Far Cry3

 

 

Far Cry 3 released at the tail end of 2012, after Black Friday. Consequently it missed a lot of the best of 2012 lists because a lot of people just didn't get a chance to play the game all the way through. But although it missed most of those lists, word of the game's quality started to seep through. I had played both of the previous Far Cry games, but only briefly. Neither game really stood out to me. Far Cry 3 was immediately different.

It's clear that this game comes from the same company that brings us Assassin's Creed. In a lot of ways Far Cry is the first person version of Assassin's Creed. A lot of the things that make that franchise so good are incorporated into this game. For starters it's an open-world game. It's possible to fast travel to parts of the island you've been to previously. You start out with a map of both islands but you can't see the details of the map until you venture out to the different radio towers in the game (18 in all), climb to the top of them and then synchronize the map. Doing this lets you see all the details of the area. Where the roads are and where the lead, where some of the nearby items can be found, and even which animals can be found in which areas. 

The animals bring a lot to this game. They can all be hunted for their pelts, but unlike most games in which you merely sell the pelts, they can be used to upgrade your inventory. You start out able to only carry 1 weapon, and a wallet that holds 1,000 coins, and a rucksack that holds 16 items and so forth. By finding specific hides, you can upgrade the capacity of all of these. Moreover the animals roam freely and can be hunted and even captured by your enemies.

The other game Far Cry 3 shares a lot of similarities to is the most recent Tomb Raider game (which it should be noted came out 4 months after Far Cry 3) Both games are about wealthy young people who get stranded on an island full of vicious people, and they transform from weak, timid victims who rely on others to protect them into badass killing machines. It's funny how much flack Tomb Raider got for it's attempt to portray this transformation. A lot of people had problems with how it happened, they didn't think it was gradual enough, Lara didn't show enough remorse, etc. That's nothing compared to Far Cry 3. The protagonist: Jason Brody goes from a whiny kid and IMMEDIATELY starts killing people. There isn't even the effort that Lara was given, it's 'story be damned, let's just get going' and the funny thing is, this game received no flack at all, which makes me think that the problems people had with Tomb Raider can be traced to Lara's gender more than anything else.

The game isn't without it's flaws. When the game really hits it's stride, with you at the peak of your powers and all your weapons at your disposal, the game is amazing. But too many times the game decides to neutralize all that by taking away your weapons or somehow restricting what you can do. These encounters become incredibly frustrating. The story also is pretty mediocre. It really didn't add anything for me personally, and gets a little weird at the end.

The game is difficult also, and there are a few missions that will require several attempts before the player can get through it. Typically you'll find that if you're having trouble, it's because your thinking is too limited. It's an open-world game so there is more than one way to do everything. 

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the game's Fortress levels. There are 36 enemy fortresses scattered throughout the Islands, and the Islands are basically all red at the beginning (the red representing enemy areas) but every time you conquer a fortress your allies take it over and the area around that fortress turns blue, signifying the area is under your control. For me these fortresses were the high point of the game. There were tons of ways to liberate them, and every fortress is different and has different options to take advantage of. I mentioned the captured animals, some of these fortresses have live animals in cages, sometimes dangerous ones like bears or tigers. It's possible to shoot these cages open (stealthily with a sniper rifle) releasing the animals to wreck havoc on the village. These can be used in many ways. You can clear out half the enemies and then do it, which is usually few enough left that the bear or tiger can kill the rest of the enemies for you. Alternately you can release them at the beginning and pick off the enemies while they focus on the animal.

The game does what all great open world games do. You can play the game with just the single minded focus of going from objective to objective and skipping all the optional stuff. But this game will suck you in. You will find yourself getting distracted and doing ten things you didn't plan to do. I had days where I didn't advance the plot at all, I was just caught up in the fortresses and the hunting aspects.

This game is addictive, challenging and satisfying. I highly recommend it.

Completed: 2-8-2014

Duck Tales: Remastered

As a gamer in my mid-30's who grew up on the NES, I have fond memories of the original Ducktales game. When I found out about this, I was extremely excited and was immediately impatient for any news pertaining to the release of this game.

The most common thing I've heard about this game is that it's hard. To which I say: "Welcome to old school games everybody." Granted, I've only played the game on normal, but with one notable exception, I didn't find this game to be that difficult. 

Another common refrain is people complaining about the cut scenes. There are a lot of them, but they're skippable, and if you grew up on the show you want to hear them the first time anyway.
 The voices are all exactly as I remember them, despite that the original actors haven't voiced the characters in 20 years.  The animations are excellent, looking even better than the cartoon did. They look slightly out of place as the back grounds don't reflect the same pristine level of detail as the character animations, but that's a minor complaint.

There is a TON of unlockable art in this, including originals from the cartoon. I haven't actually seen any of that yet. It takes about 3 playthroughs to get all the cash to buy everything, maybe more. But it's cool that it's there and a great touch in the name of nostalgia.

By the way, I WOULD have finished this game 4 months ago if it wasn't for that one 'notable exception' I mentioned earlier. After beating the game's final boss, you have to race a rising pool of lava to the end, and the controls really get in the way here. They are just so imprecise, and it is ludicrously hard. I gave up when I originally played it, and played through the last level 3 times yesterday before finally breaking through. You only get 3 lives, so if you don't get it you have to play through the whole last stage and the boss battle again just to try it. But really, the game isn't that hard, so it's more tedious and time consuming than anything. Imprecise controls over all are something the game struggles with a bit. Scrooge's pogo jump sometimes doesn't activate when it should, though I believe they may have addressed that with a patch. That patch didn't do anything to help that last scene though, and everywhere else in the game the slight impreciseness was just a minor annoyance, nothing major.

Overall this game was a great blast from the past, and I anticipate playing through it again on the harder difficulties. (and also the Xbox 360 version that Jonathon gave me for Christmas)  I only wish there was a platinum trophy with this game, because I would definitely go for it if there were.

Completed: 2.1.2014

Infamous: Festival of Blood

 Released as a stand-alone follow-up to 2011's Infamous 2, Festival of Blood takes the world of Infamous and sets Cold in a city over-taken by vampires. Cole himself becomes a vampire and has until sunrise to become human again or remain a vampire forever.

It's strange that this game is a follow-up to Infamous 2, because all the new cool powers you get in Infamous 2 are gone. Cole is back to his standard lightning blasts and lightning rockets and there is no way to add additional powers. It's a puzzling step back, and considering I only recently finished Infamous 2, it was very noticeable.

To somewhat make up for taking away so many of Cole's powers, you do get one new vampire power: the ability to turn into a swarm of bats and fly through the city. At first that isn't that useful, because your power drains away quickly. But by collecting the 99 blood jars around the city, you gradually build up your blood meter. Normally I'd have no interest in tracking those down, but after you find 5 of Mary's 10 Teachings, you get the ability to find the nearest blood jar on your map. So at that point it was easy to track them all down. I kind of appreciated that method, they don't just hand it to you, you have to get to that point, but they also don't expect you to track them all down either. This actually made finding them fun, which is normally not true of this type of objective.

After how terrific Infamous 2 was, this game just felt mediocre, a  step back. I think the decision to make it a stand-alone game hurt it here. Had this game been a simple DLC pack, I think they could have built off the existing Infamous 2 infrastructure.

With this game in the books, I am now completely ready for Infamous: Second Son next month. I doubt that game will build off anything from this game. It's unlikely that vampire mode will become a regular feature in this game ala Call of Duty's Zombie mode.

The game was decent, and the vampire twist was interesting. Biting the necks of innocent bystanders surprisingly got old very quickly, but I had to do it 100 times to get the trophy. . I probably wouldn't advise against buying this if someone was dead set on getting it, but I wouldn't recommend buying it either.

Completed: 2.1.2014

Assassin's Creed 3

Assassin's Creed 3 is by far the most controversial game of the series, and in the conversation for most controversial of its generation. The game was unveiled to a thunderous reception. The choice to set the game during the American Revolution and the striking artwork that accompanied it generated tremendous positive buzz for what was already a AAA franchise. I know I personally, as someone who is passionate for history, was extremely excited for it, and I broke my Assassin's Creed rule, where I always wait for a sale. Not this game. I knew immediately I'd have to get this day one.  I remember seeing the game, but not being allowed to play it at PAX Prime on Labor Day weekend, just two months before the game released. Looking back at that now, it was very strange that a game releasing that soon didn't have a playable demo. I played demos for a lot of games that came out after AC3, so I'm not sure why the decision to only show one of the developers playing it was made instead, but it seems akin to the decision to not let a movie be reviewed in advance. This may have been the first hint that Ubisoft knew this game wasn't going to be as well received as AC2 and Brotherhood. When the game released it debuted to mostly solid scores, but was getting mostly 8's instead of 9's. That seemed to get the ball rolling and it became very in vogue for the game to get trashed on internet message boards. To this day the game is treated like a bad game by much of the internet, something not supported by it's 85 meta critic score. Once again the internet has over reacted.

In my time with this game, I really can't say why it isn't held in the same regard as AC2 and Brotherhood. To be fair, I haven't finished Brotherhood yet, I stopped playing it because I couldn't wait to start AC3, but I'm at about the halfway point. I've had trouble pinning down an explanation from others as well. Reviews seem to be vague about what they don't like. The most common complaint I've heard about the game from people on message boards is that it starts off too slowly. I loved the way it started, I won't give it away as it's a bit of a spoiler, but I thought it was a terrific way to start. Every game doesn't have to begin with you about to shove a knife in an enemy's back. I appreciated the slow build up as we are introduced to Connor. And really any time people complain about how a game begins, it always makes me suspicious that that's as far as they got.

The game isn't without it's flaws. I encountered a few glitches that required me to restart my mission to get past them. The option to play through each mission with 'full synchronization' returns to this game, and I didn't much care for it. Full synchronization mandates 2 or 3 optional conditions you can satisfy while doing the mission, such as kill all the enemies without touching the ground, or kill 5 enemies with counter attacks, etc. Often the synchronization list would flash by so quickly that I didn't see what was on the list. I would be playing through and out of nowhere be told that I failed one of the synchronization options, without knowing that I was supposed to be doing it. On occasions where I was actively trying for them, they sometimes would have very strange success conditions that were not obvious without trial and error. But since these are optional, they didn't bother me too much. I just can't see a scenario where jumping through all these hoops and completing every single mission with full synchronization would actually be fun, which I think is supposed to be the point of a video game.

The game has a lot to do. You can plow through the game quickly because the game recognizes how massive the world is, and now offers a fast-travel system letting you instantly go just about anywhere on the map instead of having to travel there. I appreciated this system, as it let me go straight from mission to mission, but part of the charm of this series is there is always something going on that inevitably distracts you from your next mission. A lot of that is mitigated now, and a huge part of the world can remain unexplored by utilizing the fast-travel system. That's not a complaint, just an observation. I suppose it's good that a player can do what he wants, but it's a bit of a shame that by leaping from mission to mission he kind of cheats himself out of some of the fun of the game. I think the developers could have kept the system but been smarter about where to place the fast-travel spots. There are 3 main areas in the game, so maybe have the player able to travel to each area, but not anywhere within that area. And since the developer knows where he's going to be, they can place things specifically between the fast travel point and the mission start to tempt the player into a side excursion. The game offers 3 board games that were around during that era that you can seek out and play and gamble on. They're all really hard though. I thought checkers at least, I'd clean up at, because I have always considered myself a good checkers-player. Apparently not. I got destroyed in checkers and most of the other table games I played.

Much has been made of the sailing in the game. It's an aspect considered the best part of the game, and it was kept and fleshed out more for this game's sequel: Assassin's Creed 4. I played AC4 before coming back to this game, and prefer the naval combat in AC4. But it is a good addition, it's something AC games have always been good at, each game always introduces a major new element, which is an excellent way to keep the series from growing stale.


Completed: 1.25.2014