Far Cry 3: Classic Review

FC3 was a game that I had fond memories of for a while when I initally beat it, I thought it was an amazing game. Any game that vaguely resembled it was something I inherently thought was good. This was until so many games and to this day borrowed what from FC3 did and Ubisoft themselves used it as a template for many of their games going forward to the point any linear level based franchise by the company got axed or turned open world. I did resent what this game and by extension the Assassin's Creed franchise turned Ubisoft into and I don't harbor as much resentment towards their later games now than I used to, I wondered if I still got the same enjoyment from FC3 that I did back when it came out. While I wouldn't consider the game to be as amazing when I did when I first played it, I still had a lot of fun with it.

The story is surprisingly decent stuff. I wouldn't consider it the best story ever told, it does a good job at making me pay attention inbetween the sections of over the firefights, stealth, driving, tower climbing etc. It begins with Jason Brody starting off as confused and not knowing what to do but the more the game goes on he becomes more detached from his humanity and starts to enjoy doing what he does. It's a decent arc especially for a game that is about over the top over world shennigans. Vaas is also an entertaining villain and what helps is that whenever he does do his over the top monologues, it's always after he catches Jason Brody and by extension the player by surprise. He's also a decently proactive villain.

However Hoyt is a alot more dull, while he was foreshadowed at the begginning of the game, he's not as proactive as Vaas was and most of his character consist of him acting like a bargain bin Tony Montana. He also seems to be oblivious during the sections where you dress up as a Privateer until it turns, he actually knew all along and chose a dramatic moment to reveal it.

Another disappointing thing is that you can take over every enemy camp and the story never once even acknowledges it. It's a shame since the story reflects on Jason Brody getting "stronger" with the skill tree. Still, story is decent enough which is the bare minimum a game story should be.

FC3 is a game very much inspired by popular games of the time. The shooting mechanics are very much inspired by the CoD games. You got snap auto aim when you use ADS, most of the guns being hitscan, having different throwable weapons and scripted campaign missions. You got the climbing and towers of Assassin's Creed and the detection arrows of Splinter Cell Conviction.

The shooting itself has aspects not even CoD campaigns do. For example, health doesn't automatically regen and can regen up to a certain block and you also have syringes to heal yourself or Jason can do first aid on the spot if he doesn't have any syringes. While the enemies you fight consist of infantry and animals. There is a bit more enemy variety with the former with snipers, heavies, and enemies who will throw molotovs among regular grunts and the AI is not too bad either. They will take cover, flank you, throw grenades, burn the grass to flush you out and will also eventually lose sight of you if you break from where they lasted spotted you. 

Many people nowadays scoff at the very idea of "Ubisoft Towers" and enemy camps. Thing is, I'd argue the Towers in FC3 serves a role in not only highlighting the map but also gives the player another way at getting weapons. You could pay the initial price upfront or try to find an enemy weapon but climb up a tower and you get the weapon for free as an added bonus of unlocking the map. Climbing up the towers in FC3 can have more tension by comparison since it's in first person and you don't have a "hold the trigger to climb everything" like Assassin's Creed does. It's more of a quick and easy navigation puzzle.

Enemy camps also break up the pace of story missions which can be on the scripted side with some optional stealth thrown in. The stealth follows the logic of 80s action movies like Rambo, Commando, and Predator where stealth is used at the start but eventually there will be an over the top fire fight. You also get an XP bonus for disabling alarms and clearing a camp undetected. The former you need to do since camps can be harder to clear with the reinforcments so it encourages stealth better than Assassin's Creed does. However Metal Gear Solid 5 has far better stealth mechanics.

The enemy camps and FC3 also does a great job with "immergent gameplay" since when running around in the open world or if an they have animals trapped, they can be a great way of thinning out the horde or they could be YOUR enemy. There is so much wacky and over the top stuff happening like random firefights with animals, other Rukyat warriors or just randomly enemies on the open world.
 

Only big negative from a gameplay standpoint is that once you get past the "early game hell", FC3 becomes a pushover especially regarding holster crafting, not having skills needed to be efficient and the early game weapons. Outside of an overwhelming enemy number or the healing item activation animation not happening while enemies are riddling you with bullets since the guns are hitscan, Jason getting hit by fire and the put out fire and healing item use being mapped to the same button, even normal difficulty you go down to critical health fast, and due to the fact that green leafs are mostly all over the map and it's easy to craft healing syringes in the pause menu this causes the game to be on the easy side. I wouldn't mind this but enemies later in the game are just as easy as the pirates you fight early on. Nothing really changes once you get past the aforementioned "early game hell". All raising the difficulty does increase damage numbers and the timing window to use healing syringes and get a successful heal in decreases drastically. 

Overall, if you can get past how easy it can be after a certain point, it's still a well made open world game even if it is hard to look past the influence the game has on the industry at large