There is only so much you can do with a game that doesn't have mutants, elves, jet packs, insane gods, cannibal cultist or talking dogs.
Okay, it sounds like it's generally along the lines of what I was thinking it might be, which is fine. I might pick this one up. The two month deep freeze is starting on the East Coast and my 360 probably still has some life left in it. Splurged on some new Sennheiser wireless headphones for the TV as well recently, so I can use that as a further excuse.
Don't be fooled by our negative comments. It's a great game so far, I recommend it. Also FarCry 2 had a pretty robust map editor and some of the levels people made were crazy. I've not touched the multiplayer yet, I'm pretty sure this game has a map editor too so there's bound to be some mad maps out there already.
FarCry 2 was one of the worst games I've played released by a major company. I actually broke the disc in half and chucked it into a dumpster. I think I'll hold off until FC3 is like $1.50 on Steam. And even then, I don't know. There are probably better things I could do with my $1.50, like wipe my ass with it. The original FarCry was good because it was made by Crytek back when they were in their prime. It took full advantage of the PC hardware that was available at the time, and had amazing, brutally tough open-ended gameplay. I really don't see the point of these shitty, consolized sequels that aren't even made by Crytek, or what they even have to do with the original game. It's just Ubisoft cashing on a name, but you could call these things anything and no one would know the difference. FarCry has no sequels as far as I'm concerned.
As a big fan of the first Far Cry and mortal enemy of the second, I can say that Far Cry 3 is pretty damn good. The only good things about the second was the way the run down vehicles handled the dirt roads (although it only had a good effect when the rest of the game wasn't getting in the way) and the fire system. Well driving cars up mountains on bad dirt roads is a hell of a lot of fun this time around, it just feels so on edge and realistic while still being forgiving and arcade-like enough not to annoy you. Also, the map is way more interesting than FC2 and you don't have to repeatedly drive through non-capturable outposts every 30 seconds with insta-respawn enemies. The fire system doesn't play as big of a role because the lush tropical grass doesn't seem to spread fire quite as much as dry savannah grass does, but it's still a good feature that no other game really has and has been enhanced in how you can use it thanks to a few new weapons. Overall I love the feel of this game. Moving through the jungle on foot or by vehicle just feels really well done, just like Far Cry managed at the time but with a MUCH larger map. The game borrows from Red Dead Redemption with the hunting aspect, plant gathering aspect and the ability to gamble (poker) as well as borrowing from GTA:SA with capturing turf - although there aren't actual turf wars after the fact; if you capture an outpost close to an uncaptured area there will be conflict every now and then, but you can't ever lose the outpost. The story seems pretty good although kinda Team America'ish at times. The main story voice actors are really good though, so this somewhat makes up for the scripted main story events. The bad for me is as said, the scripted story events play out like any cliche FPS and remind me at times of games I now avoid (COD franchise and similar). There are decidedly too many animals in this game... especially predators. Need to kill some tigers to make a weapon holster? Here's 5 in one area! I would've liked it if there were far less predators in general with maybe one or two 'hives' for each species, like a small gully or cave where they shelter together in packs. This way the upgrades could have been made a lot harder to obtain. If you needed 5 tiger skins but only ever saw a tiger every 10 mins in their hunting zone and could be killed by it pretty much instantly if you didn't spot it before it spotted you, that would make it a challenge. Alternatively if you found the tiger den you could take your chances - but even if you manage to pick off a couple from a distance, good luck retrieving their skins without the others savagely mauling you. Plants are the same, you should either need more to craft things, make them a bit more rare or not glow gold/show up on the radar, more like they do in read dead redemption. The same goes for money and weapons, both should be harder to obtain. At the start of the game it had this awesome feeling of surviving against the odds. I had 1 gun with hardly any ammo and crap all health. I could venture into the jungle but the pirates were patrolling almost everywhere. I could sneak around carefully and choose my battles, but a pack of 3 rabid dogs could almost kill me and alert nearby pirates to my location. Once you get better weapons and can carry more of them along with silencers, more health, armour and as many stim-packs as you can carry, the feeling switches to "how much shit can I devastate". You have the choice though... the game does try to limit when you upgrade things, for examoke I went out of my way to find the common spot for boars because I felt like I needed more ammo. If you just play the story, the game will be a lot harder... I just felt that aside from the excellent voice acting in the story, I much preferred the open sandbox scenarios I could create myself.
Yes, it's much more like Red Dead Redemption. Not as good mind you which is mainly because of the setting and having a little less variety in what you can do as well as the locations. Because of this it's now (10hrs in) becoming a bit repetitive. There are still quite a few unique locations that you see when following the story, and quite a few surprising caves and bunkers to explore for relics and loot. So it's still holding my interest, just at the start it has a really great feeling of awe at the overwhelming world you have to survive in. Once you feel you have conquered most of the challanges, this awe fades. That never happened for me in Red Dead. Still, my favourite thing in this game is sneaking up on pirate patrols, stalking them in the jungle picking off one at a time and finding the best position to take an outpost without being spotted (still a challenge for some of the later ones with dogs and heavily armoured guards).
EBay'd it. Even if it's only 15-20 hours before it gets a bit repetitive, I'll be happy. The only Far Cry game that I've played on the 360 was waaaaay back towards the launch: Far Cry Instincts Predator. That game was laughably primitive compared to what I've seen of this one.
@fusion It's funny that you said everything should be harder to obtain and you loved only having one gun at the beginning. I was the complete opposite. I hated only having one gun and fuck all ammo. I didn't do any missions or anything for quite some time, I just wanted weapon holsters and ammo pouches as soon as possible, by the time I eventually found some boars to make a small ammo pouch I already ha the stuff required to make the following two pouches. I bought the game to go Rambo and kill shit, not feel like an underpowered pussy.
I ran into an interesting bug/situation. I was trying to take one of the encampments and failed badly. The alarms went off and the reinforcements came in by boat. Well the reinforcements got to the camp and began screaming. I didn't have a direct line of sight to them so I don't know what happened but when I came back every single pirate was dead and there was one big pile of bodies. The only thing left was one barking dog. Creepy?
@bfun A tiger could have gone on a rampage and wiped multiple people out. I took over an outpost once by firing a single bullet from a silenced sniper rifle. I shot an exploding barrel that was next to a guard and a bear in a cage. The guard was killed by the explosion, and the explosion did just enough damage to release the bear but not injure it badly. The bear proceeded to wipe out every single enemy in the outpost. I got a 1500 XP bonus for shooting a barrel and watching.
Sounds like they need an 'Animal Whisperer' perk in the game that allows you to command jungle beasts in the area to attack. That's not really any more ridiculous than the old feral mode.
I did the same in regard to upgrading everything before doing too many missions. Then I kinda missed the feeling of vulnerability. Some of the missions are still decidedly hard at times though, so it's still a lot of fun. Taking out outposts undetected has become very hard for me now, I think I need to work on my stealth a little more. I think I just found out you can't do takedowns on heavy gunners because of their full armour - so that blew the last one. I just did the mission where you burn the 'crops' and what I said about the fire system isn't true, it's still just as big a part of the game as it was in the second. Only, the fires do seem to stop a little early sometimes, but it's easy enough to get a few things blazing and cause a lot of havoc. If you shoot the door of the cage it releases the animals unharmed. There was one with a tiger early on that I did this at. The tigers can take down half a dozen normal guards before they die so I literally got 1500xp from a single silenced sniper shot. It first hinted at me to do this but it just said shoot the cage, so I did for a cassowary and I didn't have a silenced rifle. Well I only shot the side of the cage because I couldn't see the front and it did nothing but alert everyone to my presence - but just a while ago I shot the door from the back for a bear in a cage and it killed half the camp. There was an opening in the fence behind the bear cage so I shot the door and ran back out behind the fence so the bear didn't come after me. Instincts was quite a bit different from the original game if I remember right (never actually played it) it was originally a cut down version to work on the original Xbox, they may have expanded it a little for the X360 but I think it still wasn't as open as the original. Then of course, the original is hardly open world at all compared to this one I can see myself getting at least 25-30hours of enjoyment out of it. I think I quit FC2 after 10 hours of pointlessness.
XCOM Enemy Unknown It's excellent, but it's also really fucking hard. One wrong move and even your most elite soldiers can wind up dead. I also have no idea if I'm making the right decisions on the overall strategy part. I've heard you can make bad decisions on overall strategy and not know you've screwed up until much later in the game.
I'm playing Black Ops 2 multiplayer, I'm thoroughly enjoying it, and I don't care who knows it. My mates hate it claiming that MW2 is the best and always will be but I'm having huge fun playing it.
To screw up you need to loose the support of the countries. Loose enough countries and you loose all your funding and get shut down. So two tips. Never turn down a mission to help a country and when you have a choice between multiple countries choose the one with the highest fear level. Also, if you haven't noticed yet, launching a satellite will reset the countries fear level so that's another reason to always have satellites ready to go. I also noticed that the trades don't seem to help fear levels so don't bother with them unless you need the money.
Anyone besides me played a lot of the original X-Com games from Microprose? I've played the demo of the new X-Com game and enjoyed it, but I was curious to know how good the new game is from someone who has played through the majority of it.
@AKS: I played the original shit loads and got the new one for Christmas. However, I - of course - haven't played it yet. I'll let you know how I get on - I hope to start it soon, unless I loose more of my free time this week.