Thompson

Far Cry 3

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Ha! Nice.

I was creeping around an outpost and trying to draw guys out, one at a time. I get one of the drunken dudes down, and draw another one over with a rock. I knife him but another drunken dude sees us and starts running at me, screaming "mother FUCKER!". I whip out my silenced pistol and fire as fast as I can and he explodes in fire. He was just winding up a molotov throw and I'd hit the bottle. He falls at my feet, burning, and I run back up the hill, hoping the flames don't catch me. After I catch my breath, I realize the rest of the camp isn't alerted, either. No one has heard or seen me, or heard one of their number exploding into flames and dying. I resume my stealthy creeping with a smile on my face. :)

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That's amazing.

Are you still playing with no UI and if so, how are you liking it? Is it possible to play the entire game this way?

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Fairly easy way to stealth enemy camps is to (silently)snipe alarms and perimeter guards, then move in close and take the rest out with a silenced pistol. This method also makes one feel like a super-badass but can be ruined by a stray leopard.

Also, what is up with Ubisoft Montreal's audio being out of sync in the cut-scenes? I've got a decent rig, but ever since AC1, their cut-scenes are unwatchable.

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Sounds like maybe a video codec problem? Or do you mean the ingame cutscenes that aren't video? If it's the latter case, then WEIRD. I don't know.

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When I first saw early footage of Far Cry 3, I was miffed (Mini map? XP points? Cutscenes?). It looked as if the interesting design decisions of FC2 were stripped out and replaced with stock parts from a generic shooter.

But dang, Far Cry 3 is really well done. It embraces the grenade-rolling-down-hill systems-based gameplay from FC2, and I'd say FC3 pushes that particular aspect further. I played in a Garrett-visits-Hawaii playstyle, and it definitely scratched that Thief itch for me.

Loved

- Basically, animals are the best. Getting help from some wandering komodo dragon. Quietly casing an outpost and then being pulled underwater by an alligator. Watching the predator/prey world ecosystem just do its thing. I love how often these things happen, and I love their unpredictability.

- By far the most fun I had were the Outpost and Wanted side missions. Loved looking at all the angles, making a plan, and then (attempting to) execute that plan.

- The enemy tagging is one of those things I think sounds horrible on paper, but once I actually played with it I loved it. It reminded me of Mark of the Ninja's approach of generously handing the player all the information to be Mr. Sneaky Ninja Guy.

- The voice acting is great. I liked that characters actually had distinct characteristics.

Not crazy about

- Many of FC3's campaign missions felt constrained to one path, which sometimes felt counter to having this big beautiful game world and systems-based mechanics. When the campaign missions did take an open approach (i.e. E3 demo mission) it was fantastic, but they felt few and far in between.

- I spent a lot of time in the pause menu. After FC2's great paper-map approach, crafting a health syringe in the heat of battle feels silly.

- FC3 made me love Dishonored's meticulous UI customizability all the more. I really wanted to look at the world instead of all the floating UI doodads.

- The 'sort-of' functionality for dragging bodies is funny, in how once you drop a body you somehow lose the ability to pick it up again (?)

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I agree on all points. That body dragging thing was just weird. Many occassions where I figured I'd drag a body to a place, accidentally drop him in plain sight and then having no way to pick it back up. Not that hiding the body seemed to matter. A lot of times, the AI just grew X-ray vision going "A body!?" even though there's a wall and a building blocking line of sight.

Pet peeve of mine on the delay for bringing up the map. If I'm gonna be checking the map frequently, I'd like that stuff to be snappy. And it's not! Boo!

I tried out some of the multiplayer stuff. It's very complete for something that feels like afterthought bullshit. Maps are terrible and it has the worst CoD envy. I suppose I knew that already. Anybody willing to give the co-op a shot with me? I'm not expecting much, so maybe if any of you is not expecting much either, we can expect very little together! Exciting!!

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- I spent a lot of time in the pause menu. After FC2's great paper-map approach, crafting a health syringe in the heat of battle feels silly.

- The 'sort-of' functionality for dragging bodies is funny, in how once you drop a body you somehow lose the ability to pick it up again (?)

Agreed on both points. Going into menus to make stuff I needed felt weird both because of how good and complete the first-person perspective was otherwise, and also because the UI for that shit is kind of terrible on PC. Since the PC is the machine that birthed GUI menus, you'd think it wouldn't be too difficult to make ones that feel snappy, responsive and intuitive on it. Yet, no. Dodgy console interface porting, way too many layers and generally just making me lose my in-game momentum. The fact that there isn't a hotkey to create health syringes at the very least is criminal. Hell, they sometimes pop up a dialog box telling you when you have the necessary ingredients for an item - rather than just having ESC go to that item in a menu (which is helpful, admittedly, because of the aforementioned shittiness of the menus), why not also give me a key prompt for just making the damn thing?

The body thing is just strange and I presumed it was because there wasn't an obviously elegant way to not have it conflict with looting bodies on button-limited console controllers. I understand that, but it is bizarre in a game that otherwise promotes so much freedom.

I tried out some of the multiplayer stuff. It's very complete for something that feels like afterthought bullshit. Maps are terrible and it has the worst CoD envy. I suppose I knew that already. Anybody willing to give the co-op a shot with me? I'm not expecting much, so maybe if any of you is not expecting much either, we can expect very little together! Exciting!!

Yeah I'd probably be interested in at least seeing what the multiplayer is like, if you're on PC too. Is it four player coop? There must be a couple other Thumbs who want to do dumb shit on an island.

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Ah man, the game just crashed during a sweet rocket mission

Anyone else think cry guy sounds like Sean Vanaman, it's uncanny

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There's some pretty rad chin tattoos in this game, I might surprise my girlfriend and get myself one for Christmas

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Yeah I'd probably be interested in at least seeing what the multiplayer is like, if you're on PC too. Is it four player coop? There must be a couple other Thumbs who want to do dumb shit on an island.

Affirmative on the PC thing and 4 player co-op thing.

Insanity head girlfriend win

Has the loading screen hypnotized you and also are you drunk?

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Yes and yes. Magically become dependable co-op buddies, HOCUS POCUS, ABRACADAVER!

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I totally got my first undetected-camp-takeover bonus, completely undeserved. When I showed up a leopard had eaten most of the guys, and the rest burned to death when I blindly threw a molotov. Good game is good. Definitely considering the hud-disabling thing though.

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That's amazing.

Are you still playing with no UI and if so, how are you liking it? Is it possible to play the entire game this way?

I am still playing with no UI! It's amazing. I can't imagine going back, like, ever. I anticipate a few QTE problems in the future, but until then? Hells yeah. So immersive, especially because I don't use the camera tagging.
Definitely considering the hud-disabling thing though.

You can also try this: http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/734046-Mods-for-Far-Cry-3?p=8773981&viewfull=1#post8773981 It turns OFF the obnoxious UI prompts and makes everything else really see-thru, and removes the mini-map entirely.

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The Wanted Dead missions are impossible if you can't find out who's the boss dude with that icon.

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Jesus christ, the checkpointing is so bad in this. If you leave the game (in frustration) in the middle of a mission, you have to play it through again. Okay. I'm on the second island and there's this mission where you have to go pick up some papers, but there are guys all around trying to kill you. The game decided that whenever I spawn at the last checkpoint before I reach the papers, I have zero health. None. I originally reached it with full health. Okay, when I reach the papers, suddenly guys turn up from both sides of the bridge I'm on. They have jeeps that cannot explode. I have the papers, but I can't just leave, which would be easy. I have to reach "the getaway vehicle". It's on the other side of the bridge from where I ran to cover. The game decides to start spawning rocket soldiers from a tiny hut I was just in. This is exactly in the direction I'm supposed to head, and when I finally do I reach the getaway vehicle, it "Needs a repair tool" and I die.

Turns out I only ever liked clearing out camps and the Wanted Dead missions in this game, the rest is either filler or just incredibly frustrating. I uninstalled it, I don't have it in me to play through that mission again.

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PiratePoo and I managed to do some of the coop, after a bit of a rough start. It's weird. It doesn't really feel like Far Cry in any sensible way. We mostly just wandered along a straight path, shooting guys until we were told to stand still in an area for a bit and shoot guys. The only genuinely entertaining bits were interstitial competitions between the players - in one case we were driving ATVs around trying to grab and plant bombs faster than each other, and in another we were just plonked on a bridge and given sniper rifles while enemies milled about in a village below.

All in all one has to wonder why so many parts of this game (the multiplayer, the coop and the campaign missions specifically) seem to be actively working against the interesting open world systems that make the rest of it enjoyable.

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How many ubisoft services do I need to sign up for to play this game? Including co-op.

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