Far Cry 3

I suppose I should add to the earlier comments on the game, since I have finished the campaign. I'm not a big fan of first person shooter games in general, but I have to acknowledge that it can sometimes be made to work. After years of Doom clones/evolution, I found Half Life to be surprisingly immersive and interesting, for example. So I have some bias in the genre. Thus, when I say Far Cry 3 seems a cut above most FPS games, one must understand that I am very critical, but also haven't experienced them all by any means.

There's strength to the story conveyed in the game, and I really like that. The specifics of the story vary greatly, though. The premise is fine. Vaas, the antagonist for the first chunk of the game is awesomely demented, and manages to act as a foil of sorts. There's a good back-and-forth rivalry between him and the main character... then Vaas gets killed in a drug-haze quasi-dream sequence. And that's about where the story takes a turn for the mediocre. The behind-the-crazy "real" bad guy is far less interesting, as was the gameplay on the second island. I find this a little bit worrying after having read that the designers really meant Vaas to be a more minor character, but increased his importance based on the actor's portrayal. That means the whole game was designed in such a way that wouldn't have been as good. Hmm.

Characters aside, the game edges into some pretty dark places. There are a handful of major scenes where the main character is in some drug-affected state. There's a scene of interrogating a prisoner while undercover that actually made me squirm some. It's a tale about a "normal" guy who gets pushed into a world of violence and death, only to find he's good at it - perhaps too much so. That is addressed and played up over the course of the story. It's probably a good thing that I can say it make me a little uncomfortable. From a purely analytical standpoint, though, I have to say I felt the transition was rather abrupt and probably the element that disturbed me most was the character doesn't really question or express regret.

The gameplay is solid, though as with any FPS I've seen, the vehicle driving feel wonky. Perhaps the most fun parts were assaulting enemy outposts, completely apart from the story missions, offering a chance to scope out a place, plan ambushes, or just run in guns blazing. Unfortunately, doing some (but not all) side missions, I unlocked signature weapons and most of the gear before hitting the second island. That meant the outposts (and random tiger attacks) were pretty easy to deal with. In general, any mission failures on the second island felt less due to failures on my part to plan or execute and more due to stupid amounts of enemies being thrown at me.

So... overall a reasonably good game that has a story which addresses at least a few things that get glossed over all too frequently in games, but the challenge and fun of it all peak long before the ending, making the latter portion of the game dull by comparison.