While FC3 does some things right, the things it does wrong can be very frustrating at times. It is still a must play.
THE BAD STUFF:
Right off the bat, you are somewhat shocked to learn that you cannot carry more than one weapon from the onset. No worries, you just have to hunt animals to craft larger loot bags, weapon holsters, ammo bandoleers, syringe kits, etc. The problem with that is, I didn't want to play Far Cry 3: Cabellas Big Game Hunter. I just want to play Far Cry 3. The hunting is a bit tedious, and quite frankly, the animals have WAAAY too much health. I clip dumped an assault rifle into some of the creatures only to have them laugh at me and bite my foot, or claw me to death. For some reason, you can hack them with the machete more efficiently than you can shoot them. That is until later on when you learn some new syringe recipes that make your life hunting much easier. Still, I found myself just wanting to get all of the hunting over with at the beginning before I went on to the main quests. It wasn't easy to down some creatures without better weapons or the later learned syringe recipes. I found the hunting to be a tedious grind that broke the immersion.
The save system is god awful. I am used to being able to hit F5 after going through something tough, or before I am about to encounter a sticky situation. However, there is no quicksave, and often when you open the menu to save, it will say "Unable to save during a mission". Well, you are ALWAYS on a mission, it is just a matter of whether or not you elect to go and do it, or do a side mission. The game saves at random spots when you approach a radio tower, a pirate camp, or begin and end a mission, with checkpoints between. I would have preferred to at least have a save system like FC2 where at least you knew where your saves were going to land if you didn't do a quicksave. Inexcusable for a PC game if you ask me. And by the way, you cannot skip cutscenes. So if you die at the very end of one, or you just happen to play the game for a second time, you have to watch the whole damn thing all over. WTF!?
The game suffers from some sort of strange mouse lag or something. I am quite accurate in most other shooters, and it just seems way harder to line up shots on enemies for some reason. I turned the sensitivity way up, and that helped a little, but it just still feels off. It almost feels like steering a console analog stick with the mouse. Again, inexcusable for a PC release. Textures pop in and out when you draw near them even on max settings. It is as if the max render distance for consoles made it in to the PC port. BLAH!!
The user interface is somewhat more cluttered than I would expect out of a modern open world shooter. I don't want the stupid mini map up at all times. Where the hell is the GPS system that FC2 used? What was wrong with that? I actually thought it looked cool, and it kept you immersed. In FC3, you spend way too much time in the pause menu crafting, map checking, and it just takes away from the action too much. I don't want to pause a firefight to craft more syringes, I want to go through a whole battle without having to pause it a few times. I don't understand why they did this...oh wait, yes I do. They seem to forget that a keyboard has about 20x more keys than a controller, so we are forced to use their crappy menus too. ARRRGHH!! There are some mods already out that can lessen the onscreen clutter, and some patches are supposed to help with the annoying boxes that keep trying to remind you of things, but it is still not perfect.
This is an M+ rated game, yet for some reason all of these developers must think that 9 year olds are playing these games because they make every damned important object in the game glow. Oh gee, I had no idea that a chest might be openable after the first 20 I found. And I sure would have missed that gun on the ground, thanks Ubisoft! There is almost no need to explore because all of the loot chests are shown on the mini map, and so are the plants. GAH!!
My last few complaints are the weapon sights, and the enemy psychicness. There are a couple of weapon sights that have a glowing orb in the middle that basically ruin the whole point of having a sight in the first place because it obstructs your view of the target at even medium ranges. Thank god there is a mod for that as well. The other thing is, I really don't have the patience to throw rocks all day trying to lure out pirates from their patrol routes in order to get an undetected XP reward. Besides, there are plenty of things to do to earn experience anyway. Even if you try sniping with a suppressor or using the bow from LONG range, they somehow know exactly where it came from if you miss or a body is found, and they charge your position. WTF!!?
Oh, I almost forgot. Very repetitive dialogue from the NPCs. And there is some poor collision detection when it comes to tiny ledges on bridges and the like. Finding the sweet spot to loot a corpse or climb a ledge can be tedious at times too.
THE GOOD:
Despite the textures popping in when you are roaming around, the world is still pretty neat, and the character models are well done. The world is very well designed, and it truly feels like you can go anywhere you want, as long as the hill isn't too steep. I never tried to test the limits of the range out to sea, but I would imagine it isn't all that far out from shore before you are warned to return to the mission area.
The main characters are very believable and well portrayed and the voice acting is excellent. Even though the group of friends are a bunch of spoiled rich kids, it is still easy to relate to them because they all seem to genuinely care about each other. Vaas is easily the one that steals the show, but some of the more intimate moments with your friends are a nice departure from the craziness.
Even though I complained about the mouse sluggishness, once you learn to deal with it, the game becomes more enjoyable. Besides, if it were as easy as COD to wipe out pirates, the game wouldn't be as fun. The recoil feels about right for most weapons, not too harsh, and not too easy to control as well. The sounds of the weapons are good, and the fire effects are pretty realistic. There is a mod that allows you to add more attachments to guns that wouldn't previously allow, and is supposed to increase the damage on shotguns and sniper rifles. The only drawback with this mod is that it also increases the enemy damage for those same weapons. It seems that all of the mods that I could find overwrite the same 2 files in the FarCry3 folder, so they do not work in conjunction with one another unless you modify the files yourself, such as the mini map translucency.
The story is a bit awkward, but it is a nice change up from FC2. The boss battles (if you can really call them that) break up the pace of the game a bit, but they aren't QuiTE (hint,hint) what I was looking for. There are some great moments in the game which will be unique to any other experience because even though the enemy AI is somewhat stupid at times, they actually can be challenging when they come in from behind with reinforcements and try to flank you.
The weapon variety is good, but I still feel like they could have put more into that. It is 2012 (well 2013 now) people! Give me 50-60 guns to choose from! Being able to attach a suppressor to sniper rifles is pretty sweet. Finally!!
The radio towers offer a challenge mid to late game, and the other side missions you can do are fun to change up the pace and earn some cash and experience. The poker isn't exactly perfect, but it is done as well as you could expect from a game that isn't trying to be Poker Superstars 2. I actually broke away from playing online at times to play in FC3 because at least I can do something with the fake money in FC3! LOL.
Enemy variety is decent, and some of them offer quite a challenge. I hate the molotov guys with a passion, and if you don't too, you must have better luck putting them down before they start bombing you.
SYNOPSIS:
So it seems that I have way more gripes than I do good things to say about the game, but that is mainly because this was my most anticipated title of 2012. I was wanting this game to be "Skyrim with Guns" as others have mentioned, but it just wasn't on that level. It is still a great game, and I dumped about 20-30 hrs into it without feeling bored other than the crafting grind. With mods and hopefully some texture fixing issues, this game only stands to improve more than it already has. I didn't mention multiplayer or co-op because those are entirely different, and I honestly didn't have the desire to play either just yet. The bottom line is, this is definitely still one of the best games of the year, it just fell a bit short of my expectations. Stop reading this and go BUY IT!