So far so good - didn't like FC2 at all tbh with the whole malaria BS (got no patience for that right now lol) but this is turning out to be the first Far Cry game that I'm actually very much enjoying and hopefully turns out to be the foundation on which the next games in the series are built on!

Combat feels satisfying (from the weapons you use, the variety of weapons and the look/feel of them too), the main antagonist is very likeable and cool, the environment is awesome to look at and explore, driving is cool, soundtrack is real good... Yup, everything's pretty spot on! There's even stealth and stealth takedowns.

Now if you've played other Ubisoft games like the more recent AC's then you'll be familiar with its open worlds and having a ♥♥♥♥ ton of things to do - all that's here - but how I'm doing it is going from main mission to mission and doing a few side activities in between so I don't get too burnt out or start to feel like the game's getting repetitive.

There's a crafting system which is not too intrusive or overwhelming - just enough to feel like you're being rewarded for going out hunting animals for their skins so you can e.g. craft an item that allows you carry more than one weapon or hold more money/ammo. You only need usually two of the reagents (or at least for the first upgrade).

Graphics hold up pretty well too.

Definitely worth it at -85% off but hold your horses, cowboy! Because not all is sunshine, rainbows and titties. As you can see I've unfortunately chosen not to recommend this game on Steam because of some technical issues. The game so far is great as I said already but let's see. Nothing unusual for a lot of Ubisoft games. There's the Ubisoft Connect launcher and having to log in to play - an extra step that's just annoying really. There are features unavailable because the online servers have shutdown. Then there's the crashing - something to do with DX11. I followed a guide here on Steam but unfortunately, Steam didn't like that. So now the only way to play the game is to run the .exe from within the game's directory which obviously means my hours won't be counted (part of the fun for me, personally, and why I enjoy playing my games on Steam).

I paid good money for a product which turned out to be scuffed and that makes me sad. What a shame. A great game (so far) but I can't be supporting a product that isn't working as intended or encouraging people to give away their money to crooked, uncaring and out of touch developer/publishers.

“Sandbox” in a large open world and fun, real immersion in the game - for a long time these concepts were compatible in much the same way as a dolphin and a mermaid from a famous song. In fact, until now only role-playing games from the Gothic and The Elder Scrolls series have managed to marry them, and even then only because the developers there focused not on a “sandbox”, but on a large, interesting and hand-crafted world: Bethesda can afford to spend years and unlimited budgets on this.

But the action games, which honestly tried to implement a game “sandbox”, somehow didn’t work out right away. No matter how much they borrowed from role-playing games (side quests, skill branches, improving weapons, conversations about life in a bar), they still ended up with a cloned, boring and artificial world in which only the first two hours were interesting. And this year Ubisoft finally broke through. Years of training on two parts of Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 2 have borne fruit: the new games in these series have turned out to be such that you can now say the same thing about them as about Skyrim - you want to live here.

Adrenaline in the tropics

The main secret of the success of Far Cry 3 is that here, perhaps for the first time, sandbox action films managed to combine the “sandbox” with a fascinating, spectacular plot. Previously, either one of these was implemented crookedly, or, more often, both of them were lame on both legs. And in Far Cry 3 we see a script that is not equated to a background image and is not limited to three lines, but draws you to the screen no worse than, for example, the movie “Adrenaline”.

The comparison is not accidental. The story of how a group of young people went on vacation to a tropical island, and ended up being captured by local pirates and almost sold into slavery, is just as full of madness, shockingness, charisma, humor, self-irony, irrepressible imagination and drugs of varying severity. And if the plot still raises questions (how a cowardly, impressionable guy who has never held a weapon in his hands without any preparation begins to cut and shoot accurately right and left is not entirely clear!), then all that remains is to follow the development of events in admiration.

A doctor who loves to eat mushrooms, a bandit gone crazy and his even more bloodthirsty boss, an imaginary CIA agent, some Indians led by a sexy, tattooed girl, a hippie black man in glasses who answers all questions in the spirit of “follow the path.” warrior, and the chakras will open” - bright, half-crazed characters are complemented by approximately the same missions. Trying to save our friends and family, we run through a minefield, escape from a burning house, get out of a sinking ship, storm prisons, go down into caves for hallucinogenic mushrooms, travel through our own visions like Max Payne and burn marijuana fields with napalm.

Hunting, fishing and money-grubbing

But the most important thing is that all this staged, crazy action movie, balancing on the brink between drug propaganda, postmodernism and self-irony, gets along quite well with the open world, where, as before, you can go in all four directions. At first glance, in comparison with Far Cry 2 and other “sandbox games”, little has changed: the same lush scenery where you really want to escape from the St. Petersburg winter, the same cloned side quests in the spirit of Grand Theft Auto 3, dating back to the days of Grand Theft Auto 3. “send that evil one to the forefathers, deliver the cargo or kill as many enemies as possible in the allotted time,” the same confrontation between two factions and the need to capture outposts. Finally, the same “safehouses”, which serve as both a storage point and a supply warehouse.
However, the developers made a number of significant amendments, thanks to which all this made sense. Firstly, it now makes sense to capture outposts (plus radio towers that open up new pieces of territory): enemies no longer respawn there, and each such point becomes your transit base.

Secondly, the authors very successfully added a hunter and herbalist simulator to the game. It has its own ecosystem, within which different animals live in different places on the map and different plants grow. We, of course, use the latter to make all sorts of medications and potions. But all these wild boars, deer, leopards, lizards, dogs, sheep and buffaloes rush through tropical meadows, fields and rivers for a reason, but again with meaning. Each animal here is not only a detail that creates the right atmosphere, but also 3-4 kilograms of useful resources. We, as in Gothic, are literally forced to hunt and skin skins, because then they can be used to make a lot of vital things that allow us to increase the capacity of a backpack, wallet, belt for grenades or potions. At first we can't even carry more than one type of weapon. If you want more, be so kind as to skin a couple of sheep!

Thirdly, you want to explore the world, complete cloned tasks, capture and open new areas of the map also because all this brings money. And in Far Cry 3 they are needed like air: the prices for weapons and upgrades to “barrels” are frankly prohibitive. The difficulty gradually increases, and therefore there is always something to spend money on. Of course, if you really want to, you can go through the story without being particularly distracted by hunting, herbalism, gathering and secondary errands, but this will be more difficult to do than in other sandbox games.

And the world itself beckons and draws in. This, of course, is not Skyrim yet, but it’s already somewhere nearby: here you can accidentally stumble upon some abandoned temples and caves, see a tiger killing a buffalo and dogs joyfully chasing sheep, overhear interesting conversations between NPCs or notice how A pimp scolds a prostitute outside a brothel. And besides the same type of quests, there are more interesting and even ironic tasks: one of them, for example, parodies “Romeo and Juliet”.
Kill me fun

However, even if Far Cry 3 did not have a captivating plot and a living world, we would still highly appreciate it - in fact, for its action. Here it’s simply interesting to shoot, kill, quietly sneak up from behind and use a variety of weapons (from a knife and pistol to a crossbow and flamethrower!). The shooter from the game turned out to be as bright, crazy, inventive and charismatic as the plot. You can, for example, open a cage and unleash a tiger on an enemy, or set fire to one bush or house and see how everything is on fire, including you and your opponents, who are roasting as they run.

In addition, three branches of skills allow you not only to use medications more efficiently, run faster, swim longer under water or collect herbs more economically, but also open up very effective methods of killing. You can jump from rooftops and stairs onto enemies, kill them one after another in a deadly knife combo, and then pull the pin of a grenade in the corpse's pocket and throw the body to the others.

At the same time, the enemies are extremely smart and inventive, they willingly use the same grenades and chase you in jeeps, so it’s a pleasure to fight with them. Except that during hide and seek, opponents are openly stupid and give in: they almost always stand with their backs to you and even a couple of meters away they don’t notice anything with their peripheral vision.

Finally, the optimistic picture is complemented by multiplayer and co-op, which also turned out to be very rich and effective: co-op is a separate mode with new, but no less colorful characters, and in multiplayer you, among other things, can drop hallucinogenic gases on your opponents, forcing them to attack each other
In short, Far Cry 3 may well take the title of game of the year this year. Not for the bright action, living world, style and fascinating plot - we have seen all this separately from other, no less strong contenders. And for the fact

in rook iland you play as jason broson adn you must killing the pirates to become the far cry