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Far Cry 3 |OT| Sex, Drugs, and the Call of Battle in the Uncharted
- Thread starter legacyzero
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Shadow of the BEAST
Banned
Some of my favorite games this year were The Walking Dead, Spec Ops, Catherine and Mass Effect (and FarCry too, but still), if the story wasn't great then at least the writing was decent, and the stories they told had something meaningful.
Maybe I'm just let down because I expected something along the lines of Spec Ops.
Here's the baseline: entertaining throughout and keep the number of times I cringe to a minimum. It did alright, I wasn't bored. Am I grading on a huge curve? Sure, but this is a different animal. Let's hold out expectations back until Bioshock or something, it's around the corner anyway.
The Last Wizard
Member
If anyone is in need of a online pass pm me, first come first serve.
Only ask if you plan on playing online as someone who really does could benefit from it
Only ask if you plan on playing online as someone who really does could benefit from it
Well, my expectations were built up around Vaas and his schtick. Before, I was at best ambivalent. I get lulled in by bullshit all the time though. After the fact I can see things for what they are, but I'm very much in the moment when I play, even between sessions. I was hoping that at least Vaas would turn out to be a more meaningful character, something more going on below the surface (of him and the game). And then - nothing. Deflated the entire story for me. Hoyt just looked like a cartoon villain after that. Yes, I get it. He's pure evil, look at him be evil. Let's get this over with. The entire second island was a balloon, slowly deflating.
I used a grenade launcher from the beach.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
It's pretty disappointing that the waters around the islands are pretty shallow. If the sharks getting killed drown into thick black water.... hmmmmmm........
Also, the endings for this game, both version, are such a slap in the face.
Also, the endings for this game, both version, are such a slap in the face.
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
He he. I did that, then when trying to find the body I'd get attacked. I'm done with sharks for now, thanks.
I don't like the idea of hunting in real life, but in the game it is a blast. I also love letting the animals out of the cages in the pirate dens, bears mess them up.
Oh ya, I also bought the 50 cal sniper, so much fun watching two guys flying backward when lined up. I'm really addicted to this game and on mt GTX 670 it is a constant 60fps with everything nearly maxed out. Such a beautiful game.
So it's interesting how different the game turned out to be from this trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE9EpmDMZtA
I'm actually kind of annoyed by it. Some of it is still in the game actually, with Vaas shouting 'pull the trigger!' that made less sense this time round. I do feel like initially they wanted to go the slip into insanity route as Spec Ops did, but then later pulled back on it. (and made it a satire and commentary on game culture... as if). You're now left with the conclusion of the Vaas story that felt completely out of place in terms of what preceded it (safe for the hallucination bit during the shrooms quest, which beforehand they said was also going to be very important for the gameplay but then had no follow-through whatsoever).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE9EpmDMZtA
I'm actually kind of annoyed by it. Some of it is still in the game actually, with Vaas shouting 'pull the trigger!' that made less sense this time round. I do feel like initially they wanted to go the slip into insanity route as Spec Ops did, but then later pulled back on it. (and made it a satire and commentary on game culture... as if). You're now left with the conclusion of the Vaas story that felt completely out of place in terms of what preceded it (safe for the hallucination bit during the shrooms quest, which beforehand they said was also going to be very important for the gameplay but then had no follow-through whatsoever).
Really was digging the second island until
I've already got all the skills, letters, memory cards and outposts completed. 9 more missions to go. Really wish there were additonal skills to unlock. Someone really screwed the pooch big time right there. XP is completely useless to me now. Money, however, isn't since I always need to refill my GL-94.
you get the privateer suit. Granted, it looks cool and kinda reminds me of the yellow jumpsuit in Kill Bill. However, up until that point the second island felt very reminiscent of FC2 because you're in a much more hostile environment with privateers not wasting any time to run you down or chase after you in their vehicles. The land itself is so much more open and hilly which begs for the wingsuit to be used even though I never use it.
I've already got all the skills, letters, memory cards and outposts completed. 9 more missions to go. Really wish there were additonal skills to unlock. Someone really screwed the pooch big time right there. XP is completely useless to me now. Money, however, isn't since I always need to refill my GL-94.
Yeah it definitely seems like there should be more skills. I've beaten the game, but I still have a ton of outposts/side quests to do and I've nearly completely maxed out my skills.
I never get that. You grind until nearly every sidequest is done in an rpg, and then complain that you're overpowered. Well of course. It's quite obvious to me that that's not the way the game's 'intended' to be played. They don't try to put urgency into the story for nothing.
That's odd, I put in just under 30 hours on the ps3 version, no hard locks. Over all performance was ok, not a lot of slowdown at all, no tearing.
I will say though, the things that stand out as poor are just about every thing Red Dead got right. Depth of field, just about anything out in the distance actually, weather and sky. The rest of the game looks good.
I will say though, the things that stand out as poor are just about every thing Red Dead got right. Depth of field, just about anything out in the distance actually, weather and sky. The rest of the game looks good.
Agreed, I liked that scene.
But the QTE after it is just annoying. I couldn't beat it for some reason and gave up, when I started over I had to play the poker game again.
The only thing that annoyed me was
Sam saying 'I hid a knife in my boot'. Okay but what about that huge ass knife on your shoulder.
Also when I looked to my side the guard's weapon was hovering next to his hands, but I feel that the latter parts were especially buggy, probably had less QA testing.
(also who killed all the guards afterwards)
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
I was thinking the same thing until I would set alarms off and they called in helicopters. That and those Molotov guys with pin point accuracy, so annoying. But if I keep everything quiet it is easy. Now I can take down heavies, it should be much easier.
Quick question:
I "killed" Vass, wtf what that whole scene about? Why was it a dream sequence? Why doesn't Jason ask the obvious question why he was sent to free Vaas from the truck from the military guys? It seems like Jason got played and the good guys were using him, but he never says anything and the story moves on. did I miss something?
Nope. It's what it is.
He is being used, but that will become clear soon enough. Or not, it depends. It probably occurred to you already, since you're kinda doing all the work.
It really makes no sense. I have a theory that they changed the game/story halfway through this year and left some of the stuff in there, thinking we'd telepathically understand what they'd mean regardless. Cf. the trailer they released at the beginnig of this year and Iposted above, and how it turned out.
(not actually a spoiler, but thinking about it could ruin your fun while playing)
Vaas was supposed to be your mirror image, (I am you, you are me, pull the trigger!) which would in turn drive home the satirical meaninh of the game ostensibly intended by the writer. You're playing this awesome dudebro shooter, but really you're the definition of insanity
My solution has been to be very selective in which skills I activate. I haven't given myself any health increases or stat bonuses of any kind. Just extra abilities (death from above, etc.).
I think I've finally found a sweet spot in how to "fix" the game's busted (i.e. absent) difficulty curve:
-Only unlock very select skills (no stat/health bonuses).
-No looting bodies or animals, except when a mission requires it. Only chests.
-No buying anything except for weapon upgrades (no ammo, new weapons, maps, etc).
-No using the large map.
-No binoculars or weapon tagging.
-No crafting except for weapon slots (an exception to the "no looting" rule) and where required.
-Ammo only comes from what you find in chests or by walking over fallen enemies.
-Sell everything you can.
I'm a good ways in now, and the game has gotten much more challenging finally. But without those artificial fixes, this game would be a cake-walk. It's definitely busted as is. It has a lot of the same problems as the original Assassin's Creed, and the "fixes" are also very similar. And like AC, it's amazing how much of the game seems to have been built to be played without all of that stuff. For example, it's much more rewarding to use the towers to scout the horizon for columns of smoke (which mark the enemy outposts). If you use the map, there's no way that element would matter. Hell, I figure most people play through the game without ever noticing those details. Very much like what happened with the first AC.
Like the original AC, they threw on a coat of last-minute "Easy Paint" to disguise more fundamental design issues. Which means that they've left it up to us to figure out how to scrape off the "junk" in order to get at the real game underneath.
The game does have a difficulty curve, but it flattens out instead of ramping up (logarithmic learning curve instead of exponential). I think it's actually better that way, something most people would prefer. It's something I'm trying to get a research project greenlighted on even. The ideal game difficulty progression.
Edit: you editted your post and I do actually agree with the latter part. It's almost like there were two different teams. One to implement all these great perceptual cues to get people to discover the game world naturally, and the other to steamroll over it, making the work of the former team completely redundant.
Maybe as a result of playtesting? I hope so, and not as a result of boardmeetings.
Edit: you editted your post and I do actually agree with the latter part. It's almost like there were two different teams. One to implement all these great perceptual cues to get people to discover the game world naturally, and the other to steamroll over it, making the work of the former team completely redundant.
Maybe as a result of playtesting? I hope so, and not as a result of boardmeetings.
I can't stand flat difficulty curves, especially in open world games and RPGs. I get bored once I realize there's just a simple "rinse and repeat" structure that won't get any harder. At that point, I figure I may as well just watch a movie or read a book. If the game's not going to challenge me, then I've already won. And if I've already won, I see no point in continuing.
Playtesting is informed by what happens in the boardroom, so there's not much difference. For big AAA games, "frustration" is often seen as a bad thing. Smarter design teams find ways to have dynamic difficulty curves that allow you to tailor your experience to your desire for challenge (GTA or fighting games, for example). Emergent design in open world games should be an ideal fit for dynamic difficulty, but in Far Cry 3, they've gone out of their way to make the game as easy as possible.
Like Skyrim, Far Cry 3 seems determined to make sure that everyone has an easy time with it, no matter how much you ramp up the difficulty slider.
Anyhow, I'm glad I found some artificial ways of making the game a reasonable challenge. I wish designers would stick to their guns when it comes to difficulty. All too often, the answer from playtesting seems to be to dumb games down and treat gamers like impatient idiots.
Most games do not get progressively more difficult. Take a classic example of well balanced difficulty setting like the Halo series, level 2 is not at all more difficult than level 8. And that's in a linear game where, you know, you'll always get to level 2 so many hours before you reach level 8, unlike a Far Cry. The idea is to introduce new mechanics in addition to iterating on those already established in new ways. Hate to break it to you that way, oh great videogame conqueror, maybe try Tetris or something?
Fahrenheit
Banned
I bought the special edition on Steam, how do I get to the extra content?
I don't see why you felt the need to mock him. A lot of games have the problem of overstaying their welcome, which is what I think he's alluding too there. If you have nothing new to offer or something that might challenge me in any way past hour 10 or 20, then it's probably time for the finale or to quit playing. I don't see a problem with that. Those numbers are different depending on the person, but the idea stays the same. Things just get stale.
I'm usually the idiot who finishes a game anyway, even if it's started to bore me, but that's just because I have to see how it ends. I also need to feel like I got my money's worth. It's not quite the same as not finishing a meal you paid for, but it's similar enough.
Halo does get more challenging though, the idea is that the challenge increases with your skills, so that you stay in an optimal sense of Flow.
That was at least the prevailing paradigm, and the reason why game designers started introducing dynamic difficulty adjustment, but it's starting to change now, because if the game keeps on matching the difficulty to your skill progression you don't get a sense of achievement. It's good that Far Cry becomes easier as you get more perks, because at some point you need to start owning it. Well at least that's the hypothesis.
It's actually ludonarratologically sound too, because Jason Brody becomes the ultimate hunter.
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
Ya, something is off.
They seem to make you want to think that Jason and Vaas are two sides to the same person. It really doesn't make sense, since everyone around you treats Vaas like a real person and Vaas did capture your friends and shoot your bother(s). It is also strange that Vaas keep "killing" you and you keep living.
^ Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton thought the same thing: http://kotaku.com/5967703/a-simple-way-to-fix-far-cry-3s-dumb-story
Also, the only thing about Vaas failing to kill Jason I absolutely hated was
Broke that entire scene for me. That's not so easily hand waved away, though I suppose going by the writer's comments it might just be another satirical exaggeration of a trope.
I'm also gonna sound theword wankery jargon alarm here and propose 'ludonarratively'.
Also, the only thing about Vaas failing to kill Jason I absolutely hated was
that nobody gave a shit that a guy he supposedly shot in the chest didn't bleed. You've got to assume that he was breathing when they threw him on the pile too. I know they're probably all drugged out junkies and whatnot, but come on.
It would be, if not for the amount of UI hints that turn you into the Predator the moment you acquire silenced weapons, which is very quickly.
I'm also gonna sound the
I added a spoiler tag to my post
The part you mentioned... I don't get it. I kind of thought that was dumb
RE: the game's difficulty. The game is too easy on normal mode. I didn't mind though, I don't think this is necessarily a game that I want to be very challenging. It's just a lot of fun.
Things do get stale, but is ratcheting up the difficulty a solution? Would RDR benefit from a Mexico that is significantly more difficult than the starting area and the eastern side harder still? There's a guard seemingly on every roof top and street corner in New York in ACIII(a city the player visits later in the game) and man, does that suck. Anyway, the idea that a game becomes meaningless once you're consistently able to deal with the stagnant difficulty level it decided to impose is funny, thus the benign conqueror comment.
You have a very narrow definition of what constitutes "challenge."
To bring this side discussion back to FC3, at a certain point your basic tasks don't change, many of your skills are designed to break/circumvent the game's own design elements, and you're asked to keep going for another 10-15 hours after the difficulty flatlines. Very quickly, you see all the game has to offer, and you just check icons off of a checklist for the rest of the game (I ran into the same problem in Skyrim).
Folks gave the first AC the shaft for doing exactly that. Somehow people are giving FC3 a pass for the same issues. My point is that it is fixable with the handful of basic tweaks I listed above. I'm loving the game now. But it took a good 3-4 runs through the first five hours of the game to get it just right. I did the same basic thing with AC1, and it became one of my favorite games of all time, not just in the series. But like AC1, FC3 is a busted, boring game "out of the box." It seems designed for people who enjoy playing games on God Mode, for the Game Genie crowd.
I disagree. For the greater part, or at least the first half of the game, I found it hard as nails. The reason? I didn't go hunting for special animals to get more weapon slots, so I only had two. One close range weapon and one assault rifle. Good luck with that when halfway through an outpost you're out of ammo (I did upgrade my weapon pouch, or at least until you had to find more difficult / unique animals), especially later against the heavies (I didn't get the 'knife heavies'-skill until I was almost done). Especially if you don't find out you can disable alarms instead of shooting at them.
The game got easier when you deploy a sniper rifle, it's like a completely different game then. I found that out after the ten hour mark. Still, you can't use it when you're inside the camp so you have to make your assault rifle bullets count. When you do power up over the course of the game, it feels liberating near the end.
This game seems designed for people like me (well apart from the fact that I place heavy emphasis on the story), 'average joes' without OCD tendencies. You can make it easier if you delve into the menu system, find out exactly what you need to power up and do this first before you do the main story missions. Then you are overpowered for a large part of the game. But really, is this not your own doing?
The game got easier when you deploy a sniper rifle, it's like a completely different game then. I found that out after the ten hour mark. Still, you can't use it when you're inside the camp so you have to make your assault rifle bullets count. When you do power up over the course of the game, it feels liberating near the end.
This game seems designed for people like me (well apart from the fact that I place heavy emphasis on the story), 'average joes' without OCD tendencies. You can make it easier if you delve into the menu system, find out exactly what you need to power up and do this first before you do the main story missions. Then you are overpowered for a large part of the game. But really, is this not your own doing?
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
Quick question - I have the special sniper rifle, but it doesn't have an attachments. I got the .50 cal to unlock and it has some, but the stats are less. Can it be silenced? I really miss the ability to snipe something or someone without instantly being seen, can you do that with the .50 cal?
I also realized why I was setting off alarms after destroying the alarm box, the have two alarms sometimes. I guess I should scope things out better. Love taking out the boxes with the bow.
I also realized why I was setting off alarms after destroying the alarm box, the have two alarms sometimes. I guess I should scope things out better. Love taking out the boxes with the bow.
In the context of a difficulty curve, yes it is.
Yea, the stock 50 cal can be silenced. I chose to stick with the special anyway, it makes things a little more interesting. The way I figure is if I'm going to bring out the most powerful weapon in the game, at should at least mean open conflict. There are assault rifles and stuff that can be silenced, so you can head shot a sniper in a tower while scouting an outpost without raising alarms.
I don't know, it nags you an awful lot about all the things you could be doing, some actively through tutorial messages, others by littering the screen with side content icons and every Rakyat mentioning that clearing an outpost is only the first step and that your work isn't done, ie. look at that job board over there. It seems to be very scared of you walking around with nothing to do.
With or without OCD tendencies, a sniper rifle, as you mention, means you're playing a different game. In an open world that's emphasized even more. Add weapon tagging into the mix and it really is like you're playing the Predator. The improved stealth aides that as well. I don't think it's a bad thing, because I like to creep through bushes and take out everyone unseen. But I do think that it's the designers job to intelligently limit me and to guide my experience so that I don't get bored. I don't think limiting play-time is their job (if I decide to eat as much candy until I get sick of it that's my fault), but any other tool, be it general difficulty, enemy composition and intelligence, or any other sort of gating that pushes back against my growing abilities is up to the designers. If there's a way to become virtually invincible through skills and equipment, especially early on, then maybe it shouldn't be there or relegated to the end of the game.