➤ Far Cry 3 Classic Edition, the review 🎮

Far Cry 3 Classic Edition it represents in many ways the closing of a circle for the Ubisoft franchise. In fact, we are talking aboutremastered edition of the episode that, in 2012, relaunched the series in a big way thanks to some happy intuitions, selling over ten million copies and laying the structural and narrative foundations for the following chapters. A decidedly ambitious game also from a technical point of view, which not surprisingly found it very difficult to maintain a stable frame rate on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, thanks to the large open world, the sophisticated effects and the large number of possible interactions with the scenario between enemies, animals, vehicles and NPCs.

La remaster in short, it comes to do justice to the title of Ubisoft Montreal in the console field, where on PC clearly the situation has always been very different. So let's go back to playing the role of Jason Brody, an American boy like many others, who finds himself in the middle of a real nightmare when he and his friends, during an "extreme" vacation, end up inadvertently trespassing into the area of a tropical island controlled by a group of dangerous guerrillas. During his brief imprisonment, Jason is forced to live situations that will change him forever, starting a transformation that will lead the boy to become a warrior.

Gameplay and structure: home, sweet home

If it is true that Far Cry 3 represents the starting point for modern interpretations of the Ubisoft franchise, which with the fifth chapter has further emphasized the element of the "charismatic villain", multiplying these figures and giving each of them a precise personality so much as crazy as it is intriguing, in the same way in terms of gameplay and structure, trying again with Jason's adventure is like coming home, or wearing a pair of shoes used for a long time again. The ingredients are all there: the narrative introduction with a high epic rate, the short tutorial that illustrates the stealth facets of the action, the desperate escape through the woods that ends with a potentially deadly fall, which instead marks the beginning of a new life for the protagonist.

Saved by Dennis, an in-law member of the tribe People, Jason is encouraged to become aware of his abilities, to test the warrior in him and who is also manifested through the tribal tattoo Tatau, enriched from time to time with new signs to indicate the skills learned during the campaign, related to the Heron, Spider and Shark classes. There are the shops where you can buy weapons and ammunition, the vehicles we can borrow to cover long distances, the inevitable communication towers to be reactivated, the outposts to be conquered, the flora and fauna to represent precious resources but also dangers, in the optics of a crafting system thanks to which to manufacture more capacious backpacks, holsters and belts, gradually supporting the acquisition of an increasingly rich and varied equipment.

All this system still works in an excellent way today, both for those who return to Far Cry 3 after a long time and for those who have not yet had the opportunity to play the classic episode of the Ubisoft series. The problem lies in its inevitable lack of freshness and originality, if we consider that the same formula has been reused by the French house for practically every subsequent chapter.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

The forty-four Trophies of Far Cry 3 Classic Edition are based on the list of the original achievements of the game, and are obtained by carrying out certain actions within the campaign, obtaining a certain amount of skills, spending specific amounts at the shops, collecting the collectibles and bringing completed the secondary missions.

Technical realization: an unconvinced remaster

Free for the owners of the Far Cry 5 Season Pass, to be purchased separately for all the others, Far Cry 3 Classic Edition is in short a title that is still very valid today, which is played as a pleasure and offers phases in which the freedom of action is enhanced by the many strategic options available, while we face opponents who move according to behavioral routines of discrete thickness and consistency. The remaster side is missing, in the sense that this edition does not seem to have been made with the commitment and enthusiasm that would have been expected for the return of such an important and celebrated episode. There is an optimization problem related to the aiming system, although this does not dramatically affect the quality of the gameplay, but above all we have chosen to include only the single player campaign in the package, cutting away the cooperative multiplayer that he had given us so much satisfaction at the time of the original release, thanks to funny situations that it was possible to share with friends, while preserving the progress achieved in this area.

Then there is the technical discourse, which unexpectedly moves between highs and lows: as highlighted in the analysis carried out by Digital Foundry, the game does not run at real 4K, but at 1440p, without going beyond thirty frames per second and indeed recording on some occasions the drops are frankly difficult to digest. Doubling the frame rate would probably have been impossible due to the extra work on the CPU, undoubtedly the weak point of the current generation consoles, but in general the decent results obtained by the developers are more than anything else the result of the goodness of the original material rather that of the remastering work, which we can define as a bit pulled away.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Digital Delivery PlayStation Store, Xbox Store Price 29,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

7.0

Readers (21)

7.9

Your vote

Far Cry 3 Classic Edition represents a welcome journey into the past of the Ubisoft series, when some excellent insights laid the foundations for a very successful franchise, still recognizable today by some precise structural and narrative elements. The experience is certainly enjoyable and full of things to do while exploring the large island witnessing the path that the protagonist takes to become a true warrior, free his friends and defeat the group of pirates controlled by the madman Vaas. The problem lies in the inevitable aging of the formula and in the remastering work, discreet but below expectations, as well as missing some elements that would have been nice to find on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. A mandatory download in view of the Far Cry 5 Season Pass, but as a single purchase it must certainly be evaluated carefully.