It's always nice when you go into a new game with a certain expectation, and those expectations are immediately exceeded.  I feel that lately, the game industry has become rather predictable in a lot of ways, and not just in the fact that there are so, so many sequels to existing IPs these days.  With the gaming media becoming so fast paced, it's quite easy to find out just about everything about a game near-instantaneously, due to how rabid the journalists are to be the first with their review.

Far Cry 3 has ended up being a rather unique situation that I probably won't see again for a very long time.  I saw a few advanced reviews of the game, but I really didn't pay much attention to them.  I saw they were very positive, and that prompted me to preorder the game about a week ago.  But aside from that, I didn't know that much about it.  In addition to that, I wasn't particularly a fan of Far Cry 1 or Far Cry 2.  So, going into this game, I really didn't have any expectations, good or bad.  Since I didn't read much into the game itself, I was pretty much just expecting a rather formulaic shooter, perhaps a bit like Crysis 2, which would be fun for a while but perhaps quickly become boring.

I was wrong.

I saw one review quoted as saying that Far Cry 3 was like "Skyrim with guns".  I scoffed at this.  (And also rebuked, "You dumbasses.  Fallout is Skyrim with guns.")  But now having spent a few hours within the game, I do see the point they were trying to make.  With the large open world, relative freedom to do anything you want (even if you feel like simply ignoring the main storyline), the crafting, the loot, the exploration; yes, I do get their point.  It is like Skyrim with guns.  With that being said, I will also say that everything that Far Cry 3 does, Skyrim does better.  FC3 feels like every feature in the game is a computer interface.  It's immersion breaking.  When I craft something in FC3, I just click buttons and then I have the item in my inventory.  I only have to click buttons in Skyrim too, of course. They are both video games, after all.  But with Skyrim, it actually FEELS like my character is CRAFTING that item.  That's not the case in FC3.  It's things like this that make Skyrim superior.

But those comparisons aside, FC3 is an excellent game.  And since I wasn't going into this game expecting anything like Skyrim, I really don't have any complaints to make in that regard.  Actually, the only thing about the game that I don't like is the fact that it uses Uplay, Ubisoft's proprietary digital distribution software.  At least the game is still on Steam, though, unlike EA's Origin exclusive games.  So, I won't complain TOO loudly.