Welcome to the Backlog Breaker! In the last 3 years, I have played a lot of new releases for coverage on the site and the result is both a diverse selection of games under my belt and an ever-growing backlog of ones I inevitably don’t get to. Well that all changes in 2024. This year, we’re starting Backlog Breaker, a show you can enjoy in both written form (like this) or in podcast form on our YouTube channel at a later date. The premise is simple, on each new entry, we will take a look at a game that’s been on our backlog and share our thoughts having finally played it.
My backlog is quite extensive with some big titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt in the running. So choosing one game to start the journey would have been tough. However, as someone who has long been a vocal Far Cry fan, it was obvious that it was time for me to play the most iconic entry in the series first: Far Cry 3.
My first Far Cry game was the second one on the PlayStation 3. Back then, I was just a kid, and though I don’t remember the story much, I loved just getting in a car and driving around in that game. Despite hearing how good it was, I skipped Far Cry 3, and years later, I jumped back in with Far Cry Primal, followed by Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, and Far Cry 4 a little while after that. Then came Far Cry 6, the biggest new release we ever reviewed on the site back in 2021. I know FC6 got a fair bit of criticism and I’ll get to that later on in this article, but I really did enjoy it. (Click here to read my review for Far Cry 6.) Last year, I played through Far Cry 5 to round out the list and had a fun time blasting through it in co-op.
Right off the bat, the thing that impressed me the most about Far Cry 3 all these years alter is how cinematic it is. The concept of the game could have just as easily been an R-rated late-summer thriller from Blumhouse or Universal. While Far Cry 3 sets it up effortlessly, starting it off with a bright vacation montage cut to the beat of Paper Planes by MIA and then pulling it away to reveal the character’s terrifying reality, it’s a hard line to balance. (Just look at Uwe Boll’s movie adaptation for proof.)
Far Cry 3 walks that line of silly and serious really well and though it might occasionally lean too far one way or another, it always manages to recenter itself. This is a game that lets you loose on a vibrant playground while also reminding you of the stakes at hand. The tropical paradise turned battleground is both beautiful and full of nasty surprises. Exploring the open world is rewarding, offering new experiences that flush out the narrative in some interesting ways. I say this quite often about games of this scope, but it’s true here as it always is. The more time you’re willing to spend in the world, to explore and discover, the more rewarding the journey will be by the time credits roll. Which took me about 14 hours.
The design of FC3 deserves special mention because it’s consistently great. The open world is designed to naturally push the player in certain directions and see certain things. The radio towers are designed to increase in challenge, going from a simple walk up a few stairs and ladders to jump puzzles that require you to step back and observe your surroundings. Even the structure of the narrative is designed in a way that allows players to slowly discover more of the map as they play. Whether players notice it or not, these design decisions are why so many people liked and enjoyed FC3.
You cannot talk about FC3 without talking about the characters. More specifically, Vaas. A villain so unpredictably theatrical that the series has been seemingly trying to one-up him ever since. This is due in large part to the performance of Michael Mando. Vaas is written as a sadistic and twisted antagonist and he brings the character to life wonderfully in his bipolar monologues. I think this could also be attributed to the fact that he supposedly co-created the character with Ubisoft. That’s not to take away from the rest of the cast, who also do a great job. As expected, the characters are quirky and their voices are cast to match.
While everyone talks about Vaas, there is a bigger, badder villain in Far Cry 3 that becomes the final target at the end of the game. My biggest disappointment with the game narratively is that it sets him up as a larger-than-life antagonist while we’re actively pursuing a larger-than-life antagonist and the result is a boss that only becomes relevant for the last few missions. He does fucked up things but they lack the impact of Vaas. As I wrote in my notes while playing, Vaas is like the Joker to Jason’s Batman. There’s a fine line that separates one from the other. It sours the ending a tad bit more when the final boss encounter is just a brief quick-time-event in a shadowed room.
In my time with FC3, I’ve come to realize that it’s a bit more punishing of a game, and not in a bad way. In Far Cry 6, for example, there are so many ways to get around the map and I rarely ever felt in danger, running to cover with a sliver of health to heal up. This was a much more common occurrence in FC3. Item crafting is also a much more crucial mechanic that’s important to survival. Meanwhile, I didn’t really engage with the crafting mechanics in FC6 and didn’t struggle despite that fact.
I did find this to be a sort of double-edged sword because, on one hand, I appreciated the way that the mechanics are sort of baked into the core gameplay loop but, on the other hand, throughout the second act of the game I had grown tired of how frequently I would see the pop-up telling me my wallet or rucksack. As someone who enjoys exploration and looting more than hunting and skinning, it was a bit unfortunate that I was forced to stop what I was doing to go hunt some Tapir. To be fair, however, I do think the “survival” mechanics are more fitting in this game than the more recent entry.
It’s been over a decade since Far Cry 3 came out and the Classic Edition, that I played, holds up well. It’s not cutting-edge visuals but it still looks nice. I can only imagine how gorgeous this game would have looked coming off the muted browns of the Far Cry 2 color palette. Nearly every corner of the Rook Islands is lush with greenery and it’s easy on the eyes. Other than maybe FOV and performance stuff, there’s not a lot that holds FC3 back from being played in 2024.
I did also have some other minor issues with the game too. I like the map overall, but I find traversing it to be sort of a slog. Also, to specify, I played the Classic Edition on the PS5 and the performance was fine. No major frame drops and no real bugs either. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the gunplay but a bigger frustration for me was the controls. I found the “Hold Triangle to BLANK” prompts to be a bit temperamental. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. No matter how many times I hold down the button. Same with the “L3 to Wingsuit” prompt too. Both felt a bit clunky and resulted in some annoying deaths. Admittedly, these were all minor hiccups in my opinion, and didn’t lessen my experience of the game significantly.
This is where I want to get into a few spoilers. So skip this paragraph if you have not experienced the story yet. Far Cry 3 is famous for its two endings. While I had a pretty good idea of what the choices would be from early on, I was surprised at how compelling the game was to support each option. Throughout my roughly dozen hours with the game, I constantly flip-flopped what my decision would be. The logical choice at the start is to save your friends and go home but you also have found a group of individuals who look up to you on this island. People who depend on you for one reason or another. Not to mention that one of them says they love you. And while your girlfriend makes a case for normality, a flashback reveals that there were already problems in the relationship before the trip.
Without going into specifics (spoilers over), I also want to talk about the narrative as a whole. The game clearly references Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, frequently showing quotes during pivotal loading screens. Under that lens, the game is less of a white savior simulator, and more a tale of an unreliable narrator losing himself the deeper into the proverbial rabbit hole he goes. Furthermore, the endings then become a test of Jason’s grasp of reality, punishing him to some degree with either decision. I may be reading too much into all this, but I found myself speculating whenever I read the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland excerpts and so I wanted to share them here.
Since I said that I saw the ending choices coming from a mile away, I should also emphasize how engaging the overall journey still was. There were plenty of twists and turns that had me buzzing. The game manages to put Jason Brody in some truly cool and cruel situations. It may not be a Call of Duty, but jumping off a bridge surrounded by enemies and wingsuiting to your getaway car or sneaking through a facility to plant C4 on a satellite dish and escaping on a helicopter is still inherently cinematic.
Part of Far Cry 3‘s cinematic feel comes from the music selection. It’s not filled to the brim with licensed music, but the moments it does use them are great. Obviously, there’s the opening, but one of my favorite parts of the game was walking up to a field of marijuana with a flamethrower as Make It Bun Dem by Skrillex blasts through my headphones. This whole sequence, as frustrating as the checkpoints might have been, really did put a smile on my face because it really captures the vibe of the Far Cry series.
I think the revelation that Far Cry 3 has helped me reach is that, yes, Far Cry games recycle the same gameplay sequences. This is a criticism that all Far Cry games get on release and one that was fairly leveled against Far Cry 6. Be it claiming radio towers, securing outposts, or burning fields, you’ve done it in one game, you’ve done it in all of them. But the truth of the matter is, I still enjoy it. I enjoy those gameplay sequences. For me, every other year, I jump into a Far Cry game to experience that familiar gameplay loop in a different context.
And in the game’s defense, I have also come to appreciate that they are different experiences in their own way. FC3: Blood Dragon is very different from the base game. Similarly, while you’re doing the same things, Dani Rojas’ revolution in FC6 is different than Jason’s fight for survival in FC3 or Ajay Ghale’s journey to scatter his mother’s ashes in FC4. I think most Far Cry fans will agree with me when I say that new entries in the series are new excuses to do things we know we like. New games with new worlds are great, but there is comfort in the familiar and there is nothing wrong with that.
