Far Cry 3

Just beat the game, and here's my thoughts.

About half way the game loses a lot of steam, I honestly think they should have made it shorter and never created Hoyt as a villain. He is not nearly as interesting as Vaas. Also while logic was never the games strong point it has a done of random plot hole inducing things in the 2nd half.

Some of the NPC are real interesting while others are really bad. Worse the main character is pretty damn annoying.

The game is the best early on when you don't have much. Once your packing good gear it gets a little boring.

Heavies later on take way too much damage, it's just stupid.

Crafting on a whole is useless, never needed it at all.

Climbing towers and assaulting bases is the best part of the game. Oh and the travel bit you unlock on the second island is fantastic.

I enjoyed the game, but the comparisons to skyrim seem way off. It's a fun game, not great though. If it had single player coop I'd raise it up a bit more.

Edit: Oh and the good ending while nicer was dull, while the bad ending while really awful was interesting so yeah.

I recently finished as well. My complements and criticism mostly echo master0. I did enjoy the crafting, but you finish all you can on the first island. Having heavies be really tough was a pain at first, but the heavy takedown and my AMR helped a lot. Besides, at least they didn't have a huge health bar on top of ther heads, like in the co-op game. The power curve is quite skewed. I was mostly a bad-ass by the second island mostly unstoppable towards the end, unless the game throws 15 enemies at you with no chance stealth (see the final missions).

Overall, it stays in my top 10 for the year, albeit at number 10. The gameplay was vey fun, but in the end it was a much more transitory experience than Far Cry 2, at least for me.

Wrapped on this tonight. Rented it, so only a minor monetary investment (let's call it $14).

I enjoyed it a fair bit, and the quick-fail missions did get me irritated at times, but overall, I really enjoyed it. As for the heavies, I rarely had trouble with them - usually a grenade or two, as well as some heat from my shotgun, took them down relatively quickly.

My biggest gripe is with the ending - why they give you a selection at that point is beyond me. Jason has forged his path adamantly, never given to the actual player's concern.

All the other little gripes people have had? Yeah, not going to say anything different. It was more fun than I was expecting, and I credit that to the world exploration, hunting, and skill integration. Also, to the explosive tipped arrows.

tboon wrote:

No fail stealth missions suck. Especially ones that take you back fifteen minutes. Really especially when there's an obvious place to put a checkpoint. For a game that has (this far) been respectful of my time this just makes me more pissed.

This might be it for me for this game. Or maybe I am just raging.

Schizophrenic Game of the Year.

its actually not that bad.. watch a youtube video walkthrough and then realize... it does help if you have the extra speed squat perk..but agree that mission was annoying.

I'm stuck on the first (I think?) insta-fail stealth mission,

Spoiler:

where you have to infiltrate the boat, kill the radio operators, and get their Sekrit Information.

It doesn't help that the game flips out and yells at you if you move too far away; clearly, climbing a hill to snipe or get a better perspective is Wrong, and should result in a complete fail state.

I think I'm done with this game. I don't mean to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, given the love the game has gotten, but I just can't get past the game's shortcomings. The insipid story, grindy hunting/crafting system, and shallow open-world with the completely revealed map and constant mission reminders loses me. I loved Far Cry 2; this feels like a weak imitation of a once-great series, aimed solidly at the pre-pubescent dude-brah gamer, and the combination of terrible UI and forced-stealth missions pretty much kills my enthusiasm.

Maybe I'll come back to it if/when a no-hud patch is released on the console versions.

TheHipGamer wrote:

I'm stuck on the first (I think?) insta-fail stealth mission

That one's really not that bad at all; I prefer that mission to the stupid forced shooting bits and the one stealth mission (I haven't reached yet but am dreading. god I hope it's only one.) where I've read you aren't even allowed to kill anyone.

I think I used a bow and a couple of takedowns for that and didn't have any problems first time through. Yeah it sucks that you can't snipe from farther away, but people have been saying the story missions suck for a reason. That mission, while by no means unique in it's insipidness, gets worse:

Spoiler:

after spending that time killing those dudes stealthily, somehow an alert gets triggered anyways and you have to kill or run away from all the reinforcements ANYWAYS

IMO it's worth pushing through just to get access to more outposts on the 2nd island, although my opinion may change depending on how frustrating that silly no kill stealth mission turns out to be. The good in this game is all about taking out outposts.

The hunting/crafting isn't really that grindy. You're inevitably going to get attacked by wildlife (or come across pirates/Rakyat in a fight with wildlife) as a matter of course just in the process of doing other things, and the herbivore/non-aggressive animals which won't attack you are easy to kill by virtue of being non-aggressive. For the unique/named wildlife you need for the top-level upgrades, continually jabbing yourself with animal repellent makes those trivial.

I've pretty much learned to tune out the various reminders, so while a ui tweak there would be nice, it's not any kind of game changer for me.

TheHipGamer wrote:

I'm stuck on the first (I think?) insta-fail stealth mission,

Spoiler:

where you have to infiltrate the boat, kill the radio operators, and get their Sekrit Information.

It doesn't help that the game flips out and yells at you if you move too far away; clearly, climbing a hill to snipe or get a better perspective is Wrong, and should result in a complete fail state.

I think I'm done with this game. I don't mean to be contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, given the love the game has gotten, but I just can't get past the game's shortcomings. The insipid story, grindy hunting/crafting system, and shallow open-world with the completely revealed map and constant mission reminders loses me. I loved Far Cry 2; this feels like a weak imitation of a once-great series, aimed solidly at the pre-pubescent dude-brah gamer, and the combination of terrible UI and forced-stealth missions pretty much kills my enthusiasm.

Maybe I'll come back to it if/when a no-hud patch is released on the console versions.

I "cheated" on that one.

Spoiler:

I died, then respawned at the edge of the mission area on top of my jet-ski. Out comes the sniper rifle and before you know it, all but one of the bad guys were dead. Proceeded to board the boat and finished him off with a shotgun. Then it turns into corridor "crawl" until the end of the mission.

Ok, that first stealth mission can be done pretty damn easy. Rocks and silent takedowns. You guys are throwing rocks right? Sneak in behind and get the knife kill. Also, upgrade your smg with a silencer and it's even easier.

Also, that second stealth mission where you can't kill anyone is also easy. Rocks and sneak.

Finished it. I loved it. I thought the movement and shooting felt as good as anything I've played. I also don't understand all the backlash against the story. I thought the story was fine and I liked the main character.

One of the best things about the game was the physicality of the character, which is unusual for a first person game. My favorite move was dropping into a crouch as you are running, which results in an awesome slide as you transition. I was playing another FPS, and I was disappointed I couldn't replicate that move.

Oh, Jason sounds eerily like a roommate I had when I was young. It's such an exact resemblance that I actually went and looked up the voice actor, in case he'd gotten into that field in the (many) years since I last saw him. I liked it fine, I was perfectly used to the voice, but I was majorly creeped out at the same time. The phrasing, the intonation, the way the actor chose to stress certain slightly odd syllables that didn't really make sense.... I would have bet you $100 it was my old roommate, hearing it blind.

Hey guys, just grabbed this game on a whim (and all the stellar talk from everyone here and from press) on the Steam sale and am having a bit of a problem; and only with this game. Whenever I start the game up, something is wrong immediately. The game pops up in windowed mode and the screen flickers and the opening logo is very chuggy. After seeing that, I went to hit CTRL+ALT_DLT, to see if my computer was locked up. But after popping the task manager, the game was stable on the main screen. Going to options and throwing it in Fullscreen and setting Video options seemed to be okay. Starting the game and getting the opening seemed to be okay (granted a little dark on my monitor, but nothing out of the ordinary). After finally being able to control my character and running away, the game then went to a black screen and stopped responding.

Went looking for fixes and found a couple things. On the main Ubi forums for FC3 found a tech help forum, tried a couple things. Main fix sounded like it might lead somewhere: Link to that forum thread

Issue: "Far Cry 3 Has Stopped Responding." on a Black Screen and or gets minimized.

Cause 1: Windows 7/8/vista is attempting to change the visual theme to basic but is unable to change it due to Far Cry 3 Auto Disabling Desktop Composition....

I have seen Windows pop up something about changing the theme to basic, but have never had it interfere with a game like this. I tried following that fix, but Steam won't recognize the game if I set it to "Compatibility Mode" like that fix suggests.

I posted there and tried to look around about other fixes but couldn't find any help. I don't like to post here and take up people's time with tech issues, but I could sure use some help!

Anybody have any ideas? Any little morsel of knowledge would be appreciated!

I have a cousin visiting for New Year. He is an outdoors type and, early in the new year, he's going ice climbing in Scotland. After catching up for a while he said he'd like to see the games I'm playing. I decided to show him a little Far cry 3. My first thought was showing him a croc ambush attack. I headed to some water and walked to a patch of waterlilies. After a few seconds a croc obliged and I was dragged into the water. A bloody struggle ensued. My cousin was suitably impressed with my knife skills. Unfortunately, on the way back to the car, I was unexpectedly knocked down and gored to death by a water buffalo which tarnished my image as a hardened jungle survivalist.

We then proceeded to take an enemy base by the ocean. Afterwards he asked if he could have a go shooting a barrel with the bow. He couldn't get the stick controls down and had limited success hitting the barrel from close range. We then spotted a shark in the water and proceeded to have no success at all hitting it with the bow or the gun. After some time I mentioned that you could kill one hand to hand and he said, "Sod it. I'm going out there." He swam out into the water. I'd not tackled a shark up to that point so I wasn't sure how tricky it would be. Once we were out mid ocean I tried to scan for sharks, made trickier because the cousin controlled camera kept drifting up to the sky. "The stars are coming out," he said. "Yes. It's getting dark."
"So we're out swimming in the ocean at night looking to kill sharks with a knife."
Yep." I spotted one some way off. It was heading our way. "There's one. When it attacks we'll get a button prompt and you'll have to hit the A,B,X or Y button."
The fin drew closer. "Which buttons are those?" he asked. "The coloured buttons. I'll call out which button colour you mash it repeatedly." Suddenly the shark hit us grabbing the characters arm and thrashing a little before swimming away in a puff of blood. "I thought you said we'd get a button prompt."
"There wasn't one. Perhaps you should swim for shore."
He started for shore. The shark hit us again. This time there was a prompt. In my panic I forgot the whole colour thing, "A! Hit A!"
"Which one is A!!"
"A! Green! Hit green!" but it was too late. We were dead.
I reloaded and demonstrated how real men hunt sharks. From the shore with a submachine gun. I then demonstrated how you craft wallets.
On the way back to the living room he said, "I can't believe you let me get eaten by a shark."

I think I'm almost done with FC3. I adored the first island; the pay-off for stealth was great, and I'm already tossing around playing Dishonored and actually stealthing it. I'm usually a hack-and-slash player, so this is really a milestone for my gaming style.

Spoiler:

That said, I don't like torture and looked away when Jason beat his brother. I get what the game was doing, but it made me VASTLY UNCOMFORTABLE and part of me doesn't understand why he didn't just kill Hoyt when he was in the same room with him the first time. The "No really, this is tougher! There are heavies!" of the second island; the bad guy not being that interesting...

I've been playing this almost since its release and really want to finish, but the main story isn't what had me coming back. It's great; I still want my husband and friends to play it, I just wish I felt the same adoration for the second half that I did for the first.

For me Far Cry 3 feels like the first person version of Red Dead Redemption, in the best possible way. Red Dead was the last game I actually spent time in hunting. With the similarities butchering the animals in Far Cry 3, I started seeing the resemblance early in the game. The worlds between the games were so similar; the same game mechanics kept popping up. From the base raids to the random encounters on the roads, collecting ingredients to the poker, Far Cry felt the Red Dead. The theme was obviously different and the perspective changed (1st person vs. 3rd person) but the fundamental architecture is the same game.

I haven’t finished it yet but have made it to the second island.

One outpost left on the second island (the nw-ern most one) which hilariously and unexpectedly gave me a ton of trouble last time I attempted it. An overhanging cliff is a great place to snipe from until you realize you can't get eyes on all the dudes and your only way off the cliff (short of an at least 10 minute long trek around the other side of the giant hill) is to glide off it which is...suboptimal if you're trying not to be detected.

Not sure if I want to continue with the story missions, but I'll crack that last outpost at least.

Just throw molotov's down and wait for them to run into the open. Sniper rifle does the rest.

Sally.Caboose wrote:

I think I'm almost done with FC3. I adored the first island; the pay-off for stealth was great, and I'm already tossing around playing Dishonored and actually stealthing it. I'm usually a hack-and-slash player, so this is really a milestone for my gaming style.

Spoiler:

That said, I don't like torture and looked away when Jason beat his brother. I get what the game was doing, but it made me VASTLY UNCOMFORTABLE and part of me doesn't understand why he didn't just kill Hoyt when he was in the same room with him the first time. The "No really, this is tougher! There are heavies!" of the second island; the bad guy not being that interesting...

I've been playing this almost since its release and really want to finish, but the main story isn't what had me coming back. It's great; I still want my husband and friends to play it, I just wish I felt the same adoration for the second half that I did for the first.

Yeah that was one of the big wtf moments. The last half is mostly nonsense story wise. Although I did like the friendly person you meet, quite amusing.

BlackSabre wrote:

Just throw molotov's down and wait for them to run into the open. Sniper rifle does the rest.

...and done.
Didn't even end up needing the molotovs on my next try. Approached from a different direction and saw there was a tiger cage I could open to chase the few guys I hadn't spotted out into the open.

The QTE battle against the last boss was really the icing on the cake. Why a game with this tight a combat system has to lapse into this simon-says bullsh*t for boss battles is simply beyond me. A failure of AI to bring a proper opponent at endgame? A mistaken idea that this kind of QTE crap allows for some kind of drama? This game is about shooting, sneaking, blowing up - so why does it change to an entirely different game against boss characters, what kind of game design is that? f*cking lazy is what.

Simply put this game is infected with lazy development through and through. The crafting is a halfass effort that blows its load after about two hours of gameplay and then is completely worthless after that. The XP upgrades last maybe half the game and then its just "oh I guess I'll throw some points into some ability I may use once in a blue moon" Seriously halfway through the game the XP gain is just more worthless visual clutter like the plants scattered around showing up on your minimap. These systems were just not very well thought out. That the game is enjoyable at all is thanks to the basic fps gameplay which does feel very good, and the open-world mayhem - which is really rather underwhelming all things considered (and another system at odds with itself by becoming less fun the more bases you take over), and I think only stands out due to the fact that most FPS games these days are so on rails that anything that offers a touch more freedom feels like a breath of fresh air. But here it's just a tease, as the story missions constantly are at odds with that freedom, afraid to really hand you the keys to make any kind of real decisions. At this point I think the Call of Dutys are at least more honest with what they provide the player, there is no bait and switch. Far Cry 3 just teases freedom only to set you right back on the story rails and strap you in with no choice whatsoever. Weak.

Well, I appear to have a giant Molotov cocktail stuck to my right hand (it only shows with the bow and when swimming.) Worse it doesn't reset when I leave the game and come back in or when I get rid of all my Molotovs

IMAGE(http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/6169/molotovw.jpg)

I went to the Ubisoft forums and found a thread of people reporting, and showing images of, exactly the same thing. It has to get patched. Time to shelve the game and wait.

AcidCat wrote:

At this point I think the Call of Dutys are at least more honest with what they provide the player, there is no bait and switch. Far Cry 3 just teases freedom only to set you right back on the story rails and strap you in with no choice whatsoever. Weak.

I agree with this so much. I remember saying in the blasphemy thread that there's nothing wrong with a plain 'meat and potatoes' game, just do what you're doing well and don't make a mess. Call of Duty campaigns are fine, not every game has to be a revelatory genre buster.

Most Ubisoft games I've played in the last few years have been an adequate core, and then they just keep layering on extraneous bits to pad it out, presumably because they don't know how to do small and compact. Ubisoft's skill seems to be in production, producing big things with big long credits in a big special edition box and then rolling the factory onto next year's big production.

Higgledy wrote:

Well, I appear to have a giant Molotov cocktail stuck to my right hand (it only shows with the bow and when swimming.) Worse it doesn't reset when I leave the game and come back in or when I get rid of all my Molotovs

IMAGE(http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/6169/molotovw.jpg)

I went to the Ubisoft forums and found a thread of people reporting, and showing images of, exactly the same thing. It has to get patched. Time to shelve the game and wait.

Think of the explosion that thing would cause! Wait... O.M.G... THE TURTLES!!!!

BlackSabre wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

Well, I appear to have a giant Molotov cocktail stuck to my right hand (it only shows with the bow and when swimming.) Worse it doesn't reset when I leave the game and come back in or when I get rid of all my Molotovs :(

Think of the explosion that thing would cause! Wait... O.M.G... THE TURTLES!!!!

I just need to find someone with an enormous lighter stuck to one arm.

juv3nal wrote:
BlackSabre wrote:

Just throw molotov's down and wait for them to run into the open. Sniper rifle does the rest.

...and done.
Didn't even end up needing the molotovs on my next try. Approached from a different direction and saw there was a tiger cage I could open to chase the few guys I hadn't spotted out into the open.

My favorite stealth trick was making my first round the grenade launcher. This would usually kill 2-3 in one go if I arced it well, and start a fire. At that point I just needed pick them off and I was fine. I was always happy when I found an animal locked in a cage, I made special effort to free them and help them survive the fight.

AcidCat wrote:

The QTE battle against the last boss was really the icing on the cake. Why a game with this tight a combat system has to lapse into this simon-says bullsh*t for boss battles is simply beyond me. A failure of AI to bring a proper opponent at endgame? A mistaken idea that this kind of QTE crap allows for some kind of drama? This game is about shooting, sneaking, blowing up - so why does it change to an entirely different game against boss characters, what kind of game design is that? f*cking lazy is what.

Simply put this game is infected with lazy development through and through. The crafting is a halfass effort that blows its load after about two hours of gameplay and then is completely worthless after that. The XP upgrades last maybe half the game and then its just "oh I guess I'll throw some points into some ability I may use once in a blue moon" Seriously halfway through the game the XP gain is just more worthless visual clutter like the plants scattered around showing up on your minimap. These systems were just not very well thought out. That the game is enjoyable at all is thanks to the basic fps gameplay which does feel very good, and the open-world mayhem - which is really rather underwhelming all things considered (and another system at odds with itself by becoming less fun the more bases you take over), and I think only stands out due to the fact that most FPS games these days are so on rails that anything that offers a touch more freedom feels like a breath of fresh air. But here it's just a tease, as the story missions constantly are at odds with that freedom, afraid to really hand you the keys to make any kind of real decisions. At this point I think the Call of Dutys are at least more honest with what they provide the player, there is no bait and switch. Far Cry 3 just teases freedom only to set you right back on the story rails and strap you in with no choice whatsoever. Weak.

Pretty much this. The game has 20 hours of game play in a 40 hour game. All the mechanic in the game get worse the longer you play, save for the open world nature itself. I also agree that the crafting is silly and just busy work, and the xp system is fairly useless (good for acting as a tutorial to introduce new things though). If they had cut the game in half it would have been so much better.

The following isn't really a spoiler but more of a personal experience I just had with the game that was pretty epic regarding the Old Mine area.

Spoiler:

So there I was busy exploring the island and I decided to try and activate a radio tower. That went down simple enough so I checked my map for new destinations. That's when I noticed a location named "Old Mines".

I first decided to just creep up to the location trying to remain undetected so that I can disable the alarms. That didn't work too well so I decided to walk all the way around and climb the mountain and back to the area above the Old Mine. Slowly crawling from rock to rock trying to find the best spot I was in for a challenge seeing that there was no way I could see both alarms from the same location and the sniper wasn't making life much more easier.(This would have been impossible in FC2 since I would have been spotted miles away already )

I slowly moved to the far side where I could see both the sniper and one of the alarms. I held my breath as my cross-hairs targeted the first alarm and squeeze the trigger. Chaos ensued down below since the pirates had no idea where that shot came from. The sniper got sight of me, but it was a moment too late for him since I had him in my sights way before he noticed me. Needless to say he didnt survive the bullet to the chest I gave him.

I tried to hurry to the other side of the rocks so that I could shoot the second alarm. I thought I got there on time but even with two shots the alarm wouldn't budge and the reinforcements were called. With my third shot I finally destroyed the alarm and slowly picked off the targets while more and more reinforcements arrived. Eventually I killed all the pirated all I had left to do was finish off the dogs and the area would be mine.

As soon as the area was secured I went through the tunnel and down the extremely long ladder. I was expecting to see some abandoned mine shaft maybe with a relic or such. What I found was beyond words. Such a beautiful hidden wonder. It may have brought a manly tear to my eye, but I wont confess to that.

So that was my tale of discovering the Old Mines. Far Cry 3 is littered with moments as such. I can name a few more that I have experienced and I only started playing the game yesterday. I am in love with this game. A lot like a crush really.

I ended up finishing off the story missions for want of something to play. The story is still blegh, but some of the fights in the later missions are actually okay in that you can sort of approach them stealthily (the three traitor captains, the approach to the satellite dish & the fuel depot, sort of, although that last one has dudes that magically spawn in from nowhere). The "sit here and defend while waves of dudes come at you" parts, turret sequences and qtes are still dumb though.

The don't-kill-anyone-forced-stealth bit was actually nowhere near as tough as I had been dreading and it was okay.

Thinking back on it, the best story mission stuff is probably right after

Spoiler:

Vaas throws you into the water tied to a cinder block

until

Spoiler:

you get all your stuff back

in that you're forced to do without the overpowered tools you've grown used to which makes for an interesting change of pace.

juv3nal wrote:

Thinking back on it, the best story mission stuff is probably right after

Spoiler:

Vaas throws you into the water tied to a cinder block

until

Spoiler:

you get all your stuff back

in that you're forced to do without the overpowered tools you've grown used to which makes for an interesting change of pace.

That was pretty much the last time I was stressed while playing.

Very little chat about this! Sure petered out quickly. I'm still working through the campaign, I'd like to start working through the Rakyat trials and I've decided I need Uplay friends to compare e-peens scores with!

I think I'm Rothving on Uplay if anyone wants to add me (my high-scores are currently pretty terrible if that's incentive), do we have some sort of Uplay google doc or something on the go?

Once I finished it, I kinda haven't felt the desire to go back to it. Unfortunately the shine wears off quickly once you do all the hunting stuff. Well for me it did. I found that once I had everything fully upgraded, it was just a matter of finishing the story, getting some achievements and then, that's kinda it. I'm not sure if I want to go back any time soon. Shame really. I mean I enjoyed the game a lot, but the replayability for me isn't there.