Ten years have passed since I played Far Cry 3 (it was my second playthrough then, and this most recent one is my third), a game so influential that it changed Ubisoft as a company both for better and for worse. I had an itch to scratch, and decided to ditch some of the newer shinier toys I had been playing with lately, in order to greet an old friend. After having gone through the sequels up to Far Cry 5 (sans Far Cry Primal), part of me had feared the old tried and true legend had lost its edge. To my surprise, not only did this entry hold onto its razor sharp fangs, but it's even better than my memory serves despite lacking many of the features and quality of life additions brought to the franchise in later entries.
I remember reading an article back in the day about how the writer for this game was frustrated that the message had went over the majority of the player base's head. Ten years is a lot of time to gain much insight in the field of media literacy, and after having gone through the game for the third time, what I initially saw as simple crumbs is now the entire buffet that is the purposeful meaning behind this game. To keep it simple, Far Cry 3 is a story of colonialism and the American imperialism which only serves to worsen an already terrible situation. One mustn't throw themselves down the rabbit hole and let himself be swept up in the madness without fully understanding its purpose and intent, allowing a cult of natives with malevolent intentions to exploit the naivety of the clueless white American hero to topple the balance of power and help them exert full and total domination. Strength should never be considered a right to domination, but a tool to protect the weak. The Alice in Wonderland quotes that would pop up between chapters now makes much more sense to me, as the parallels to the characters in the story are a lot clearer and easier to see.
If you missed the message of the game, I genuinely do not blame you, because the game actively fights its own message as well. The writer doesn't get to have the final say in how the game is developed in its entirety unfortunately, and this game proves how contradictory it is to its own premise. Story segments are sparse, with wide intervals in-between as you plunder, kill, hunt, and sabotage your way all over the island. What is there isn't enough to hammer the point of the game home either, with all side quests being quick cash grabs that only serve to prove your protagonist as the "true honorable American hero" without taking the time to have the player reflect on his actions. Although the pirates don't have, and frankly don't need, any semblance of writing to ask of the player's sympathy, there were simply no notes at all that served to detail the protagonist's descent into madness over the course of the game. You are simply killing the bad guys on your exotic vacation, then taking time to play Poker or participate in races during your free time, amidst a siege of pirates occupying the island and running a slave trafficking ring. To quote French filmmaker François Truffaut, "There is no such thing as an anti-war film." Film, or rather entertainment which encompasses video games as well, in the end has a purpose and that is to entertain. If there were a video game to better prove him right, it would be Far Cry 3.
So how does Far Cry 3's gameplay stack up? Well, yeah, it's incredibly fun. There's a bevy of weaponry to give the player as plenty of options as possible in regards to tackling hideouts and encounters, albeit with some glaring oversights such as not being able to carry and hide bodies out of enemy sight. Not every weapon is given all the available accessories, such as the only semi-auto rifle in the game being the weakest that also has no silencer attachments whatsoever. With that said, I find these limitations quite refreshing, as they force the player to either adapt more often on the fly, or to find ways to be more creative with their approaches. I still prefer the more gun-ho balls-out approach to chaos in the later games, but this design philosophy is different and charming enough. Grenades and loud explosives can be used to misdirect and are just as viable as silenced weapons. The game really wants the player to use the compound bow, due to its wide range of useful applications beyond just simply being a very slow ammo-efficient sniper rifle alternative. Not being able to hide bodies only serves to make it likelier for enemy camps to go on alert, but with that you can still stay in stealth, hunt them down while misdirecting them as they cower in fear, or even setting up traps with explosive barrels or mines.
There are still some glaring oversights that not only does this game have, but the sequels as well. For starters, gunplay is not the snappiest. Aiming down the sights takes a minute, with weapon switch animations that take maybe a bit too long, and don't blend into usability cleanly. Bullet spread can certainly be an issue especially with snipers, and while I welcome the stress of missing a shot only to alert the enemy to your potential position, it makes fast shots aimed at running enemies all the more difficult. This might be one of those games where adopting the tactic of leading the target and letting it walk into your sights is necessary, though it's worth noting that bullet travel is negligible; all of your ballistic weapons are hitscan. Onto more infuriating elements, the window for context-sensitive actions is annoying. It feels like you have to be staring at a target for a small amount of time before the pop-up which allows you to takedown appears, making surprise kills much harder in a way that feels very unfair. The time needed to hold down prompts to initiate context actions can also ask of you far too much time, and I've had far too many deaths where I had to hold down the heal button only for it to take too long before the healing animation begins.
Some elements I dislike in this game that are unique to this entry are primarily focused on progression; I simply despise being forced to play stealthy without the validity of going loud and proud, if I wish to receive the XP necessary to level up faster. This was corrected in Far Cry 5 where you only lost out on money that was already extremely easy to farm for, and it's a humongous weight off my shoulders to never have to deal with this system in that game. It's extremely annoying here, especially with how easy it is for you to be suddenly discovered. Dogs are by far the worst enemies to deal in this game, as they can track the scent of any gunpowder in the air from bullets you fire back to you, even if they never see the bullet or shot itself. Perhaps the use of the compound bow could get around this issue, but I barely used it much this playthrough and I believe it had a detrimental effect on my experience this time around. It's agonizing dealing with tiny hitboxes with how fast and close they are to the ground in a game with very hilly terrain, and how them discovering you will count as denying you your undetected bonus, albeit the human pirates won't have detected you yet even though they have an idea of the general area you are in.
Many of the side activities in this game are very repetitive and dry, and I do not recommend doing any of the ones without upgrade incentives behind them. Of course, I would be silly not to mention the animations that play out whenever looting a pirate or skinning an animal, and whenever a model is in too difficult of a position to not allow the animation to play out, I jump with joy. It may be a matter of 2 seconds for pirates and 5 seconds for the animals, but it gets annoying fast with how often it happens. It's a minor complaint, but one that bothers me greatly and it involves how you also need to grind and upgrade your wallet in order to even afford some of the guns in the game when you first start out. Finally, there are some technical issues regarding this game; it's difficult to see this game as old, but that is the case. This was originally a game intended for Windows 7, and it certainly did not scale the best up to modern day Windows 10 and 11, as well as newer CPU with more cores. I highly recommend going to the PC Gaming Wiki entry for this title for a bevy of available mods and fixes which could help with some of the performance and compatibility issues. A game from 2012 should not run at a frame rate as low as 20 FPS on my RTX 2070 laptop. Lastly, it's tied to Uplay / Ubisoft Connect, and with it comes all the annoyances and hurdles with using it or even buying the game on Steam.
Overall, Far Cry 3 does indeed stand the test of time, and may even be better than I remembered it. It's not my personal favorite in the franchise, but it still has one of my favorite video game villain portrayals, and still has a unique flavor to the madness that balanced it out but only to push you in lateral directions where you could make the most out of all the tools available to you rather than relying on a single technique every time. Certainly not a game to be missed, and absolutely worth your time.
I remember reading an article back in the day about how the writer for this game was frustrated that the message had went over the majority of the player base's head. Ten years is a lot of time to gain much insight in the field of media literacy, and after having gone through the game for the third time, what I initially saw as simple crumbs is now the entire buffet that is the purposeful meaning behind this game. To keep it simple, Far Cry 3 is a story of colonialism and the American imperialism which only serves to worsen an already terrible situation. One mustn't throw themselves down the rabbit hole and let himself be swept up in the madness without fully understanding its purpose and intent, allowing a cult of natives with malevolent intentions to exploit the naivety of the clueless white American hero to topple the balance of power and help them exert full and total domination. Strength should never be considered a right to domination, but a tool to protect the weak. The Alice in Wonderland quotes that would pop up between chapters now makes much more sense to me, as the parallels to the characters in the story are a lot clearer and easier to see.
If you missed the message of the game, I genuinely do not blame you, because the game actively fights its own message as well. The writer doesn't get to have the final say in how the game is developed in its entirety unfortunately, and this game proves how contradictory it is to its own premise. Story segments are sparse, with wide intervals in-between as you plunder, kill, hunt, and sabotage your way all over the island. What is there isn't enough to hammer the point of the game home either, with all side quests being quick cash grabs that only serve to prove your protagonist as the "true honorable American hero" without taking the time to have the player reflect on his actions. Although the pirates don't have, and frankly don't need, any semblance of writing to ask of the player's sympathy, there were simply no notes at all that served to detail the protagonist's descent into madness over the course of the game. You are simply killing the bad guys on your exotic vacation, then taking time to play Poker or participate in races during your free time, amidst a siege of pirates occupying the island and running a slave trafficking ring. To quote French filmmaker François Truffaut, "There is no such thing as an anti-war film." Film, or rather entertainment which encompasses video games as well, in the end has a purpose and that is to entertain. If there were a video game to better prove him right, it would be Far Cry 3.
So how does Far Cry 3's gameplay stack up? Well, yeah, it's incredibly fun. There's a bevy of weaponry to give the player as plenty of options as possible in regards to tackling hideouts and encounters, albeit with some glaring oversights such as not being able to carry and hide bodies out of enemy sight. Not every weapon is given all the available accessories, such as the only semi-auto rifle in the game being the weakest that also has no silencer attachments whatsoever. With that said, I find these limitations quite refreshing, as they force the player to either adapt more often on the fly, or to find ways to be more creative with their approaches. I still prefer the more gun-ho balls-out approach to chaos in the later games, but this design philosophy is different and charming enough. Grenades and loud explosives can be used to misdirect and are just as viable as silenced weapons. The game really wants the player to use the compound bow, due to its wide range of useful applications beyond just simply being a very slow ammo-efficient sniper rifle alternative. Not being able to hide bodies only serves to make it likelier for enemy camps to go on alert, but with that you can still stay in stealth, hunt them down while misdirecting them as they cower in fear, or even setting up traps with explosive barrels or mines.
There are still some glaring oversights that not only does this game have, but the sequels as well. For starters, gunplay is not the snappiest. Aiming down the sights takes a minute, with weapon switch animations that take maybe a bit too long, and don't blend into usability cleanly. Bullet spread can certainly be an issue especially with snipers, and while I welcome the stress of missing a shot only to alert the enemy to your potential position, it makes fast shots aimed at running enemies all the more difficult. This might be one of those games where adopting the tactic of leading the target and letting it walk into your sights is necessary, though it's worth noting that bullet travel is negligible; all of your ballistic weapons are hitscan. Onto more infuriating elements, the window for context-sensitive actions is annoying. It feels like you have to be staring at a target for a small amount of time before the pop-up which allows you to takedown appears, making surprise kills much harder in a way that feels very unfair. The time needed to hold down prompts to initiate context actions can also ask of you far too much time, and I've had far too many deaths where I had to hold down the heal button only for it to take too long before the healing animation begins.
Some elements I dislike in this game that are unique to this entry are primarily focused on progression; I simply despise being forced to play stealthy without the validity of going loud and proud, if I wish to receive the XP necessary to level up faster. This was corrected in Far Cry 5 where you only lost out on money that was already extremely easy to farm for, and it's a humongous weight off my shoulders to never have to deal with this system in that game. It's extremely annoying here, especially with how easy it is for you to be suddenly discovered. Dogs are by far the worst enemies to deal in this game, as they can track the scent of any gunpowder in the air from bullets you fire back to you, even if they never see the bullet or shot itself. Perhaps the use of the compound bow could get around this issue, but I barely used it much this playthrough and I believe it had a detrimental effect on my experience this time around. It's agonizing dealing with tiny hitboxes with how fast and close they are to the ground in a game with very hilly terrain, and how them discovering you will count as denying you your undetected bonus, albeit the human pirates won't have detected you yet even though they have an idea of the general area you are in.
Many of the side activities in this game are very repetitive and dry, and I do not recommend doing any of the ones without upgrade incentives behind them. Of course, I would be silly not to mention the animations that play out whenever looting a pirate or skinning an animal, and whenever a model is in too difficult of a position to not allow the animation to play out, I jump with joy. It may be a matter of 2 seconds for pirates and 5 seconds for the animals, but it gets annoying fast with how often it happens. It's a minor complaint, but one that bothers me greatly and it involves how you also need to grind and upgrade your wallet in order to even afford some of the guns in the game when you first start out. Finally, there are some technical issues regarding this game; it's difficult to see this game as old, but that is the case. This was originally a game intended for Windows 7, and it certainly did not scale the best up to modern day Windows 10 and 11, as well as newer CPU with more cores. I highly recommend going to the PC Gaming Wiki entry for this title for a bevy of available mods and fixes which could help with some of the performance and compatibility issues. A game from 2012 should not run at a frame rate as low as 20 FPS on my RTX 2070 laptop. Lastly, it's tied to Uplay / Ubisoft Connect, and with it comes all the annoyances and hurdles with using it or even buying the game on Steam.
Overall, Far Cry 3 does indeed stand the test of time, and may even be better than I remembered it. It's not my personal favorite in the franchise, but it still has one of my favorite video game villain portrayals, and still has a unique flavor to the madness that balanced it out but only to push you in lateral directions where you could make the most out of all the tools available to you rather than relying on a single technique every time. Certainly not a game to be missed, and absolutely worth your time.