Far Cry 3 - Digital Deluxe Edition PC Games

Released on 29-Nov-2012

• Far Cry 3 update brings harder difficulty and outpost respawns

  Ubisoft has a major free update planned for its acclaimed shooter Far Cry 3, bringing features much requested by the game's fanbase. The announcement was made on the game's official forum.

  Top of the list is the ability to reset the various pirate outposts dotted around the blood-soaked madhouse of Rook Islands. Arguably the best bits of an already excellent game, these outposts find you trying to clear locations of enemies, using stealth and guile where possible. And explosive arrows and lots of bullets when that fails. And sometimes a tiger.

  The sense of sadness you felt when you'd beaten all the outposts will now turn to elation once you can reset and respawn any completed location, allowing you to creep, sneak and slay as many times as you like. You'll need to have finished the story in order to do this, as only then will the option appear in the menu. Any incomplete side missions, such as hunting challenges, related to each outpost will also be reset.

  The update will also introduce a new Master difficulty setting. "Seasoned veterans will find themselves challenged by more aggressive wildlife, tougher pirates, and more deadly privateers," read Ubisoft's post. "Your skills as a master of the Rook Islands will be tested." Again, you'll need to have finished the game on Adventurer, Survivor or Warrior difficulty before the option is available.

  Ubisoft has yet to confirm when this update will go live, but it's great to see a publisher continuing to improve and support its games months after release, based on fan feedback.

  Far Cry 3, one of the very best games of 2012, is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

  Published: 19/02/2013

• The Best of 2012: PC

  
  

  If 2012 deserves to be remembered for anything - apart from the imminent Mayan apocalypse of course - it's as the year when people finally stopped bleating about the PC being a dying games platform. The past twelve months saw an astonishing run of top quality games for PC, as indie studios turned out fresh ideas by the dozen while mainstream developers fell back in love with the idea of pushing the flexible hardware a PC offers to the absolute limit. Here's our round up of the top PC titles that helped define the year.

  

  What's perhaps most noticeable is that some of 2012's biggest releases were PC exclusive, not just PC versions of hit console games. Blizzard's Diablo 3, for example, was arguably one of the most important games of the year, yet talk of a console version is still shrouded in rumour. Arriving a mere 12 years after the release of Diablo 2, it's fair to say that fans were absolutely desperate to get their hands on Blizzard's fast-paced tactical action RPG. Always a series driven by frantic combat and furious loot-grabbing, Diablo 3 streamlined many of the processes involved without making the gameplay itself shallow. Whether playing online with friends, or hacking your way through the horde alone, it's still one of the year's most frighteningly addictive games. If you get it for Christmas, be careful - you may emerge from your first session to discover you've missed New Year's Eve.

  

  But then this was a year for great RPG revivals on the PC. Fans of NCSoft's massive online role-player Guild Wars didn't have to wait quite as long as the Diablo faithful - a mere seven years separates Guild Wars 2 from its 2005 original - but the wait was still more than worth it. A rare MMO that requires no monthly subscription, Guild Wars 2 innovated in other areas as well, not least the fresh approach to quest design which allowed more fluid storylines to emerge based on player actions rather than strictly define dungeon encounters. With 400,000 players filling out its rich fantasy world, it's an excellent choice for anyone looking to try out an online RPG.

  

  Or, of course, you could turn to the top dog of the genre. World of Warcraft continued to dominate in 2012, with the release of the latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria. This not only introduces a whole new land to explore, it adds a deeper pet battling system, a new character class and a new playable race - the Pandaren, a monastic order of martial arts mammals that look suspiciously like a certain popular animated movie character. Don't mention that though. The fans get very upset.

  

  The best games of 2012 weren't only exclusive to PC, of course, but many of them were clearly designed with the platform in mind. Dishonored, the astonishing and compelling stealth adventure from the co-creator of Deus Ex, was a hit on consoles but a more perfect fit for PC. A game of painstaking plotting and careful progression, its dark and deliberate pace feels right at home on a keyboard and mouse, as you take control of supernatural assassin Corvus and set about unravelling a conspiracy in a steampunk world filled with detail and story.

  

  Similarly indebted to the PC was the superb strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, in which you manage a global agency tasked with investigating and repelling alien invasions. A remake of the 1991 classic, it retained the methodical turn-based structure but brought it bang up to date with nailbiting extra-terrestrial encounters and a satisfying web of upgrades and abilities with which to arm your brave, loyal and very often horribly doomed soldiers.

  

  In certain cases, this shift back towards more PC-flavoured gameplay was especially useful. Far Cry 3 was great on consoles, but it pushed their fixed hardware to the limit. On PC, the tropical island setting is in full bloom, stretching into the distance in extraordinary beautiful detail even as you're prowling its open world, stealth-killing murderous bandits and trying not to be mauled by leopards.

  An excellent year for PC players then, and a trend that will only continue in 2013. It might be a good idea to put some of those Christmas spends towards that new graphics card you've been promising yourself...
  

  Published: 20/12/2012

• Far Cry 3 - Review

  
  

  

  It's probably quite fitting for a game that's all about man's descent into insanity that Far Cry 3's probably the nuttiest thing you'll play all year. It's a hedonistic mix of guns, sun and madness - as well as a cavalcade of wildlife that takes this above and beyond your normal shooting experience. Here's a game where the balance of a gunfight can be tipped by an errant bear.

  If that's not enough to convince you - and really, it should be - then there's more. There's much, much more.

  Far Cry's always been a series about freedom. When Crytek's breathtaking original made its debut - a game that's still handsome today, some eight years on from its release - the tropical backdrop was a dizzying first. You could go anywhere, and explore any tactical option.

  The sequel carried on it that vein, although it may have been a bit too smart for its own good: Ubisoft Montreal's follow-up was an essay on the fallibility of man when faced against the wilderness, which is all well and good but, as your character's arm seized up through some strange illness and your gun jammed for the umpteenth time, wasn't actually that much fun.

  

  Sun, Sea And Sandbox

  Far Cry 3's still about freedom, but it couldn't be further removed from the strictness of its predecessor - this is a game that's been engineered at almost every level for fun, and one that's desperate to fix a big dumb grin on your face at all times. It pretty much succeeds at that, too.

  Ubisoft Montreal's case is no doubt helped by the fact that it's been taking notes from the king of open world games. Far Cry 3's biggest debt, and its biggest influence, isn't really the two entries that came before it. Instead, it's Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series.

  Yes, this is Skyrim with guns. If that sounds like an incongruous mix, well to be honest at first it is. When you're first scouring the jungle, looking for a goat to skin so you can craft a new pouch that'll allow you to carry more ammo, you may wonder what on earth is going on, but slowly Far Cry 3's madcap philosophy comes into focus.

  Every Rook And Cranny

  With the crafting joined by far-reaching and thoughtful skill trees, it turns out that this is a much deeper experience than you'd ever really expect of a first-person shooter. And like Skyrim, it's one that slowly sucks you in, until you find yourself spending more time in its fantasy world than you do your own.

  

  It helps that Far Cry 3's Rook Island has taken another leaf from Bethesda's book and filled its every nook and cranny with things to do. There are optional quest-lines, or even good old-fashioned rampages, and they're all unlocked in a pleasingly methodical way. The world's open from the off, but it's only really decipherable once you scale one of the many radio towers that grant access to a portion of the map, allowing you to see the dizzying selection of activities on offer.

  Paradise Lost

  So brilliant is the experience of traipsing around Rook Island - something that can be done on foot, by boat or car or, most pleasingly, by soaring across it in a hang-glider - that the actual story missions pale a little in comparison. They're tightly scripted and fairly effective, and they also deliver a story that while trashy is certainly compelling - but they're never quite as brilliant as the open-ended madness that defines the rest of Far Cry 3.

  It's a dizzying freedom that's typical of the best open world games. Oh, and let's not forget that it's a shooter too, and a pretty satisfying one. The guns are meaty - and all upgradeable, of course - and the enemy puts up a tough fight, often ensuring that you're forced down a more stealthy route in pursuit of victory. And if that doesn't work, you can always just hope and pray that a passing bear will help you out of your trouble.

  GAME's Verdict:

  The Good:

  • Incredible, packed open world
  • Fantastic open-ended stealth gunplay
  • Animals!

  The Bad:

  • Story missions aren't the measure of the off-script game

  Published: 28/11/2012

• Review Roundup: Far Cry 3

  Nestled in amongst such titans as Black Ops II, Halo 4 and Assassin's Creed III, offbeat tropical shooter Far Cry 3 could easily have been overlooked. That seems unlikely now that the game, which is out on November 30th, has attracted some of the best reviews of the year.

  Eurogamer is the most enthusiastic, dishing out a coveted 10/10 score and declaring it ""the new apex predator of open-world shooters". The review offers the game's open world freedom as its strongest asset, suggesting the game's unpredictable world makes it "a glorious anecdote factory, where you manufacture brilliant new memories every time you wake up in a safehouse and head out into the jungle."

  IGN scores the game 9/10, with particular attention paid to the dark storyline which casts you not as a rock hard supersoldier, but a terrified tourist trapped on an island with maniacal criminals. "As its unpredictable, often uncomfortable story comes unhinged," says the review, "Far Cry 3 challenges players' principles: How far would you go to protect the people you love, and what kind of person would you become to get them back?"

  PC Gamer joins the praise parade with an 89% score. "You've got a huge island to explore, ridiculously effective tools for scouting every hostile situation, and so many clever intersecting systems to inspire creative ways to conquer them," it reckons. "It's a better stealth game than Far Cry 1, set in an open world that feels richer than Far Cry 2's. That's an amazing thing to play."

  Far Cry 3 is out on November 30th for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
  

  Published: 22/11/2012

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