Far Cry 3 (2012, Windows) Review

A GAME FOR ANIMALS

Also for: Playstation 3, Xbox 360

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Over the years, I have often come across the cover for Far Cry 3. The hypnotizing stare, the mohawk, the guns; the poster boy looks like a viper, curled up and ready to strike at anyone attempting to compromise his position. I have always been kind of fascinated by it. But not until yesterday did I notice the head of a man buried in the sand just in front of him. And just now did I notice the bodies hanging in the background. The man's gaze just lured me into his tropical paradise, ignorant of the dangers it posed.

Far Cry 3 is straight-faced ridiculous, and I mean that as a compliment. It combines the picturesque setting of the first entry with the open world and free roaming of Far Cry 2 to create one heck of a cinematic spectacle. Add to that my own decision to buy and play it for the PC, and we've got a series highlight for me this far. It's a liberating experience, one I haven't seen and felt in a long time, and I am almost overwhelmed ny nostalgia playing it.

But I can't really pinpoint what I'm nostalgic about. It might just be the sensation of playing a good first-person shooter with a mouse and keyboard, something I've hardly done in well over a decade. I can't believe the difference it made (the previous entries I played on my PS3). Now I can respond by instinct to what I'm experiencing, switching between different guns and explosives with a quick button press, and fire by simply pointing and clicking. All it takes is a little dexterity. I feel unshackled.

I can easily see how this franchise can get repetitive, as every gaming outlet has let us know for the past decade, but for now just let me wallow in its survivalist existence, tumbling around knife in hand with tigers, sharks and tiger sharks - and the occasional red-clad slaver bandit, of course, which I prefer to take down from afar with my trusty silenced sniper rifle.

The story lets you embody Jason Brody, a party brat awakening to the harsh reality of mother nature. I don't like him much, but that's kind of the point. The jungle is unforgiving, and he has to grow up fast to stay alive. As the game starts we see a montage of how he got there, skydiving with his friends and brothers over a tropical island, only to end up captured by slavers and tied up in a bamboo cage alongside his older brother somewhere on that island. 

A native with a crazy stare, obviously devastated by years of drug abuse, fixates on him and delivers a  threatening speech. The native, named Vaas, is the game's poster boy and is essentially the Far Cry-equivalent to the Arkham trilogy's The Joker - an embodiment of chaos and destruction, in this case the law of the jungle over ordered civilization. He is spine-chillingly acted by Michael Mando, who would move on to become an even more recognized face through the Netflix hit show Better Call Saul.

Jason's brother improvises an escape, which ends up with him getting killed and you diving into a river, only to lose consciousness. You awaken dragged to safety in a village, tended to by a helpful guy named Dennis. He turns out to be a freedom fighter, belonging to a faction of natives, the Rakyat, who are trying to end the human traffickers' operation on the island. You decide to join forces with them in the hopes of freeing your friends.

And in an instant you become this expert marksman, hunter, assassin and demolitionist. The game allows you to embody the spirit of a Tatau warrior by gradually covering your body with tattoos. They act as a character skill tree, unlocking your inner potential with better stealth, more health, more efficient loot collecting and the like. I found the improvements very hit-or-miss. Some of them, like a ledge takedown, I never even found an opportunity to use, whereas I could barely have finished the game without improved maximum health.

The story taking us through the game is relatively okay. It's best when it involves Vaas, the poster boy villain, but his scenes are very few and far between. Overall the gallery of side characters is quite colorful, with great performances throughout. However, the central group of friends and family is rather dull, especially when compared to the island's residents. This might be intentional as the game throws you a rather impactful choice right at the end, giving the story two vastly different endings.

But it's in the bare-bones gameplay that the game shines. The moment-to-moment gunplay feels top-notch, even as I start exploiting the dumb AI for easy takedowns. No matter if I run or sneak, travel by foot or car, parachute through the air or dive into an alligator-infested river, I have full, unshackled control of my character. The aiming is flawless, and the selection of weapons and body armor allow for firefights at variable distances.

And the clever mission structure takes advantage of all these mechanics through great design, rewarding the meticulous player with higher chances of success. I really like the enemy encampment takeovers, where you stake out their claim from afar. Useful binoculars can pinpoint the location of enemies, with great help from syringes that let you locate them by scent through walls. They then stay marked for the rest of their short lives, and then you're almost overwhelmed with different ways to approach each camp. Explosive barrels, ledges, sniping spots, caged animals, choke points; they all become potentially deadly weapons under your watch. 

But the main mission designs are my favorite, with a lot of variation. From James Bond-infiltrations and photo ops, to Michael Bay-action thrillrides through exploding oil depots, the game has a slick sense of always cranking the intensity up one notch. And it only improves the further you get into the game, when you've cleared out the weaker side activites or learnt which ones to ignore to further improve the pacing. Some scenes are meant to advance the storyline, and they are affecting, with some visually astounding set pieces taking place in drug-induced fever dreams.

Many gameplay mechanics are ones we've seen stolen and repeated to death by subsequent games. Horizon Zero Dawn, for instance, owes a lot to this game. By climbing and hacking into different satellite towers you gradually reveal the map and a lot of its secrets, and in doing so the Rakyat provides you with more free weapons in their shops. The gradually expanding arsenal can make a world of difference, and with different mods you can boost your preferred playstyle a little further. You can hunt and skin different animals to craft larger containers for ammo, cash, inventory items and syringes.

Side activities like these are not the game's strongest moments, and the same can be said about many of the side missions that appear once you reclaim different settlements from the enemy. They involve a lot of menial and repetitive tasks like hunting down different animals, taking down individual enemies in melee combat or racing challenges. Hunting and crafting involve a lot of intrusive menu-delving, dropping the intensity without giving much in return.

By exploring, you can find old letters written by Japanese WWII-soldiers, revealing a legacy of savagery taking place on the island long before you were even there. I didn't find them interesting. The same can be said about the flash cards detailing enemy drug operations. And the different animal-shaped statuettes, called relics, are just collectibles for the sake of collectibility. It's easy to disregard such filler content this time around, but they nevertheless represent a bad omen for the upcoming entries of the franchise, games that I've yet to play.

No, although an inspirational sight for sore eyes, you don't explore this island for sophisticated thought. It's a trap, and behind that facade we're forced into the nitty-gritty, acting out or tough guy primal instincts or something ridiculous like that. Its visuals seem to say: This island is alive, thriving and teeming with life, which is bad for you. Far Cry 2 was a poor game all the way down to its repetitive core, but at least it shared this intriguing question with this far superior sequel: This is a game for animals. Now which one will you be?