There are some gaming experiences that you enjoy simply
because of the story.
I’ve done several
myself.
Sometimes I’ve been
rewarded
for my efforts, and sometimes there have been
games
that have been disappointing after having promised me the moon.
And now that I’m back to at least
semi-regularly reviewing games that people actually give a crap about, I took a
look at a release from last year that I missed, and sadly so.
Far Cry
3.
And where did it land on the
scale of one to
THIS GAME
SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS?!
Well, let’s take that little journey together, shall we?
I took on the role of Jason Brody, the third-place winner of
a Zach Braff look-alike contest, who is vacationing with his friends in the
Pacific when he ends up getting captured by a comically overblown and possibly
racist pirate and his band of pirates who plan to sell him and all his friends
into slavery. However, timid Jason
breaks out with the help of one of his friends (who gets a bullet to the neck
for his trouble) and runs off into the jungles of the Rook Islands to avoid
dying…
After reenacting the climactic bridge scene from Temple of Doom, Jason wakes up in a
village where a (possibly) magic tattoo has been scrawled onto his arm that
marks him as a warrior. Thus begins an
epic tale of revenge, flipping switches, several drug-induced hallucinations,
and lots and lots of bodies scattered all around the island.
The best part is that I’m really not kidding, that could
basically have been the blurb on the box art for as accurate as it is. Jason journeys across the island learning how
to make medicines from the herbs (the Richard and Tommy method of healing) and
to skin the animals of the island in order to make holsters, packs, and ammo
pouches of all sorts. And by skin
animals, I really do mean skin all of them.
Almost every animal you run into in the game has a skin to serve one of
the aforementioned purposes, the highest tiers of which require taking special
missions to hunt specific creatures and skin their pelts…which is easier said
than done in many cases.
The game is open world, though the second island isn’t open
until about halfway through the campaign.
However, there is more than enough space and enough on the first island
to keep you occupied for quite a while.
The hunting of creatures for pelts alone can literally take up hours of
time. Plot-wise, a main objective is to
clear out enemy outposts across the island to secure more territory from the
pirates and re-activate radio towers in order for merchants to bring in new
equipment.
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| "Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord, Jesus Christ?" |
A neat bit about the merchants is that while the game does
have a commerce system (a barter system accompanied by whatever loose change
you find in the pockets of people you kill) you’re not actually required to
purchase any other weapons but the starting gun. Activating radio towers unlocks certain
weapons for free, so after a handful of them you’ll have enough guns that you
can access to blow a small crater into the moon. The game very much allows you
to be self-sufficient in this regard, just a quick trip through a nearby glade
getting you enough leaves to fill your medicine cabinet and thus making the
only real need for money being ammo.
The game encourages stealth combat to a strong degree,
largely in the second half of the game.
During the first half, taking out enemy outposts is rather easy. A few well-placed shots, they’re all dead, no
fuss no muss. But as time progresses,
new factors are added that make a direct assault possible but rather impractical.
Bases get alarms that bring wave after wave of reinforcements along,
enemies get better weapons and stronger defenses, and so on. So there is a strong emphasis on sneaking
around and taking out enemies from the shadows whenever possible. Unless you just have a death wish…particularly,
again, on the second island where enemies tend to be more resilient than not to
weapon fire and you have to look for weak points.
This focus on stealth is particularly irritating when you
have escort missions, as you do have a couple of them throughout the game and
they are really exactly what you’ve come to expect out of escort missions –
very, very irritating. The death of the
piece of meat you’re guarding means, of course, that you have to start the
section all over again. And it is very,
very frustrating when you complete your mission objectives and then have your
escort taken out by a single bullet fired from a man you couldn’t see before.
That all being said, I won’t say that the game is unfair by
any stretch. If you’re observant of your
surroundings and manage to have just enough manual dexterity to act, you’ll come
out alright…nine times out of ten, anyway.
The storyline itself is very interesting, certain text
screens quoting bits from Alice in Wonderland as we see Jason’s descent into
becoming what Rook Island will make of him.
And I have to admit, seeing that descent is rather chilling as he goes
from being offended at the very thought of killing in cut scenes to doing it
off-handedly and not giving it the least bit of thought.
It’s a little harder to swallow all of the carnage in the
very beginning, naturally, due to his attitude.
But once the narrative picks up, we start to see him slipping as he
realizes what he has to do and then starts doing it. Very well, in fact. Enough so for the local native tribe to want
him to stay and be one of their warriors, their priestess in particular wanting
Jason to stick around after killing the two main Big Bads so she can have his
uber-warrior children (more on that later).
That being said, both of the boss fights against the Big Bads,
Vaas and Hoyt, are pretty underwhelming for what I was expecting. Hoyt in particular, though considering the
one with Vaas is a massive drug trip if I weren’t told that I’d actually killed
Vaas I would have never known. Also, for
as much as knives are considered a sacred weapon by the Rakyat – in fact,
certain people can only be killed by knives in certain side missions – you only
get into two knife fights over the course of the story. These boil down to quick time events that you
have to memorize and that really just are irritating when they’re brought up
right out of nowhere.
Even in the aforementioned side missions, you don’t fight
with your knife anywhere else in the
game, so it is rather jarring to only have the two sections of it right out of
nowhere.
Beyond all that, you get a flightsuit/parachute combo during
the second half of the game from a C.I.A. agent, so I really can’t complain too
much (though hey, Ubisoft, couldn’t you have gone the extra mile and gotten me
a jetpack?) as far as that goes.
What I could
complain about but won’t is the endings.
Spoiler alert: There is no good
ending. I’d normally complain, but it’s
actually really nice to see an
inversion like this in gaming what with so many games doing alternate endings
or special ones you only get for achieving certain objectives or getting
certain items. Cut and dried, playing
through the entire game, you only get two and it gets based from a literally
last minute decision.
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| Vaas really steals the show...until he's killed off halfway through... |
In the end, Jason can decide to join up with the Rakyat,
kill off his friends and have some crazy hot sex with the priestess leader of
the tribe…who promptly stabs him in the chest after conceiving (it’s implied, anyway, your guess is as good
as mine as to how in the hell she knows that) and promises that he will die the
warrior he has become.
Or, as his second option, he frees his friends and elects to
leave. The priestess tries to stop him
and is immediately killed by one of her followers who tries to attack Jason for
being a traitor. Then Jason and his
friends leave, and he lives out the rest of his days as the monster he has
become. Not to mention what is probably
the complete demolishment of the Rakyat tribe and very possibly the beginning
of the end for their civilization.
So, yeah, it’s the Kobayashi Maru.
There is no right
answer.
But y’know what? That works.
That’s actually a really
welcome change for me. Again, this isn’t
something I’ve seen that often, maybe I just need to diversify what I play, but…really,
for a game to take a bold step like this and really just give no light at the
end of the tunnel is pretty astounding.
Of course, it fits the overall feel as well. The jungle is not a nice, inviting
place. It is foreign, it is hostile, and
it will consume you given the chance.
Just as it does to Jason Brody, one way or another.
So as for a recommendation…yeah, I say go for it. It’s pretty good beyond a few minor irritants
here and there.
Far Cry 3 is available for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 from Ubisoft and Ubisoft Montreal.
