

Forced stealth, such as that seen in a later-game mission that fails you the moment you are discovered, isn't that enjoyable. You don't have to conduct your business so loudly and dramatically, however: Far Cry 3 gives you ample opportunity to be stealthy and sometimes outright requires it. (Well, some combatants, anyway.) Near the end of the game, your foes can put up quite a fight, and be great in number, so Far Cry 3 doesn't just give you the tools to be creative it ultimately demands you use them to survive. That same flamethrower can lay waste to vegetation and effectively create moats of fire that can keep combatants at bay. Consider using a C4 charge and luring a small group of pirates to an explosive demise, or using a flamethrower to char evil henchmen to a crisp.

Caged leopards and bears can be freed with a single shot, granting you a temporary ally in your quest for vengeance. Or, you could snipe the individual alarms, though shooting one does not deactivate others. Should a pirate trigger it, reinforcements arrive in a matter of seconds, so you might want to sneak in and deactivate the alarm system. One consideration: you must be aware of an outpost's alarm. Further in, however, you must put Far Cry 3's diverse possibilities to intelligent use.īest to deactivate the alarm before engaging. Early on, freeing an outpost can be remarkably easy: you shoot down a handful of pirates, and the flag is raised declaring the camp as the Rakyat's. These camps also serve as quick-travel points, lessening the tedium of driving from one objective to the next. One core activity may sound familiar to returning fans: you shoot up enemy outposts so that you may liberate them, turning them into safe zones where you can load up on ammo and other supplies. The game is big, certainly, but where Far Cry 2 could feel aimless, its sequel feels more focused without ever losing its sandbox appeal. Story missions have you navigating caves and holding off enemies in modern shooter fashion, but out in the wild, you have an entire paradise to tame.Īnd it's that lush and menacing world that makes Far Cry 3 utterly enthralling. Some moments seem made to be shocking for the sake of shock alone-not because they develop the world or its characters-but Far Cry 3 isn't so much about story as it is about its world, and the ways you exploit it for your own personal enjoyment. The game quickly glosses over an event that would make most of us emotional wrecks, making Jason's proclamations that the issue was harder to deal with than he expected ring hollow. Some of Jason's friends are strangely unaffected by the horrors inflicted upon them. Nonetheless, narrative oddities stand out. You might see the narrative curveballs coming after a while, but the trippy manner in which certain events unfold effectively blurs the lines between reality and Jason's occasionally drug-addled imagination. But his friends' shallowness ultimately allows Jason to take a guilt-free look inward, as he grows further mesmerized by the customs of the local Rakyat tribe that takes him under its wing. Those friends are too shallow for you to care much about them, which keeps the story at arm's length for a good half of the game. As protagonist Jason Brody, your initial quest to rescue your friends from a chaotic and truly frightful pirate named Vaas turns into a personal journey blurred by drugs, and fueled by the desire to follow a new and exciting spiritual path.

It takes many hours for its themes to come together in a coherent way-yet in certain aspects, the incoherence makes sense. When the story leaves those cliches behind for deeper territory, however, it does manage to communicate ideas of substance. By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's
