Far Cry 3

After sitting through the ending credits of Far Cry 3, here are my thoughts.

In Far Cry 3 you play as a tourist who is part of a group that gets captured by the protagonists of the game. You manage to escape, but you need to save the others. This means that you have to join a tribe of warriors to learn how to fight and survive on the island. The transition from tourist to killing people without remorse is a bit weird. Apart from that though, the game has a captivating bunch of characters who you meet throughout the story. Both the villains of the story and other side-characters have strong and interesting personalities. The entire game, including every cut scene is in first-person mode, which works quite well to get you immersed into interactions with those people.

The graphics are very good and the island you are stuck on is big, even when you travel around by vehicle. The game does give you points that you can fast-travel to as you progress through the story, so if you are like me you will use that every time it is possible. Combat can be done with a range of firearms and explosives, which all seem to run out of ammunition every time you are in trouble. Luckily you can use your knife to take down enemies as well, and also pick up their weapons to prolong your survivability.

My review cannot be complete without mentioning the fire. I hate fire in this game, and I love it. Use a flame thrower on a wooden house or a field of grass and the flames start spreading, catching enemies inside. Fire will lead to a lot of frustrating moments (death by fire is a normal thing on the island), but it is a very cool weapon effect.

During the game you get experience points that unlock different abilities. There is a type of side quests that you are meant to pursue to get money and more experience, but I left most of them and managed to get everything I needed anyway. I do not expect to go back and get all the collectibles that exist either, because as soon as the story ended the rest of the game is not that interesting to me.

Overall it is a good and fun game because of the strong characters and the story, but the open-world stuff does not bring much except for nice-looking environments. It might be that the cooperative and multiplayer modes are good but I have not tried those.