Far Cry 3 has quickly become my favorite game of the year.  I'm getting so much more out of it than I expected, and I'm surprised by how well it has done many things that have been in countless number of games.  For example, I wasn't expecting the game to give me a huge dose of nostalgia, reminding me of old school Lucasarts computer games such as Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine.  I also wasn't expecting to start making comparisons to Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed.  But I have.

The island is so much bigger than I expected, and I am amazed by how much there really is to explore. Obviously, the environments do not change all the much -- you are on the same island the whole time, after all -- but the island looks so GOOD that you really don't care that it's all a tropical landscape.  Besides, who doesn't want to live in the jungle?  Seriously.

The thing that has surprised me the most are the part of the story dealing with the subtle supernatural elements and the adventuring.  I suppose I was expecting a more traditional action game, where I'd be mostly just fighting the bad guys with whatever arsenal the game provided.  I wasn't expecting jumping puzzles, or spelunking into ancient ruins for priceless artifacts.  It was a very nice surprise, and I have to say it was the point in the game where Far Cry 3 surpassed Borderlands 2 as my Game of the Year choice.

One final thought is that a lot of the times when I'm into a game, I often think about it when I'm not playing it.  That's natural.  And usually, when that happens I tend to think, "I'm really looking forward to playing GAMEX again...oh but I do hate FEATUREX."  In the case of Dishonored, for example, I hated how much waiting around in a dark corner I had to do in order to play the game the way that I wanted.  That's not really a fault of the game, but it just comes with the genre.  For Borderlands 2, I hate how much inventory control I had to do, because I have very, very, very limited storage.  (Unlike in, say, Skyrim where you basically have unlimited places to put things.)

When it comes to Far Cry 3, however, there's not a damn thing I don't miss when I'm not playing the game.

Except the dogs.  Fuck those dogs.