Far Cry 3 – Hands On Preview
Beginning a demo with a cut-scene of a half naked woman is a risky manoeuvre. It can put people off the game instantly, making people think that it is shallow, attention seeking and even misogynistic. Yet this is how the demo to Far Cry 3 opened, a game which could possibly be the most intelligent and abstract FPSs of the past few years.
The demo was available to play at Rezzed where I got a hands-on preview. The first thing that was noticeable was how beautiful the game looked running on a high-end PC. After the opening cut-scene the demo started out in a thicket of jungle, every leaf on every tree stunningly rendered. A path led to a cliff overlooking the island and the pristine blue sea that surrounded it, showing off the game’s impressive draw distance. On a dock on the island a man was casually tipping corpses into the sea.
After a dive into the lagoon and a brief swim the game really began. The jungle’s thick foliage and the default weapon, the bow and arrow, made stealth the most obvious tactic. Picking off enemies with the bow gave a satisfying sense of power. The tension of being seen while drawing back the string countered by the elation of an enemy dropping to the ground, bolt protruding from his body.
This feeling was somewhat lessened though by the relatively quick drawback speed of the bow and its one hit kill effectiveness, regardless of where you shoot an enemy. However, it’s possible that both these issues were due to the difficulty settings of the demo.