For my first review I chose my most recent conquest, Far Cry 3.

THE SHORT: Definitely worth a buy. The graphics are gorgeous and the game play fun and varied. The story itself was meh but the missions were very satisfying.. The hunting, assassination and various side missions are a bit repetitive aside from the outpost capturing. The lost expedition DLC was quite fun if kind of buggy.

THE LONG.

GRAPHICS: Far Cry 3 is definitely a gorgeous game even on my machine which is not high end but I was able to play on medium settings without much of a frame rate loss. I especially want to point out the beautiful water and landscape. The enemy models aside from the named characters are all pretty much the same Somali pirate or Private Military model.

SOUNDS: The sound while mostly minimal from on the musical score side is especially well tracked. There were times when I was hunting that the only was I was able to find my target was by their animal noises. Special mention should be made to the song played in the mission where your job is to burn down the local drug lord’s marijuana plantation. It made me feel like the terminator as I burned down plant and human alike with my newly aquired flamethrower.

GAMEPLAY: This game played pretty much how I expected it to. The game took no real chances but it did everything just about perfectly, I had no problems with the controls being unintuitive or unresponsive. The side missions, other than the DLC and Outpost capturing, were a bit repetitive and I found myself doing them solely for the sake of completion. As for capturing the outposts it was pretty much a cakewalk with a good sniper rifle and hiding place from a certain distance as the enemies would not come out of their range to hunt me down. Once I figured this out I decided to have more fun with these and tried to take on each outpost differently. It was incredibly satisfying to snipe the lock off of a tiger’s cage and laugh from a distance as the tigers killed every pirate in the area. The driving was a bit oversensitive to the keyboard controls but it was not much of an issue.

STORY: In Far Cry 3 you play as Jason Brody, a preppy douchebag adrenaline junky who, along with your friends are captured by pirates after skydiving. After managing to escape the pirates you embark on a mission to rescue your friends from the pirates with the help of a magic tattoo given to you by the local tribals. The story itself was kind of bland but served well as a backdrop to show off the fantastic characters that inhabit the island. From the drug addled doctor to the psychopathic pirate who initially captured you, each character is unique and compelling and when you finally confront your nemeses it is quite satisfying to kill each one of them in a Quick Time knife duel which is a metaphor for Jason’s descent into madness as he goes bloodcrazy. It makes sense as you play through the game. Although I am not a fan of QTE’s the ones in Far Cry 3 are not hard and give ample time for the correct button sequence.

In closing, Far Cry 3 had me hooked from start to finish as Douche Bag Jason Brody slowly goes Colonel Kurtz and turns from preppy shit head to island boogey-man and somali pirates’ worst nightmare, Snow White. Play this game.