Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"All flash, no substance"

Far Cry 3 is a beautiful game. The Island you parachute onto is gorgeous in its details; the animals frolic around you, the trees sway under a setting sun, and pirates roam the land trying to kill you at every turn. However, the most beautiful thing about the game is the staple of the Far cry series; realistic fire, which destroys all this beauty and leaves a blackened wasteland in its wake.
This is all well and good: The game is pleasing to the eye; the game mechanics are easy to pick up; and the characters you meet are intriguing and, occasionally, likable. So why was I left feeling empty and, I dare say, disappointed with the Far Cry 3 experience? Simply put, there is nothing there. When you strip away the open world and get down to the main component of the single player-the story line-it is very poor. The story itself is badly written and moments of tension are replaced with simple quick time events. These moments are again very pleasing to the eye; however, they are completely uninspired and seem to be a very bad way of hiding very bad and unimaginative writing. As well as this, I found the main protagonist-Jason Brody-difficult to like. The only characters I do feel sympathy for are his friends, who you spend almost the entirety of the first island trying to rescue. For me this was a great motivation, I wanted to save these people. When you then abandon them to go to the second island the experience feels empty as the only drive to reach the end of the game is your characters drive to kill the bady. But my drive to complete the game was left on the first island. My character might have wanted to kill this guy, but I felt no need to. This is where I believe the writing is flawed. The writers do not instil in the player the same drive as appears in the character. If Brody was made a more sympathetic character then the game would be driven by my want to help him, however, his friends are the source of sympathy and so when they are taken out of the equation there is nothing left but the aesthetics.
Of course people will say that the story is not everything and in Far Cry 3 there is a wealth of things to do other than the story. However, when such effort and such attention to detail is given to every other aspect of the game, why couldn't they do that with the story?