Welcome to the Jungle – Far Cry 3 Review

Ubisoft’s series Far Cry has had it’s ups and downs. The original made by Crytek was the perfect test to see how good you computer graphic card was, after different expansion packs and different variations, the series moved to Ubisoft Montreal. Ubisoft Montreal had some great ideas for the series, moving it to an open world Africa and creating an incredible fire mechanic, but the game fell short with issues including Malaria and gun jamming.

Far Cry 3 brings you back to the Jungle but with a big twist. You see, unlike Far Cry 1 and 2, where you were playing a skilled mercenary or ex-military person with some sort of animal-like superpowers, Far Cry 3 puts you in the shoes of an ordinary guy thrown into an extraordinary situation.

Jason Brody has spent his vacation with his two brothers, his girlfriend and his rich friend going globetrotting to all the big locations, they stop for a sky diving trip to Rook’s Island. This turns out to be a very bad idea as they get kidnapped by local pirates, run by a psychopath named Vaas. After a daring escape, Jason’s older brother is shot and killed, Jason is forced to flee into the jungle. From this point, Jason has two goals, rescue his surviving friends and kill Vaas. Of course nothing is ever that simple, to get to Vaas and his friends, Jason must put his trust in a group of strange characters and a mystical Tattoo which will unlock the warrior inside of him.

It’s a pretty simple story really, one that tries to push Jason on the brink of Insanity. At first Jason feels awful about killing in general, but as he continues down his quest to become the Warrior the island needs, he starts to feel powerful about taking the lives of the pirates.

Jason isn’t a soldier, before the start of the game he hadn’t even shot a gun before, but as the game moves along it becomes second nature. The game rewards you for being creative with your kills, by getting headshots and multi-kill explosions for extra EXP, to sneaking up on bad guys to do brutal knife takedowns to take down your opponents quickly and silently. The more you increase your Tattoo’s level, the higher your skills become, allowing you to unlock better aiming abilities across all weapons and more knife takedowns.

Combat in this game can get crazy at times thanks to the upgrade system. For example, thanks to several different upgrades, I was able to shoot a guy from a zipline, land on top of his buddy which allow me to stab him and the guy next to him, take out the pin of his grenade, and kicked him towards his buddies in the matter of 4 seconds. It’s not rare to have moments like that with Far Cry 3’s combat system, but each time it makes you feel more of a badass.

But of course, killing bad guys and doing missions is only part of the battle, if you really want to get the most out of the game, you will learn to hunt down dangerous animals for their skin to craft items that will help you carry more guns and ammo. Also you can collect flowers that can be crafted into healing items and limited time status boosts.

Rook Island consists of 4 huge islands, while in single player you’ll experience the 2 bigger islands which has plenty to do. As I already mentioned, hunting plays an important part, but so does how you travel the island; which you can do so by various vehicles, including trucks, atvs, boats, a hang-glider and later on a wingsuit with a parachute. Of course you can unlock fast travel locations by taking out enemy bases and view more of the jungle by climbing radio towers in some of the best first person platforming we’ve seen in a long time.

Jason story is only half the game though, as the two other smaller islands are set for the 4 player co-operative campaign which takes place a few months before Jason’s adventure. 4 mercenaries are out for blood as their captain stole their money and left them for dead. While the gameplay is more fast paced then the single player, it feels much more like Left 4 Dead then the single player campaign, this isn’t a bad thing though.

Far Cry 3 also includes a team based competitive multiplayer mode, where you’ll join either Vaas’ pirates of Citra’s rebels in a fight around key locations on the island. The different modes are very straight forward and are explained by your team leader at the beginning of each match. What makes the multiplayer mode real interesting is what happens at the end of the match. The 3 top players of the winning team get to choose if the lead player of the losing team receives a punishment or mercy. There are a handful of animations for punishment and mercy, however it seems rare to see the mercy option selected by most players.

We gave Far Cry 3 our Game of the Year for 2012 for a reason. It is a huge improvement from the previous titles, it is one of the prettiest games that we’ve seen, and it’s one of the few games aside from Saints Row The Third that actually made us want to work on the side missions and make our characters stronger. Ubisoft has struck gold with this game, and you owe it to yourself to play it.