One of my most anticipated titles of the year is Far Cry 3 and I was lucky enough to go hands on with it while in Germany for Gamescom 2012… twice.
The first time was at the awesome Far Cry 3 industry party which consisted of a weird gypsy lady with a bunch of snakes and some truly odd actors who had been hired to walk around dressed like soldiers who randomly walked up to people and just stared at them.
It was severely disconcerting and that’s the entire idea behind Far Cry 3 whose entire premise is based on insanity.
So to the actual gameplay; the level we were given free reign on was one tiny portion of one of the islands available in the game, for this demo the section was cordoned off by a fence but in the final game it is going to be entirely free roam and the size of the game is humongous. Everything you see you can get to and it very much reminded me of Red Dead Redemption in a lot of good ways:
Firstly the sheer size of the open world – but while running around I also noticed there are a lot of side quests that can be completed such as collecting flowers for medicines, finding safe boxes full of money and ammo and I think I saw a side quest where I could save someone but I got distracted by a pack of wolves who tried to take me down.
I managed to take them out with my trusty bow and arrow and then hopped into a crashed car that I found in the bushes and went for a spin, after that I got into a jeep and tried that out and then onto a quad bike. Each one drove and felt entirely different which was really refreshing to find out and there really is nothing better than racing through the jungle on a quad bike only to fly off the edge of the cliff and get that amazing view before plummeting to your death… okay so maybe there is something better but it was a whole lot of fun none the less.
As you can most probably tell by now I didn’t really have a mission to complete with my hands on and simply ran around most of the time. The graphics are looking truly impressive and when I climbed to the top of a radio tower to disengage the radio the feeling of being supremely high up was amazing, with a view over a large swath of the island just falling away beneath me.
After that I headed over to a rebel outpost and got some shooting practice going, in this short time it became obvious that this isn’t a run and gun and you are going to need some strategy to take the bases back from the rebels. It was also nice to see that my bullets could pass through things like cardboard and cloth but were stopped by more solid structures. And let’s not forget that explosive arrows are a mans best friend when someone is hiding behind a truck. Kaboom!
Once you take the base your allies arrive and hoist their flag and you can now use that base for fast travel across the island to anywhere else you have taken over.
Next up I accepted a hunting mission where I had to track down 2 bears who had been killing local villagers, you are given a radius on your map showing where the bear was last seen and after I figured that out (the guy told me) I headed into the centre and found a cave with a bear munching on a poor villager.
The two bears were easily dispatched of and skinned and unfortunately that was all the time I was allowed with Far Cry 3 which was possibly a good thing as I may still be wandering around the island now if they hadn’t kicked me out.
My short time with the game has done nothing to dampen my excitement for Far Cry 3 and I can’t wait to head back into the insanity in November when the final game is released.
Last Updated: September 6, 2012
