By Nathan Grayson on December 22nd, 2012.
The break’s nearly upon us, and the news has already fled into its cozy hibernation hole to avoid the harsh shifts in weather and people caring. So now I’m going to tell you about some patch notes, because they’re all that’s left in this desolate winter wonderland. Fortunately, Far Cry 3‘s brought a fairly sizable bounty of improvements back from its latest bug hunt, and it even managed to bag the big one: notifications. Yes, you can finally banish those loathsome pop-ups from Jason’s face.
Escape The Loop
By John Walker on December 19th, 2012.
Having completed Far Cry 3 a while back, I found that so much of the game’s story just didn’t sit right with me. Not simply in the sense that it appeared to contain colonialist nonsense and clumsily handled rape plots, but that I felt I was missing something. That the game was trying to say something to me, perhaps partly through that which I found problematic, and I hadn’t been able to hear it. So I pursued the game’s author, Jeffrey Yohalem, to talk it through.
Yohalem proves to be a very animated, very passionate writer, who sees Far Cry 3 as a complex exploration of many ideas, mostly questioning the role of the player in a game, and what they’ll do in order to win. It was, he says, an attempt to break the loops of modern gaming, to ask the player to start to demand better. Fortunately, I’m animated and passionate too, so we get to discussing how successful this really was. What follows is a heated chat about what gaming could and should be. I return at the end with some thoughts on the conversation.
By Nathan Grayson on December 19th, 2012.
Far Cry 3 has multiplayer. Or at least, I’m relatively certain it does. I am, you see, somewhat guilty of scampering into single-player’s wide open jungles – like a frightened tapir who doesn’t want to become a backpack – seconds after start-up. I honestly haven’t touched multiplayer in spite of my near-obsessive love for Ubisoft’s wild, wild wilderness rumpus, but I now have a strong reason to reconsider. While the mode selection’s fairly standard on the whole, the powerfully robust map editor is anything but. Case in point: these brilliantly faithful recreations of classic maps from all across the magical gaming kingdom. Have a nice mid-morning gawk about each place after the break.
By Nathan Grayson on December 8th, 2012.
Far Cry 3 has opened its komodo-dragon-like terror maw and consumed the entire RPS staff. We’re now naught but moldy bones littering the dimmest corners of its lair, wobbling on excitedly about that time we saved all those turtles from an out-of-control, highly turtle-unfriendly fire we started. But it’s definitely not perfect. Obnoxious pop-ups swarm constantly in a ceaseless cycle of useless reminders. John, noble lord of loathing, described it best when he said “Far Cry 3 does not, and it WILL NOT SHUT UP.” Fortunately, Ubisoft has heard players’ pleas, and now the pop-ups are going bye-bye.
Bad Tigers
By John Walker on December 4th, 2012.
Yesterday I celebrated what is definitely a really fantastic game. A game that deserves celebration, a surprise treat from a series that never promised anything this involved, mad, and genre-busting. It is, overall, a very positive experience. And as I said yesterday, such experiences come at a price – when stuff is wrong, it looks very, very wrong. But in the case of Far Cry 3, this isn’t about picking up on issues that would pass in a more mediocre game – this is about really wantonly stupid mistakes, issues that defy the belief that any human being can have played the game before it was released, further evidencing the theory that this was indeed a game coded by tigers.
Tigers!
By John Walker on December 3rd, 2012.
Far Cry 3 is a game of enormous juxtaposition. Overall it is undoubtedly an absolutely stunning game, ridiculously fun and utterly engrossing. And in there are some real extremes. I argue that Far Cry 3 contains some of the features for which we’ve spent our years screaming at the sky, a real understanding of why fun can be more worthwhile than realism, emergent play, and angry, angry tigers. And I also argue that Far Cry 3 contains some of the stupidest mistakes imaginable – in fact, beyond imaginable, because there’s no understandable way they could reach the finished game unless it were in fact coded by angry, angry tigers. I argue the first half of this below, with the second half tomorrow.
By John Walker on November 30th, 2012.
Update: Ubisoft have tweeted an apology, saying they’re working as fast as they can to get the servers back online.
So, like many others, I’m very excited to play Far Cry 3. After Jim’s review, and many similar elsewhere, I’ve been dying to play it and finally have the chance. Today is my day off, hooray! And so far I’ve been treated to a horrible, horrible time, and all at the hands of the technical mess that is Uplay and idiotic mechanical choices. And right now? Ubisoft’s servers are down. On launch day. You can still play in offline mode, but ho boy, this isn’t a good start.
By John Walker on November 28th, 2012.
Scottish people are awfully sweary. “Fookin’ shite” this and “wee bastard” that. I don’t know. It must be all the batter. One of their potty-mouthed number narrates the Far Cry 3 co-op trailer, which is a grisly mix of explosions and neck stabs, narrated by a man who’s angry with me for something I must have done.
By Adam Smith on November 26th, 2012.
Do map editors normally have trailers nowadays? Far Cry 3′s has one. I know that some trailers have trailers and it’s only a matter of time until someone makes a trailer for a logo, so I guess something as functional as a map editor can appear in a video and say ‘hello’. The most notable thing about the editor for Ubi’s Jimpressing open island shooter is that it looks simple enough for an idiot like me to use. Terrain can be generated randomly, objects are dragged and dropped into position, and the whole thing can be populated with wildlife and AI baddies for solo play.
By Adam Smith on November 23rd, 2012.
What a difference words can make. If I’d seen this new Far Cry 3 video last week, my first reaction would probably have been to chortle about magical tattoo abilities. After reading Jim’s thoughts on the game, I’m too giddily excited by watching those abilities in action to spend any time laughing at minor bits of silliness. Far Cry 2 was a mess but it still managed to produce some of the finest moments I’ve ever experienced in an FPS, so when I see the words “it has kept what was good…and builds on everything else”, damn straight the lens through which I view the trailers changes. Very excited.
Crying, Not Crying
By Jim Rossignol on November 21st, 2012.
The third game in the Far Cry series has arrived, bathed in sun, populated by sharks and murderers, driving too fast along a dirt track, with the grass on fire all around. But is this a holiday of a lifetime, or a trip to the wrong side of the tracks? I pulled on a scratched pair of aviators and scavenged a shotgun from the body of a fallen games journalist to tell you wot I think.
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