Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Surprisingly good"

Let me start by saying that I enjoyed Far Cry 2. But that was about four years ago. The game had no lasting appeal after you beat it, and the more that I played it, the more errors that I found with it. It just didn't work. There was no sense of "Hey I need to do this because of this." If you have no cause and effect system, then it's hard to make a good game.
Far Cry 3, of course, scared me when I saw it announced. I wondered if free-roam would be back, because that was one of the things that saved Far Cry 2. Through watching countless trailers and interviews, I still had a very limited grasp of what Far Cry 3 was, up until a few weeks prior to launch.
I was glad to see a lot of things that I enjoyed were making a comeback, namely the free-roam, the map editor and multiplayer. But it still worried me that free-roam was going to be empty and bland like it was in Far Cry 2, where namely your only option was to go kill people at outposts for no apparent reason other than there was a possibility that they might have diamonds.
Free-roam is certainly better this time around. There are a lot of side missions to do. Everything from finding someone's lost child to hunting a rare animal to assassinating someone. All of these are great fun, and there is something for everyone.
While I'm thinking about it, hunting plays a huge role in Far Cry 3. At first I thought that it sounded tedious, but it actually became quite enjoyable. In order to upgrade certain things (carry more weapons, more ammo, etc.) you will have to hunt a certain number of a specific animal. By doing this you feel more accomplished rather than if you just walked into a store and bought the upgrade.
Of course, there is a perk system and this let's you do some pretty bad *** stuff. One of my favorites is the knife throw take-down. You go up behind the first guy and stab and then take his knife and throw it at the next guy's head. There is a lot of really awesome things that you can do no matter what way that you want to approach the game. Whether you want to go guns blazing or stealthy is up to.
All in all, Far Cry 3 is a great game that did not disappoint me. It has the ability to change gameplay according to how you want to play it. If you like shooting games, Far Cry 3 is a must play.