Game rating: Far Cry 3: online CO-OP (PC)

[Art Blade]

[smg id=5698 type=preview align=center caption="coop crew"]
Game title
Far Cry 3: online CO-OP

Category            Rating            Comments Story line 9 Whoa. SP only got a 3 from me. I'll give this a 9 because.. hey, there actually is a different individual story for a coop :) And it is far more believable and immersive than the one we know from SP. Even those of you who won't play online may access the coop intro video, a large cutscene if you will, that gives you a brief rundown of each of the four characters (Tisha, Collum, Leonard and Mikhail) who will be player-controlled. Just access the online bit from the menu, coop, there's your option. I liked that video very much. The story that unfolds is chopped down into chapters that can be accessed individually and played in any order and all chapters may be played repeatedly over and over again. All four protagonists stick together at all times. They were on board of a ship called S.S. Astrid the captain of which took all the money from everyone and sold the ship and crew to Hoyt Volker. Our four heroes escape and seek out to find the captain and their money, fighting through hordes of mercs and pirates (and a couple of dogs). The characters actually have something to them, personality, shrewd, rough and raw.. and an arsenal of weapons. ;D The voice acting (oh yes, they do speak, each of them with a characteristic voice and accent) is brilliant. For a mere background of online slaughter it is a very nice story and the comments are entertaining and versatile. The action is non-stop, fun guaranteed. Graphics 8 Great. Well, the usual stuff that's bad in SP is still bad in MP but overall it looks cool, the locations are well thought-out and distinct and recognisable. I like it :) Sound 8 I'll give it one more than in my SP rating because of the most excellent voice acting. Game play 5 Same as in SP but for different reasons. I'd have loved to give it a much higher ranking, even a 10, but due to uncountable bugs and annoying glitches I can only give it half of what it deserves. The fact that it is generally a linear gameplay isn't a problem at all, you do want the players to stick together in some sort of way and to make them go from A to B so there isn't much of a choice. However, the space between A and B is huge and players may drift away so far from one another that they might end up too far to be revived from fellow team mates in case they got incapacitated (a symbol of two hands, the way you'd give someone a hand who's down on the ground). As in MP you'll see a timer sort of symbol hovering above the incapacitated player character showing that this team mate needs reviving. That timer running out will lead to an actual death (a skull symbol) and the dead player(s) will have to wait for the rest of the group to reach the next rallying point so they may respawn there. At each of those rallying points you may change your loadout (those loadouts are shared with the MP game). You may create up to 25 different loadouts and edit them, too. Loadouts are comprised of a primary and a secondary weapon (i.e. an SMG and a bow), two skills (i.e. faster reloading and increased movement speed), two additional items for your gear such as a grenade pouch and a bandolier, and a battle cry (like "haste" that speeds up your team mates and adds a little health to them). Primary weapons can be customised with a weapon mod (ranking MK1 to MK5) that changes the characteristics of your weapon such as the "warrior mod" that adds damage and penetration to your bullets but reduces accuracy -- all mods have one advantage and one disadvantage -- and many more things such as bigger magazine, different types of scopes, suppressor, "hot rounds" (your bullets will do more damage but decrease accuracy) and so on and so forth. Depending on what you combine with what, you can basically make two very different weapons of the same base model. One may be an AK47 that deals devastating damage but is quite inaccurate, the other one may be an AK47 that does justice to a sniper rifle. Some secondary weapons may have one modding choice (i.e. silencer for your pistol). You see, those weapons are so far from what you know from SP that you cannot compare them at all. For example the BZ19 sports 65 rounds in SP but only about half of that in MP/coop. About all weapon base stats are completely different already without "modding" them in MP/coop. Modding means as provided by the vanilla game, not external third party type of modding. There are four difficulty levels (hardest is called "insane") that change how quickly your health wears down when being shot at and I believe it also influences the amount of enemies, the harder, the more, and the type, too: more heavies when playing on harder difficulty levels. I enjoy "insane" :) Plus, apparently the difficulty level determines the encrypted data items quality, i.e. more hard drives on harder difficulty levels. Each chapter contains a unique competition which requires all four players to try to kill as many enemies as possible with one particular given weapon like explosive arrows, grenade launcher, sniper rifle and so forth. There is a different type of challenge, too, which is more like a race, where you are to collect bombs with a quad or a jet ski and take the bombs to one target that needs to be blown up. A lot of fun :) Replay value 10 despite the uncountable bugs but due to the aforementioned weapon choices and loadout combinations plus the fun of playing on a team makes it addictive. So far, I've completed about 170 chapters (obviously I completed chapters repeatedly) and it amazes me how it never gets old. ;D Mostly because you never know how well or bad your team mates fare along with you ;D Best part of the entire FC3 game. Final thoughts I can't stop playing coop! :) Together with Binnatics and Abletile I spent countless hours of fun. One day I played for 10 hours straight together with Abletile. TEN HOURS STRAIGHT! :) We are crazy about this, hehe

[Binnatics]

Excellent review, I agree completely. You deserve a kudo for that!

When I compare the co-op experience to the MP experience, there are some things that spring to mind. In the first place, the weapon balance is less annoying. The hip-fire SMG thing is still overpowered but it doesn't annoy a moment, because you combine each other's strategy. And too much running up close gets you killed anyway, even with a pimped MP5.
Plus there's less lag. I've had loads of fun using a sniper rifle and beating everybody in kill-count.  ^-^
This makes it cool to fuzz around with different loadouts and try different things. It pays off to do so, and carry different combinations with you. You can change halfway the chapter from a more aggressive loadout to one with more precision. And that come to its extacy when doing a silent run together.  8)

That makes me think of Mandru's comment: Not even thinking of joining a coop adventure because of slowing down team-mates. I would love to try some chapters with you Mandru, and see what's your strategy. I must admit that's because of having unlocked almost all the available medals and upgrades and such, but I don't feel the need anymore to keep rushing through ;)

I notice one downside compared to co-op: the impossibility to wear your own created tattoos. The warrior tattoos that come with the DLC are great though ^-^