10 Awesome Open-World Experiences in "Far Cry 3"

Far Cry 2 was a unique open-world sandbox shooter that suffered from a tad too much realism. Far Cry 3 doesn't have that problem.

After playing Far Cry 3's single player campaign for several hours recently, we can attest that many of Far Cry 2's issues have been trimmed away, leaving a wide-open playground that falls somewhere between Crysis and Just Cause 2—you won't be grappling to planes, but you will fly a lot of hang gliders.

The game opens with a tense escape sequence, not bothering with any tedious build-up. You and your friends were on vacation, you were captured by pirates, and at least one of you has already been killed. That's all you need to know before you're thrust into the action.

Over the course of the demo, we escaped from the evil asshole Vaas, activated several radio towers (that view! it's incredible), fought off tigers, sharks and komodo dragons, and tripped out on psychedelic cave mushrooms.

Most of all, we just enjoyed the open world of Far Cry 3. Here are ten of our favorite things about it.

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Far Cry 3 doesn't necessarily emphasize stealth over other methods, but it does give you the tools to choose stealth if you want. Scattered around the game's deadly tropical island are enemy outposts, which can be easily identified by their large plumes of black smoke. Capturing an outpost gives you another base at which to rest, save and buy weapons, and requires taking out all the enemies there.

From a distance, you can use your binoculars to mark targets, which makes them easy to track. Using the game's new RPG-like skill tree, you can purchase abilities that let you take out enemies silently from behind, below and above; approach through the water and pull pirates off a dock, for example. With the press of a button, you can even throw a stone to distract them while you sneak up on them. Of course, when you screw up and the shit hits the fan, it's still fun to just blast guys in the face. There's a solid shooter here as well.

On the other hand, when the shit does hit the fan, it's not always your fault. Infiltrating a logging camp as part of the main storyline, being as sneaky as possible, we were still blindsided by what occurred.

An enemy we had been about to confront suddenly started stalking toward a seemingly empty shack. "What's making that noise?" he asked aloud. We assumed he had heard us—until a massive tiger jumped out of the darkened doorway and took him out, wreaking havoc around the camp while we took out the survivors. We felt a little bad shooting that tiger in the face after that.

We spent a lot of time mucking about shooting tigers and getting up to other shenanigans, but we also knocked out a solid chunk of the main story missions. Each one seemed to take us to another unexplored portion of the map (which is huge, by the way), and every time we headed to uncharted territory we found ourselves climbing another radio tower.

After the first one, you're not explicitly told to do so, but you will anyway; it's extremely rewarding. Climbing up isn't too much of a challenge, but the view once you get there is breathtaking. And by destroying the pirates' jammers, another square of your map will be filled in, and you can see everything from nearby objectives to what areas are good for hunting boar at that particular moment. Then ziplining back down is a blast, of course.

Climbing up those radio towers isn't too hard, but getting to them can be another story. Since they're often located on high ground at the tops of hills and rocky bluffs, they can be a real pain to get to. Luckily, there's also almost always a hang glider nearby, and that alone makes it worth it to trek all the way up there.

Hang gliding isn't a new addition, but we often found it to be the best way to get to the next objective. You get a scenic view, of course, but it's also the only way you can take a straight path to your goal. The roads are windy and treacherous, but the skies are clear. Just don't try to fly one directly to the top of a radio tower; you will die (we learned that the hard way).

For a murderous group of slavers and drug dealers, the pirates on Far Cry 3's island don't keep a very tight grip on transportation. There are cars everywhere, and they all seem to have their keys in the ignition. But our favorite find while we were playing took us out onto the water.

Driving down the road, minding our own business, we'd been set upon by three vehicles full of gun-toting baddies. Attempting to run one off the road, we found ourselves careening down a cliffside instead. Naturally, the car wasn't in great shape after this, so we got out and sprinted down the beach, sure we were about to be gunned down from behind.

But lo and behold, what should we find but a damn jet ski, primed and waiting for us. After that, escape was easy. This is the type of exciting dynamic event that this game is going to be known for.

Unlike in Far Cry 2 (and most games, for that matter), hunting in Far Cry 3 actually serves a useful purpose. There's wildlife everywhere, from boars to cheetahs and komodo dragons, and gathering their skins gives you the raw materials to make bigger backpacks and more useful equipment.

On top of that, harvesting plants around the island lets you craft health-giving tonics and, presumably, more useful concoctions that we didn't get to try out. Maybe the drug-addled but likable Dr. Earnhardt, who serves as both safehouse operator and narcotics manufacturer for the island, can help out in that department.

There are three skill trees to upgrade in Far Cry 3, each corresponding to a different set of tattoos that will appear on your arm as you acquire more skills. It's all got something to do with "becoming a warrior," in some mystic sense, as you fight to prove yourself to a tribe led by lead pirate Vaas's sexy sister, Citra.

You'll interact with the world and go about confrontations slightly differently depending on what skills you choose. The Heron path focuses on long range and mobility, with skills that let you reload without breaking away from your scope, sprint longer, and take out enemies from above their heads.

The Shark has skills like first aid and up-close stealth kills, as well as those that aid in defense, and the Spider focuses on stealth and survival; sliding at the end of a long sprint, archery, etc.

One of our favorite things happened during a scenario that you've likely heard about if you've been paying attention to all the coverage Far Cry 3's been getting lately. Infiltrating a pirate camp, we spied a cage full of cheetahs, and instead of taking the enemies out one by one, we did the only sensible thing: we let it loose.

We're 99 percent sure this was just happenstance, but as one of the cheetahs approached the first pirate, what did he yell?

"Let's see what you've got, pussy!" Needless to say, that pussy had teeth.

We're hoping that random quirk of dialogue will turn out to be indicative of the general craziness of Far Cry 3's world. We tried to push it to its limits; we hang glided everywhere we could, but like we said before, hang-gliding directly to the top of a radio tower didn't work out very well. On the other hand, hang-gliding directly into an outpost and taking all those guys by surprise was a different story.

Swimming between islands (there's a series of smaller landmasses) to launch sneak attacks proved fruitful until we were attacked alternately by crocodiles and sharks. Sometimes, an objective will tell you to simply "get to point A," and you'll be left to decide how best to do so.

Combined with all those different skills and the game's general propensity for randomness ("Let's see what you've got, pussy!"), we're looking forward to simple experimenting and seeing what works—and what doesn't.

Of course, we had a blast just knocking out story missions, too, from simply activating a radio tower to capturing outposts and other camps and even spelunking through caves full of psychedelic hallucination-inducing fumes.

The main story took us from captivity in Vaas's camp, to a wild chase through the moonlit jungle, after which our protagonist awakens under the care of a thoughtful—but militant—village of locals. Under their guidance, and eventually the guidance of Vaas's alluring sister, Citra, you'll learn to be a warrior and eventually take on Vaas himself.

There are going to be plenty of ways to get there in Far Cry 3's open world, and rest assured it's like nothing you've ever seen before—it's denser than Skyrim and more unpredictable than Liberty City. We can't wait to explore all it has to offer.