Far Cry 3 swims against the current by making a longer, more open-world shooter, and succeeding magnificently.
Far Cry 3's ambition is not solely confined to its structure, however. The game features a storyline that is substantially deeper than in other games, with themes ranging from insanity and madness to the geopolitics of drugs and the slave trade. In many ways, this closely resembles the team's previous effort in Far Cry 2, in which you hunted a psychopathic mercenary through Africa in a storyline meant to recall Heart of Darkness. Here, the literary inspiration is Alice in Wonderland, a novel that is quoted during certain transitional loading screens throughout the game, and which underscores the themes of madness, surrealism, and unreality that permeate the game's long narrative. The story is not without its faults; the tribal warriors who are your allies throughout the game are painfully stereotyped as primitive, mystical, clad in their animal furs and bedecked in face paint and tattoos. But overall, the game at least tries to be somewhat serious, and it's a testament to the writers that it succeeds in part.
Far Cry 3 is perhaps best described as an open-world combat-puzzle game. Unlike the Call of Duty model of moving forward as quickly as possible in order to see the next grand finale of explosions and "surprise" twists, this game lets you move at your own pace. Almost every combat scenario presents you with some sort of defended structure or location that you must unlock with stealth, long-range sniping or archery, or with guns ablazing. How you approach these challenges is up to you, although I found that the game heavily favors the stealth or sniper player over the "heavy." In particular, when attacking outposts, there are alarms that the guards can sound to bring in reinforcements -- which often doubles or triples the number of enemies you have to kill. Thus, the best strategy is usually to sneak around and kill enough enemies so that you can deactivate the alarms. Only then is it a viable option to pop out of hiding and lay waste to the remaining foes.
The open world, like that in Assassin's Creed, also offers some interesting optional side quests. For instance, there are radio towers -- essentially the equivalent of the towers or vantage points in the Assassin's Creed series -- which unlock more and more of the global map. You must climb these towers to activate them. In addition, there are enemy outposts to conquer, hunting quests, and assassination missions. To say that the game takes an idea or two from Assassin's Creed would be putting it lightly, as everything that worked well in that series has been imported into this game, with the only major change being that you do it in first person now rather than third.
Overall, I highly recommend this game. For those who enjoyed Far Cry 2 but were intensely frustrated by its flaws, you will find that Far Cry 3 improves on almost every aspect of its predecessor. For those who want an open-world shooter rather than a corridor-slaughter-fest, this is the game for you. And for those who want to see an action game attempt an ambitious storyline, this game is . . . well, you get the idea.