Far Cry 3 is just the single-player campaign for every hungry shooter fan.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is Far Cry 3.
Presentation and Story:
The story takes place an island just like mentioned up there, you play as Jason with other five supporting characters. You start with the tutorial scene with your brother, Grunt, trying to escape from the ruthless, heartless Vaan's tribe who mysteriously and for no reason kidnapped you and your friends.
You break out from his camp with your brother only to get him killed and from that point. You're on your own playing the actual game.
At first, the story was igniting and interesting. It lets you take note of the people who are around. The villain is one, son of a good mother who will kill you without a second thought. You, as Jason, the protagonist, involved in the story and the story revolves around you. That is only in the few first hours of the game.
Presentation is just simple, you go to from point A to B and you come across a cut-scene. You finish following up God knows what and then head into your destination. As you make progress within just 10 hours, it becomes repetitive, but definitely not boring. The campaign lacks interaction with NPCs in towns and posts which we will go through later in the review.
There is no diversity in how characters, cut-scenes, storytelling. It's always A to B and you wait for the next mission to come.
Score: 7 out of 10. "Good"
Sound and Voice Acting:
Now, the game is huge, I think there's no way to cover all the sounds, because it's full of NPCs, animals and sharks. But let's talk about them in general.
Because the game in its nature lacks any mean of interactions, you seldom hear anyone talk. Even shops when you're going to buy anything. It's like a muted TV. I honestly don't know how to tell review this category, but I'll go with this: It's blank.
Voice Acting is decent for the most part. Again with the cliches "I'm the only one who can do it." I mean you're stuck and you're the one who needs to be helped. Why should it be you "THE ONE WHO CAN SAVE THEM?" You should be saved first.
There's a lot of curse and swearing which I think it's getting old. Badass characters need to have a new persona and charisma. Although enemies make up for that awful dialogue that you'll be forced to listen to. They talk to each other, which feels like a teamwork to me, and they almost act on instinct.
The music is almost non-existing because most of the time spent playing there's only whistling.
Score: 6 out of 10.
Graphics:
OK! This is where the game really shines and I am very happy to say. Graphically, it's just amazingly designed and so is technically. Smooth animation during reloading your weapon and during steering your vehicle makes the game feel fluid and easy to get off on.
Not only this artistically beautiful, but it's well-detailed as well. Having played it on the PC shows that the inferiority of the console versions. The game was test on Very High Settings with RAM: 16GB, GPU Card: 2GB and i7: 3.8 GHz
I found it weird that I couldn't run it on Ultra Settings but Very High Settings are just as beautiful as it should be.
Facial expressions, tattoos on your hands, even fair hair on your wrists are visible.
Luckily, there is no any framerate nor technical difficulties regarding the graphics.
Score: 10/10
Gameplay Mechanics:
Now, here is the game's strongest point, mechanically, it doesn't need to be familiarized with. Hop it, pick up a gun and kill enemies. It's the same shooter you've been playing those past years, however; there is something special that caught my attention.
You're not just killing like the run-and-shoot traditional way. Now, first, you take out your binoculars, strategically marking enemies and then you make your first move based the enemies' location and their patrol area. From there, you assassinate or make a scene and have a gunfire fight with them.
On top of that, Far Cry 3 comes with skill tree where you level up and get a skill point to become stronger. There are three kinds of skill trees based on three animals, tiger, shark and wolf or something like that.
Every animals is defined as stealth, health, and gunfire weaponry skills. And what's rewarding is that each skill you learn requires a different kind of thing to do. For instance, in order to gain a stealth kill skill, you'll have to kill an enemy from the top or jump over a guy and kill to advance to the next skill.
Also, to gain more experience points, there are posts, strongholds where enemies reside waiting for you to take over. Wiping them out differs on how several factors:
1. Animals.
2. Location of the post.
3. Kinds of enemies (Heavy machine gunners, snipers, RPGs..etc.)
Sometimes, it's like a walk in the park. Go behind each dude and kill him... BANG! The post is yours.
Sometimes, you really need to think things over before going blindly at them. So there's some interesting tactics to go about. And the stealthier you are during occupying a post, the more experience you'll get.
As for the weapons and bags.
Bags come from animal skins which you will hunt, skin and create bags for your medicine, grenades, ammunition, items, and number of weapons you can carry at a time.
Each bag has requires different skin of animals, some need deer, some need sharks...etc. Depending on what you want to expand, you'll get to go to different locations of the island just to hunt down and skin animals.
Weapons are somewhat traditional and there's nothing special about them. You have enough money, good. You can unlock all weapons with their attachments and color paintings.
There are two kinds of missions; as you know, the Story Mission and Post Missions which come from taking over a post and it varies to Traditional Rakyat Kills (Stealth Kills) and animal hunt (with a bow mostly)
Gameplay is the best aspect of the game, and it keeps you captivating all day and all nights.
Score: 9.5 out of 10.
Replayability:
Though you don't wanna look for a storytelling shooter here as it loses its touch after a while. But the action and missions keep your edge of your seat and it's a thrilling ride to have. It's one of the best single-player campaign so far and I hope we get more of that. Personally, I'm more into Single-Player now then Multiplayer and Far Cry 3 filled my needs for a shooter.
Though you lose interest in the characters, story and why you're in this freaking island. However; there are the action and missions that make up the bad storytelling and characters.
Score: 7.5 out of 10
General Pros and Cons:
+_+ Amazing Combat System.
+_+ Wonderful Art Style and Graphics.
+_+ Great Action.
-_- Forgettable Characters.
-_- Awful Voice Acting.
-_- Feels Lonely on the Island (NO INTERACTION WHATSOEVER)
Overall Score:
Far Cry 3 gets... a Solid 8 out of 10.