Game rating: FarCry 3: Multiplayer (pc)

[Binnatics]

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Game title
FarCry 3: Multiplayer (pc)

Category            Rating            Comments Story line 7 Funny to rate the story line of a MP setting, since there isn't really such a thing as a 'story' involved, except for the tiny introductions to the different playgrounds made by Citra or Vaas telling you what to do and not to do during the game. Anyway, I can rate the way the devs set up the MP experience, since they did choose certain game types and even designed stuff there. If you start a MP game, you can choose between 4 game types; The well known "Team Deathmatch", a 'king of the hill' -like type called "Domination", a variant to that called "Transmission" and finally a new gametype called "Firestorm". Team Deathmatch speaks for itself. Kill the members of the opposing team. Nothing new, just a good formula. Domination is about the same; Conquer the 3 control points and try to keep them off enemy hands. Good formula as well since you'll know where you can find your enemies. Especially handy when you have the ability to perform an airstrike. Transmission is a bit like Domination. Only here there will be only temporary transmitters that will help you broadcast your team's spirit, so once the transmitter is done, you have to get the next one up. Now Firestorm is something new to me, although it is a bit like the well known 'capture the flag' games. Here, you have to burn down both supply depots of the enemy team (and of course prevent the other team from burning yours). If one of the teams succeeds there will be a 'firestorm'. In the game-map there will also be a radio. Both teams have to go there and try to conquer it to use it to their benefit; the team that started the firestorm wants to call in an airstrike of gasoline to burn down enemy territory (that is already burning quite a bit because of the depots on fire). The other team tries to call in a firefighter helo to get their burning depots out. If the fire is put out by the defending team, you'll start from zero. If the attacking team manages to call in a firestrike, the game is won by them and over. I really like this gametype, since it starts easy; sneaking around a bit, trying to hide and prevent attacks, or sneak towards enemy depots and start a fire. Once there's a firestorm, it's madness. A massive fight for the radio. The downside of this rush-hour, is that once you fall, it takes 15 seconds to respawn. Normally it will take 5 seconds. Besides gametypes you can also choose custom maps. That is great. I've played a variety of good and entertaining maps created by players. The maps are ranked from bronze to gold, according player feedback. The main MP maps, created by the devs, are well balanced and have great variety. But more about that in the graphics section. The main goal in MP is ranking up to unlock new features and weapons. You can also level up your weapons to unlock mods for them and grow more powerful in the fight. There's also a great variety of Medals you can earn. You'll start to unlock 'beginners' medals, ending up with 'warrior' medals and finally earning the 'Warlord' medal. Great for the stats page, but worthless in-game. Wouldn't it be nice if you could show off to your fellow players about the medals you've won in the fight :P I'm not completely in favour of this ranking up - unlocking abilities setup. It means that as a beginner you're not only behind because you lack experience, but also because you lack great weapons and power. But once you've played cannonfood long enough, it's your turn to hold sway. :) Besides ranking up through experience, there's something else that helps you get the max out of your weaponry. It's called decoding. Every time you finish a match (both in MP and in co-op) you 'find' memory devices, like CD's, DVD's, flash drives and hard drives. They have to be decoded to get you new mods for your weapons or some extra XP. The bigger the device, the better the loot. Graphics 9 The graphics are not different from the single player world, except for some small changes. There's the final cut scene at the end of every match. 3 members of the winning team will be facing the best of the loosing team, and the best of them can choose either to show mercy or to punish the looser. Once you level up you will unlock loads of funny ways of punishing or shake hands with your opponent. Something else that's different is the ability of customizing your character. In fact, there's not much to customize, you'll run around like a Rakyat warrior or a Pirate, without much change in appearance like Art described in the SP review already. But what you can change, is quite cool: You can tattoo your arms!! There's a tattoo editor where you can make your own design on both arms from your elbow up to your fingers. I'll post an example below. This is really cool, once you learn to use it. The editor is a bit simple, but with some practice you can create a lot of cool stuff with different colours etc. Then there's the MP maps created by the devs. There are 9 different maps available. The different areas in SP all come along here as well: Shipwrecks, Bunkers along the shore, a secret submarine base, Massive jungle mountains, a Rackyat temple, and several small villages. The way the maps are created is immersive. You wouldn't notice that you're plaing on a relatively small piece of land. And it looks all very real and beautiful. The way the maps are put together is well thought and and balanced towards the different gametypes. You will never have to walk miles to find an enemy, you can hide, you can camp, you can shoot the campers, and there are areas for massive fights. The high rating I give to the graphics is because of the design quality. It is really great; good looking and well balanced. Sound 5 The sounds in the MP environment are mostly dominated by the heavily annoying reporter / motivator screaming to its team what is happening and what the team should do. The in-game sounds are just the usual. Gun fire and some music to make the experience more complete. If it wasn't for the stupid screaming all the time (and occasionally the frustrating voice chat of young foolish idiots, that's hard to mute) I would give it a 6. Nothing new, nothing special like the wild beasts or anything. Game play 1 No, I did not forget to really 'rank' this part of the game. It is a thick fat 1. The gameplay in online mode is awful. We have complained a lot about bugs in SP, but believe me. It's nothing compared to the buggy experience MP is. If you manage to get in a game you are lucky enough. A lot of times the game doesn't find lobbies or is unable to connect to them. And it happens so often that the game hangs while loading a mission. The matchmaking lobby system determines everything for you, good or bad ping, players, teams, maps; there's absolutely NO choice. Once in, you have to be lucky you don't lag too much, because most of the time other players have up to a second of advantage due to P2P design. This is so annoying, frustrating and unpredictable that a lot of players think others are cheating as hell and start bashing each other like s#!t. It also happens quite often that your game gets interrupted by a "Host Migration". It takes the whole excitement away and keeps you seconds waiting until your fight will continue, usually with some players less :/ If all the above is to your favour and you are in a game, you'll experience that there's always 3 or 4 players that dominate the entire match. They run around with SMG's with 'hot rounds', shooting anything in their way. That brings me to the next problem this MP has: The fact that the SMG's with auto-aim help when using hip fire, are extremely overpowered. In short range, the SMG is absolutely devastating. Often a single bullet is enough to kill an enemy. At range, it lacks a scope, but not accuracy. You can easily kill a sniper from a long range before he has the time to focus his scope if you're quick enough to see him. So here's a tip: If you ever decide to play MP, equip an SMG and DON'T try to aim. You'll easily make it in the top 3 of your team. And if the lagging is to your favour you might even get a kill-death ratio of 5 or above without any difficulty. I've succeeded to level up all available weapons and I know now that e.g. a sniper is a bad choice in MP. You don't get the effort of the range and precision because of overpowered others. Shotguns are also a bad choice, although the SPAS12 can give some satisfaction. In fact, any weapon but the SMG and AR, will give you the idea that the other players have a huge advantage due to lagging or cheating, because you are simply always too late. One last thing is the amount of ammo available: It's very poor. There are no ammo stashes so you'll have to do it with the small quantity you start with. For example, the bow will only give you 2 arrows, even if they are regular, non-exploding arrows. :( Replay value 7 Despite the horrible gameplay, the whole ranking system with medals and awards made it quite tempting to go on. Once you find out what weapon is best to use you can have fun in this MP world. The game is in fact very well designed. If it wasn't for the poor connectivity, bad lobby system and unbalanced weaponry, it would have been a very good MP game. Recently they added the option to vote against a map, so there's slightly more choice. And I have most of the medals now so I don't have to frustrate myself anymore carrying a sniper around. Anyway, if you level up 3 sniper rifles in a row (more or less 250 kills required per rifle to reach level 20) you become good at it. If you stay out of the way of those SMG-running fools you can have some fun with it :) The map editing will give this game another dimension and I am looking forward to test my own first MP map. The editor is kind of dull though, since it offers you to play around with AI like animals and pirates, but they stay unavailable in any type of real online game. :/ Final thoughts Besides some minor things, this MP game is designed very well. It could offer great online gameplay if it wasn't so buggy and unbalanced. The maps are great, the game types too. The ranking system and all the available mods, upgrades and medals make it tempting to go on and on and on. I think what this game needs is some dedicated servers and no auto-aim. If that is fixed, it is a great multiplayer game. A bit more freedom of choice in the matchmaking system and some more customizing options (bigger tattoos, medals, clothes) and it would be a marvellous multiplayer game. Too bad Ubisoft doesn't seem to pay attention to what 90% of the online gamers is asking for.

[Art Blade]

very nice and accurate  :) +1 :-X

I hate MP. The "1" explains why :-D However, here a "first" and a "last" impression:

The first time in MP was utterly horrible, as if everybody was cheating. More often than not I ended up without a single kill but countless deaths. When I saw an enemy, it was the kill cam replay of how he killed me. The moment I saw him I was dead, not even able to aim. Mostly I didn't even see him until I got to see the kill cam replay and wondered how the flipping heck he could have seen me, aim at me, and kill me without me having any chance of avoiding it. I gave up.

Then I tried again once just as a proof of concept, testing Binnatics's tip: use an SMG and do hip-fire. It worked. I was the first guy of my (losing) team. lol

[Binnatics]

Thanx! :)

Indeed, that's about how it is :-\\

[PZ]

Good review, Binn  :-X

Imagine how awful FC3 would be if there was a required online connection even for single player, as is the case in Simcity.

[Binnatics]

As promised, some pics of tattoos in MP:

Take a close look at the tattoo. Can you see what it is? Hint; the text is mirrored.
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Here's an example of the final cut-scene:
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[Art Blade]

looks like sliced cucumbers with slices of tomato on tar finish :)