Far Cry 3 review: A slightly twisted tropical escape

It seems that in America, the divide between rich and poor is growing deeper everyday. While many struggle daily to bring home food for their families, there are many others who think nothing of buying wardrobes of designer clothes, taking lavish vacations and blowing tons of money on ridiculous parties. Jason Brody, the “hero” of “Far Cry 3” does not belong to former group (if you couldn’t tell by his amazingly bro-tastic name).

Jason and a group of friends including his two brothers, Riley and Grant, decide to take a trip to Bangkok and the usual rich-American-cavorting-in-a-foreign-land shenanigans ensue. These events are shown in a brief montage to start the game, ending with Jason and his friends skydiving onto an unnamed island in the South Pacific. The view soon pulls out to reveal that the images are being shown to Jason by a man sporting a mohawk and a crazed look in his eye.

Eventually we learn that this is Vaas, leader of a pirate group that controls the island, and that he has taken Jason and his friends prisoner and intends to ransom them off. We also quickly learn that Vaas is exactly as insane as he looks and has no intention of ever letting you or your friends leave the island. With the help of Grant, who has military experience, Jason escapes Vaas’ camp and from there on out, you’re completely in control of Jason and his experiences on the island.

 “Far Cry 3,” a first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal, is one of the most visually striking and competent first-person shooters I’ve ever played. It strays from the usual FPS territory by placing you in an open-world setting and turning you loose and differs from other open world FPS titles (like the “Elder Scrolls” or “Fallout” series’) by putting the focus squarely on blood-pumping action. Don’t be mistaken, “Far Cry 3” is still an RPG at its core. Jason has three skill trees to level up which unlock new abilities, but these aspects are blended with its action elements so perfectly you could make the case that it’s a shooter with RPG elements, and not the other way around.

After escaping Vaas’ camp, there are many activities to occupy Jason’s time. While saving your friends and escaping is the game’s main objective, there are many pirate camps to take over (which become fast travel locations), radio towers which reveal more of the island on your map as well as a handful of other activities like racing and target shooting. Completing any of these tasks will earn you XP as well as money, which can be used to purchase new weapons and upgrades for said weapons. But my favorite side activity in “Far Cry 3” is definitely hunting.

There are several animal species inhabiting the area and while you can hunt these animals to sell their skins, their hides serve a much more useful purpose. At the start of the game, Jason’s inventory size is rather small. He can only hold one or two weapons and a very small amount of ammunition. By hunting and collecting specific animal skins, Jason can craft new pieces of equipment that will allow him to carry more weapons, ammo and other items like grenades and C4. By making you earn these upgrades through hunting, rather than just buying them from a store, you feel that much more immersed and attached to the character.

But crafting goes beyond creating new pieces of equipment. Early in the game, Jason meets Dr. Earnhardt, a strung-out man who offers to hide Jason’s rescued companions but also teaches Jason valuable crafting recipes. These recipes let Jason create standard health syringes as well as many other injectables that will buff his abilities, such as doing more damage to animals and breathing underwater for longer periods of time. Like the equipment crafting, you’ll need to find the appropriate materials to create these syringes, which you can collect by harvesting local plant life. 

Vaas is not a man you want to cross

But “Far Cry 3” is more than a collection of activities and side quests. The story follows Jason as he attempts to rescue his friends and escape the island and plays out over the course of numerous, expertly crafted missions. Each mission will test all of the skills you’ve acquired so far – both in terms of unlocked skills as well as your own mettle. Despite being a stranger in a strange land, Jason eventually befriends a handful of people who help him on his quest. One of the first people he meets is a man named Dennis who introduces you a tribal leader named Citra. Citra is the leader of the Rakyat, a native people who have suffered greatly under pirate rule, and she promises to give Jason the power he needs to kill Vaas and save his friends.

On the surface, the story of “Far Cry 3” seems like another thinly veiled excuse to allow players to kill hundreds upon hundreds of faceless bad guys. But when you examine the story, minus the extremely well-put-together shooting mechanics, “Far Cry 3” is the story of Jason Brody dealing with unbelievable hardships. Early in the game (and I mean before you even escape Vaas’ camp), Jason has to deal with not only the loss of his brother Grant, but also taking his first life. The action visibly shakes Jason but he doesn’t have time to process all that’s happening around him – he just watched his brother die and if he wants to survive, if he wants any of his friends to survive, he needs escape and do whatever is necessary to rescue his remaining friends.

As the game progresses, Jason’s sanity seems to be waning. Reality and hallucination start blending together. Jason’s friends also begin to notice a change in him and are scared for his well-being. Jason’s motives seem to change from merely trying to rescue his friends to getting revenge on the pirates and he seems to be drifting further and further from the person his friends once knew.

I didn’t expect it, but I liked Jason Brody’s story almost as much as I liked this game’s stellar mechanics. I’m a sucker for open-world, FPS titles so I knew that I would have fun with “Far Cry 3” despite not knowing much about the story. Once I got around to actually playing the story missions (I’m very OCD when it comes to finishing side activities before tackling main quests), I found it was as full of colorful characters as it was disturbing violence and mature situations. Luckily, these characters feature well-done voice acting and the violence isn’t too gratuitous, but rather serves to highlight the brutal way of life on the island.

 “Far Cry 3” also features a cooperative mode as well as a multiplayer mode but honestly, don’t bother with them. And I say don’t bother with them for a couple reasons. The first being that the single player is, hands-down, the best part of this game and you’ll want to focus the majority of your time with that mode. The second reason being that, at best, these modes are nothing special, and at worst, take away from the achievement that is the game’s single player mode.

The multiplayer mode of this game is serviceable and works fine, but there isn’t much special about it. It’s pretty standard for shooters to offer some sort of multiplayer mode these days, but that also means that there are plenty of alternatives. And the co-op mode just feels like a good idea that was executed in all the wrong ways. Considering that the single-player portion of the game is so open and rewards thinking critically about situations, the cooperative mode is strangely linear and does little more than spawn enemies in front of you to be killed. This mode offers a separate story (a ship captain sells his vessel, and its entire crew, to the pirates and four of them, the playable characters, fight back) but it’s rather uninspired and lacks the depth and feeling of the single player story. It’s frustrating because this mode ultimately could’ve been a stellar addition to the single player, but instead ends up feeling like a tacked on waste of potential.

Despite the “what-could-have-been” multiplayer modes, it can’t be stated enough times how incredible the single player story and adventure are. The amount of content to experience rivals other, top-tier FPS adventures and is one of the most visually stunning games I’ve played since “Skyrim.” The sense of progression you get from the skill trees, gradually changing from a pampered rich kid to skilled warrior is one of the best I’ve ever experienced in a game. On top of that, “Far Cry 3” allows you to play your way and whether that way is sneaking through the shadows, silently executing foes or blasting open the front door with explosives and machine guns, lets you have fun while still experimenting with all the possibilities for mayhem that it offers.

Some time has passed since “Far Cry 3” was released so it should be easy to find it discounted or used by now. But even if you can’t consider buying it anyway because not many games offer the amount of quality content that this title does.