My Far Cry 3 review

This month I have been playing a new game called Far Cry 3, in which you help the natives of a tropical island recapture it from an army of pirates, who are also holding your friends as prisoners. I mean the kind of pirates with AK47s and Nikes, not the cutlass and wooden-leg variety, and the kind of attractive, interesting friends who are worth rescuing from pirates, not the socially awkward losers we hang out with in real life. 

I like Far Cry 3 because it’s the kind of game where you have a big open world and you’re free to wander around and do whatever you like – there’s a storyline and missions, but you’re left to achieve the objectives however you want. Half the fun in this kind of game is in exploring the world and discovering all the cool stuff in it, it’s like being set loose in a giant playground full of really fun stuff like jet-skis, hand-grenades and sharks.

The first time I played it I went for a walk in the jungle to see what I could find, and pretty soon I came across a clearing where I saw a small group of deer grazing. I started walking towards them to see if they’d do anything, when all of a sudden a fucking tiger jumped out of a bush and started killing the shit out of one of the deer. And that’s what I love about this kind of game – being able to simply roam through the island and watching a dynamic ecosystem acting in unexpected ways around you.

Of course, the other cool thing is being able to interact with the world around you in interesting ways. For example, the game designers thought it would be a nice idea if the pirates kept tigers and other wild animals in cages around their bases – when you try to capture the base you can shoot the locks off the cages and the animals will attack any nearby pirates (and you if you get too close). Whether or not the designers expected players to throw petrol bombs at the freed tigers so they angrily run around the base setting fire to the pirates and anything else they come into contact with, I can’t say.  

Anyway, I give this game 15 out of 17, because setting fire to endangered animals is good wholesome family fun, although I knocked off a couple of points for racism – I’ve shot about 50 pirates so far, and they’ve all been black, which makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. My suggestion for improving the game and eliminating the racism is to replace all of the pirates with the cast of Made in Chelsea* because then there would be absolutely no dilemma about whether it’s morally OK to shoot their legs off and goad a pack of wild dogs into eating them alive.  

*Americans: Made in Chelsea is kind of like The Hills, in that most right-thinking people would rather let a midget with two dicks rape their eye sockets than watch an entire episode of the show.