Oh man its been hard to pull myself away from this game after starting earlier today.
All of the positive posts from our friends across the pond are spot on for their praise of this game. After the brief hand holding that occurs at the start of the game once you're unleashed upon the island to play how you want it really epitomizes the open world sand box style type of game.
I've been having a blast just hunting the different animals and starting to craft the different pouches and wallets necessary to hold more gear. It's the random things like gun fights happening in the distance, allied/enemy patrols, animal attacks and wild dogs feasting on the dead that add to the atmosphere. Graphically I'm playing with ultra settings on the rig below and it runs like glass.
My biggest fear of this game coming in was that it would have that same annoyance that Just Cause 2 had in that once you were spotted by the enemy there was no losing them. It was like they planted a tracker on you and could spot ya a mile way no matter how hard you tried to evade them. Not the case here in Far Cry 3. Although I'd like to believe I'm skilled in taking the stealth approach, there are times where I've been spotted but have been successful in losing my tail by either ducking in a cave or just hiding in dense foliage.
The enemy doesn't have the super human ability to always know where you're at and will often lose sight of you but they will still continue to actively look for ya. All the while taunting you and making the whole experience quite tense at times. If you are able to stay undetected the knife kills are really satisfying.
I never played Far Cry 2 but from what I've read in the past one of the biggest complaints of that game was the constant spawn of enemies after you cleared out a checkpoint. The way its handled here is when looking at the map of the island you'll see a shade of red that covers the area still under control of the enemy. This is caused by one of the enemies base camps in that area. Once you clear out a camp it stays yours and you'll notice the shade of red dissipate on the map and the overall enemy patrols in that area are reduced dramatically and allied units will now patrol there more frequently.
Being able to upgrade the weapons with silencers, red dot sights etc. and even give them some camouflage paint jobs is a small but welcome addition too. So far I'm only a few hours in and have only secured 1 radio tower and 2 camps, but overall I'm quite pleased with this day one purchase.