Reviews// Far Cry 3

Whether you prefer a stealthy approach at all times or not, there's a strong element of strategy and guile to the whole game. Certain missions require you to complete them without raising an alarm. With others you're well advised to use your handy camera to tag the locations of enemies so you can track them. Happily, the AI's smart enough that they'll continue to react to you once you're out of sight, so even if you plan to go in splurting forth hot lead, you need to plan your approach.

Vehicles are a core part of the game. You can unlock certain locations for fast travel, but even once this is done there's a lot of ground to cover on Far Cry 3's two islands.

Cars, boats, jetskis and hang gliders all number among your travel options. Vehicle events make use of them, but one of the most fun things you can do in the game is hop in whatever car you stumble across, motor over to an enemy-controlled area and drive over any enemies you find, cackling gleefully as they give chase. It's like GTA without the weird guilt some of us lily-livered liberals occasionally feel.

It's these little detours that make FC3 rewarding. You might find that seeing how far off-road you can push a quad bike is a good way to spend a few hours, or that you want to take control of every single radio tower so you can see the entire map before you progress with the story. At one point I got sucked into a Rakyat leaderboard challenge (in which you test your skills to 'impress the locals') and was sat firing RPGs at pirates to rack up points for pushing an hour before I realised what was happening.

With all this content, Ubisoft could probably have stopped at the single-player campaign, but there are both competitive and co-op multiplayer modes, too.

The co-op is a bespoke mode that runs parallel to the main story in which four hardcases rock up on shore having been betrayed at sea by their captain. It's a tighter affair than the main sandbox mode and complements it nicely. It's linear rather than open, with set-pieces specifically designed to make you work together. You can use 'battle cries' to give your comrades various boosts, such as to their health or accuracy. You can also tag enemies for your mates as you would in the campaign. There's just enough elbow room for you to choose your own line of attack, but it's decidedly more focused than the single-player.

In the competitive multiplayer there are a couple of modes that won't be instantly recognisable. The first is 'Firestorm'. The idea is to set the other lot's supply depots on fire. Once one team's supplies are burning a firestorm kicks off, a radio is switched on and it's a scramble to see who can grab it first.

In 'Transmission' you have a series of transmitters to protect. Some are overheating, and protecting them will give you more points for a shorter period of time. Some aren't, so you get less points for longer. Unfortunately, while there were multiplayer servers available there weren't enough matches available for me to pass judgement on competitive MP pre-launch. I can say that there's a strong toolset for creating your own matches, though, and that it will be interesting to see the content that emerges post-launch.

One thing that's noticeable across the board is some ropey presentation in places. The menu system to get you into a co-op match takes some real getting used to as it's pretty confusing. Similarly, the in-game menu-system launched from the start button is a bit labyrinthine. Weapon selection is bizarre, objectives don't always show up on your map right away, and you can spend a fairly substantial amount of time not entirely sure if you're doing the right thing or making use of all the resources available to you. There's a case to be made that this is the result of there being so much going on in the game, but it's a problem nonetheless.

Similarly, the graphics are a bit shonky in places. Overall, the island's really well designed. It's lush and varied, with a great colour palate that really shines through with the day/night cycles. While the map can start to get a little repetitive at times, there are enough interesting locations to keep things interesting.

Unfortunately, the graphics suffer from the sheer size of the game sometimes. The landscape has a tendency to pop, and while the Xbox 360 build I played isn't quite final and pop-up when you're hang gliding is a known issue that will hopefully be fixed, I've seen it occurring at ground level, too. There's also occasional tearing and at the edges of the map some serious blurring. Still, while overall FC3 won't have you re-evaluating what a 360 can do, it's by no means a bad looking game.

Far Cry 3 is a behemoth. At times, that means it could be tighter and it sacrifices its early promise of tense realism for game-iness. Overall, though, plumbing its depths uncovers so much interesting content that its flaws are very forgiveable.

Pros:
- Lots of content, lots of depth.
- Interesting strategy elements
- Non-linear design creates very individual experiences

Cons:
- Doesn't stick to early promise of realism
- Awkward presentation
- A few problems with graphics

SPOnG Score: 8/10