PART DOS OF MY FAR CRY 3 REVIEW

The game is easyish? Upon reading other player's reviews of the game I came to conclusion that the game is somewhat easy. You never have to buy any guns (no intelligent player would do so, you can instead just activate these really simple radio towers to make all the guns in the shop free). There's loot practically everywhere, there's money everywhere, and you really only need to spend it on customizing weapons, so I never found a lack of funds to be an issue. Secondly, a lot of players didn't like having the track system on the hardest difficulties, they said it took away from the difficulty of the game because you could just mark everyone and know where everyone is at all times.

The skill trees don't really specialize in anything. There are three main "skill trees" in the game, Shark, Heron and Spider. First of all, by the time the game was finished, I had completed one whole perk tree and was about 6 perks away from finishing the other two. You will end up completing all of the perk trees if you choose to continue to do things after the main story. The perks from every tree help with just about everything.

For instance, all three trees have skills for your takedown ability, which is primarily a stealth mechanic to quickly dispatch enemies without retaliation if you do it right.

And the Spider tree, which is supposed to focus on Stealth has perks for faster reloads with Assault Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and Light Machine Guns, along with some perks that help with combat once you've been detected. This may not be a con but I found it to be kind of strange, since I was focusing largely on stealth and I spec'd into every tree to do so. Though you end up finishing every tree anyway, this isn't a true con I guess.

The game has "dominant" playstyles. For the most part, whenever you take a camp, you should take it via stealth. You get a lot more EXP this way (1500exp compared to like 700 if you're detected) and it's a lot easier to do than to go balls deep with a Light Machine Gun. Also every camp has alarms, so if you're detected you'll be flooded with enemies and you need your reinforcements to swoop in and help you out. I feel that the first half of the game would have been very hard if I didn't primarily focus on stealth. There are very few missions in the game where I think stealth wouldn't be the optimal way to go.

Conclusion
Yes, I do think it is worth playing (it's VERY VERY fun and does not disappoint/fail to live up to the hype), but don't expect a whole lot out of it. I beat the main story in 14 hours and 24 minutes, whilst doing a few side tasks, clearing some camps, completing actions to unlock perks on the skill trees. Expect a decent story, some really good mechanics and solid gameplay, but don't expect this game to hold you down for 50+ hours of content.

My extensive thoughts on Far Cry 3, after having beaten it yesterday:

I was really looking forward to Far Cry 3 because I extensively enjoyed playing through Far Cry 2, despite it's design flaws (Stealth not working right, very shallow characters who all had the same personality, the game from 0-40% and 50-90% was really repetitive and boring grinding out missions for the factions, luckily the midgame and endgame were both pretty decent.)

Pros:
Far Cry 3 fixed it's stealth system. It works very well now, between takedowns, being able to "mark" enemies with your camera and know where they are at all times, enemies not being alerted unless they see a dead body/see someone die all add improvements to the broken stealth from Far Cry 2 where you'd kill one guy on one side of a camp, then everyone in the village is alerted.

The story mode is very diversified. In Far Cry 2, it was a lot of "Go here, blow this up, get a phone call from your buddy then do it his way which involves an extra step, then save your buddy". The story mode in FC3 is more like Skyrim. Every mission is unique.

SOME of the character personalities are VERY good. Though the personalities of the people in villages are kind of lacking (most of the women are either airheads or prostitutes) the characters you'll meet in the main story are very unique. Vaas makes for a great villain of the series. Everything from his acting, facial expressions, and actions paint a very good portrayal of a villain. The other people you meet along the way are also very unique and interesting.

The story is relatively deep. It touches on some really dark things (kind of vague but I don't want to spoil anything.) The story is very different from Far Cry 2's politically charged setting, as it is more a transformation story of the main character, Jason Brody.

The mechanics of the in game shop are a little better. Weapons are more customizeable, you can paint them, attach supressors/scopes/extended magazines onto them.

The general immersion into the game feels really good. Everything from the loading screens after major plot twists to the playable cutscenes make it really easy to grasp the mood of the game.

Cons:
As mentioned above, only SOME of the personalities are good. There are also a lot of really shallow characters (such as Jason Brody's friends) and they really lack personality. I didn't really want to rescue any of them, and the lack of character development among them was palpable.

Although the story was good and had some interesting twists, a lot of it was very cliche. I think you'll find it to be somewhat easy to predict a few of the plot twists. Also there are two endings to the game, and one of them is really stupid and very few people chose the path to that one anyway, I didn't see the appeal to it. You'll hear the characters say really corny and predictable lines sometimes.

This whole "Skyrim with guns" claim simply isn't true. There is a lack of any story outside of the main quest. For instance, in Skyrim, I felt that the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild quests were exceptionally well done, even more so than the main story. With Far Cry 3, there really is ONLY the main story. There are roughly 40~ guard camps you can clear, and 120~ relics you can find, but it's really boring and grindy. After I finished the main quest, my progress was at 40% in game, but the rest of the content looked really boring, so I don't feel the the need to continue playing.

And in Skyrim, once I finished the main story, the Dark Brohood and the Thieves Guild I found it unnecessary to continue afterwards. All the remaining quests generally received less love from the playerbase because they weren't nearly as good as the aformentioned ones. I felt the same way after finishing the main story of FC3, nothing I could do in the game would be nearly as fun and interesting as the main story.

If you keep this updated I will love you even more than I already do

Skial is the server that puts the URL in the bottom of your screen (and shows up in demos) so that when you make your pub Backburner frag movies all the other pubbers will frequent the server in hopes of seeing you play there.

http://www.esreality.com/index.php?a=post&id=2024663

The Abyssus and CM Storm Spawn seem to be the two mice that people are mentioning, and it has a good sensor.

Huh. They found a way to make me want to live in Kansas City.