Far Cry 3 did a good job of it. It's that dynamic style where you will auto cover next to a wall, and it's handled very well here.
Before I move on from all the killing, I have to mention that this game has a great hunting and crafting system as well. Animals and plants around this tropical island, whether it be sharks or Komodo dragons, will grant you different gear and recovery/hunting items. You can extend your carry amount with crafting bags, bigger wallets, holsters, all sorts of helpful things - I never felt like it was a useless system.
Of course though, this game would be just another shooter if it wasn't for the world that it was in. The characters in the game are fantastic for most of the game, and Vos, while not the main villain, is just so great and entertaining - he needed more screen time. The world really feels alive at times too. I was looting some hut when I heard shooting behind me. It turns out that my buddies (always in blue) were in a shoot out with the pirates (always red) on the road just past me. I had the chance to sneak up and take the pirates out from behind because I wasn't even around for this battle until then, and we all celebrated our victory; only of course to be greeted by a Komodo Dragon that took out on of my guys that got everyone scared and shooting their guns (myself included). I helped my bros out, and went on my way, only to find that the Komodos were still sorta hunting after me, hissing and creeping me out!
It's great - truly. The game is always surprising me like that. I was driving along, saw some pirates, decided to run one down in my truck. All of a sudden a tiger jumps out of nowhere and attacks this guy as I run them both over. It was nuts! Even when swimming in the water I always felt the tension. Sharks were always swimmin' around doing their thing, and rivers held crocs!
Side quests were everywhere in this game, and they never felt like a burden either.
I honestly felt like Far Cry 3 did one thing super right first though. They set out to make a video game, and THEN they made the story and things an interesting place around the solid mechanics and gameplay.
While this is not so much a review and me just ranting about a solid game that a lot of people overlooked at first, I still recommend this game. It was honestly crazy to me that I looked over this amazing game. If you have a good pc that can run this, I would say play it there for the better framerate as the console versions run sub 30fps - but when I was playing it on console, I didn't seem to care because I was still having a ton of fun.
-Eddie
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