Far Cry 3: First Impressions

While I do have fond memories of Far Cry 2 with its gorgeous Dunia engine, it was a somewhat contentious game due to several design decisions. Endlessly respawning opponents and difficulty spikes were things I personally didn't enjoy that much, although it did have awesome multiplayer. Four years later, Ubisoft Montreal gives us Far Cry 3, another gigantic game in a season dominated by gigantic games - when the current Call of Duty entry apparently manages a ten hour single player campaign, you know it's a good year!

Far Cry 3 looks like it will last you more than ten hours. Much more. I'd say minimum three times over, and that's not even counting multiplayer. It also appears to be dealing with some serious topics, though my brief first encounter with it didn't really get to those yet. Going back to Far Cry 2, the devs have promised no more respawning bad guys and a smoother experience, so that's good. 

Unlike some other games recently, Far Cry 3 pays homage to its early 2000's hardcore PC gaming lineage by offering quite detailed settings for PC gamers to mess around with. I mean, not many games allow you to choose v-sync framing and GPU frame buffers.

 Time to start a new campaign, and the jungle/paradise island theme makes its appearance. Unlike Far Cry 2, Ubi Montreal decided to go back to a setting very much akin to that of the first Crytek game.

Always love a good quote, and in this case very apt considering the predicament the main protagonist finds himself in.

Since it's almost impossible to discuss the story without major SPOILAGE, I'll just say it begins with what appears to be merriment, yet in fact is rather harsh criticism of certain aspects of modern society.

You've probably seen Vaas in many of the promotional materials, and he's on the cover art, as well. While in the short span of the game I covered he's still somewhat of a one-dimensional character, it's evident there's a lot more at play here.

The introductory sequences (which Ubisoft seems to be very fond of these days) are mostly stealth-based.

 

 The world seems quite detailed and loaded with items to interact with, starting with your very own tablet device. Yes, it's no longer a PDA. It's a tablet of undisclosed brand. Too bad.

 It then occurred to me there must be more options to tweak game performance, and indeed the devs have given PC gamers just that. There's myriad variables you can change.

 

 Facial animations and motion capture are excellent as is now the norm. However, I did notice some lip syncing issues here and there.

The POV is very well done. Your character observes events taking place in the background, which is entirely optional, and continuously talks to himself, being in a state of shock as the campaign begins. These factors lend Far Cry 3 a lot of texture and depth.

When you emerge in the jungle, you soon realize it's beginning to make the Crysis standard look a little like your friendly garden patch thanks to DX11 effects.

Brief underwater intro segments hint at Far Cry 3 letting your character do a lot of swimming, including reportedly punching out sharks and other marine lifeforms.

And now the game begins! This took only 30 minutes or so...welcome to the age of the Long Game!

One of the first people you meet in Far Cry 3. I won't disclose what is actually happening in this scene.

But it is followed by you acquiring your first weapon!

Of course, this is an open world design, so there's tons of places to go to, things to buy, activities to engage in, and presumably lots of shooting. Then there's the three dozen or so main missions...have you checked your schedule app recently?

Then you get your gun, a 1911 in this case. Far Cry 3 comes with a database that covers every person, item, and location in the game, with very detailed information.

So, my impressions? Very promising game, hope I'll have enough time to make the most of it. Definitely looks good, great music, and plenty of promise in terms of gameplay variety and options. Performance-wise, I believe Far Cry 3 isn't the easiest of games to run. The settings as shown above ran well on my PC, but nowhere near 60fps. I'd say somewhere in the region of 30-40. I don't have the most powerful setup in the universe, but it's definitely capable (Ivy Bridge i5, 16GB, 3GB HD 7950 etc.). Also, I hope Ubi Montreal won't come after me guns blazing, but the game did crash on me the first time I tried to run it. One reset and it was fine and then ran without a hitch. Could have been a random thing.

There's no doubt this is a must-have game, and yet again one that shows the big difference between PC and console gaming. This is another theme for 2012, which is only natural as the current gen of consoles is basically done and awaiting retirement/replacement. Still, it's awesome enjoying more attention from developers, even if they could make much better use of the incredible resources even your middle of the road gaming PC possesses. The bottom line is simple: go get Far Cry 3. It's part and parcel of a gaming season that totally caught me by surprise with its quality and penchant for HUGE titles that feel like they never end!