Out of all the games I had the pleasure of playing at E3 this year, Far Cry 3 was the one that left me saying “Meh.” Even though I am almost positive that there were plenty of games out there this week that were below that bar, I managed to only play the ones that seemed to have promise to me. The fact is that Far Cry 3 left me a bit unsatisfied with it’s core game play, and how it didn’t feel different from the regular first person shooter genre. I was able to play both the co-op and single player demos, who both had different storylines and challenges, but nothing felt like it truly stood out.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is beautiful, and seemed to have a lot of effort put into it, but the game play in both modes needed some work. Bugs were common; from randomly dying, to not attacking the right enemies, and especially the over-tweaked sensitivity. Even though that issue is theoretically an easy fix in the retail version, the demo did not feature it, so players that wanted to feel the badassness of shooting enemies with a bow and arrow would very often miss their target. The open world of the game was not explorable as well, as the demo was the same level that was shown at the Microsoft Press Conference, where even the demo player had issues showing off the game.
What I played wasn’t bad per say, but just not special. It felt like the regular aim-down-the-sights one-man-killing-machine first-person shooter with hi-res boobies and an open world. The bugs I experienced should be fixed by it’s September release, and hopefully the game will feature more than just storming another area of endless, look-alike clones.
Have a day!
