FPS General

Ubisoft has released a patch for Far Cry 3, bringing some updates and features to the game but this update has a twist; all of the features and tweaks were added based on feedback taken from the community. In other words, today's patch was essentially dictated directly by community requests.

Included are updates to singleplayer and multiplayer, namely:

Single Player:

• Outposts reset: after the end of the game, players can choose to reset the liberated outposts to face the challenge to take them over again
• A new difficulty setting: Players who have completed the campaign can restart the adventure on MASTER difficulty, with more challenging enemies and dangerous wildlife

Multiplayer:

• Map Beta Test: Map makers can now start a beta test to monitor how their map is being played using the new spectate feature and regular players are enabled to provide better feedback to help map makers improve their projects.
• Maps by author: Players will be able to show all the maps created by an author
• Idle kick: The feature that kicks out idle players during a MP match is removed from custom and private matches
• The Skip map voting system has been improved with more visibility and time to cast the vote
• A new mini-game called The Grid has been added to the Outpost website and smartphone apps

If you haven't checked out Far Cry 3 yet, make sure you visit our hub to learn more about what the game has to offer.

Far Cry 3's sociopathic villain Vaas Montenegro is one of the most memorable characters from a video game in recent years. Making his debut at E3 last year, Vaas was an instant hit as the charismatically insane island inhabitant, noted for his 'did I ever tell you the definition of insanity' scene.

But what we didn't know, is that Vaas was not originally planned as we know him in the game. That was actually an inspiriation from Michael Mando, the character who was ultimately cast to play Vaas. At his audition, Ubisoft wanted Vaas to be 'stoic and unemotional' but Mando delivered something quite different from what they were looking for. He was turned down and sent home from the audition without a job.

A couple weeks later, Mando got a call from Ubisoft. They liked his audition, so they wanted to plan a small character around him and that persona. As you know, of course, Vaas became a major hit and was much more than 'a small character'. IGN has revealed some early concept designs that show Vaas as a tall, barrel chested brute that reeks of thuggish clichés'.

The character evolved, however, and became the very unique and iconic Vaas Montenegro that we've come to know and desperately-hope-we-never-meet-alone-on-an-island.

Check out some concept art after the break, including a full version of the image at the top of this post.

Source: IGN

Ubisoft has officially announced the Outpost app for Far Cry 3, a companion application that is available on select iOS and Android devices. The studio is announcing it today, but we've been using Outpost for a couple weeks on our Motorola XOOM so we're not sure what spawned today's announcement, but either way, here is some more information.

Outpost lets you:

• Decode the encrypted data you find in game to unlock advanced weapon mods and earn bonus XP. Don’t wait until you’re playing the game to start decoding. Instead, decode on the go! Once you unlock a weapon mod, you can accept it, give it to one of your friends or sell it for more XP straight from your phone.
• View and customize your Loadouts so that you’re ready to play once you’re back in the game.
• Keep track of your progress through the Daily and Weekly Challenges. Completing these Challenges will earn you XP.
• Check out your personal stats and the stats of your friends, including time played, level, top weapons, awards and more.
• Keep track of the maps you've made in the Map Editor. You can follow the current tier placements and how many people have liked or favorited your maps.

If you have used Call of Duty's Elite app or Battlefield's Battlelog, you'll be right at home with Far Cry 3's Outpost companion app. Probably the best aspect of Outpost is that downloading it gives you access to a second decoder for unlocking encrypted data in multiplayer. It is the only way to unlock that second decoder and you're going to want it as you progress and earn more advanced encrypted devices.

Check it out on iTunes and Google Play for more information on the free Far Cry 3 Outpost companion application.

FPS General received the following missive from the Rook Islands Tourism Board earlier this morning.

The world of Far Cry 3 and the Rook Islands is a beautiful, breathtaking and oft majestic place. If you learn to ignore the sociopathic killers come to meet the unique individuals who lead the islands inhabitants and the fact that just about everything is trying to kill you, the Rook Islands can prove to be a beautiful vacation spot for your family!

The Rook Islands boasts a wide array of tourist attractions, including natural wildlife observation (don't forget to bring your camera, you'll want to Instagram these photos for sure!). Note that there is currently no cell phone service on the Islands as our wireless tower was recently overrun and all of its operators killed and thrown into the watery depths of the Pacific Ocean (a great place to take the family for a swim this time of year, the water's great!)

To help travelers acquaint themselves with the wildlife, that will ultimately try and kill you, our team has put together a handy 'Animal Lover's Guide to Far Cry 3'. There is a wealth of creatures inhabiting the islands, including bears, wild dogs, deer, tapir, leopards, sharks and so much more. If one should keep their distance from these animals, you may even come out of these wildlife encounters unscathed! Please do not feed the animals, as they rely exclusively on a diet of stray travelers natural prey according to their status as bloodthirsty monsters on the foodchain. Thanks, Darwin!

We hope you survive enjoy your time here on the Rook Islands and look forward to seeing you here real soon!

_{Paid for and commissioned by the Rook Islands Tourism Board}

Many gamers, myself included, have something called Attention Deficit Dis - look, a squirrel! And when ADD is coupled with something like the limitless possibilities of games like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Saints Row the 3rd, something terrible happens....We end up doing whatever the hell we want and the story falls by the wayside. How am I supposed to enjoy the rich narrative of Tony’s gayness if I can’t even drive two blocks without running over a hooker and attracting the attention of the police? And as for Saints Row… well I heard the story really isn’t that great anyway, but that’s beside the point.

I am writing this article because after years of remission I have recently fallen ill with “GTA Syndrome” in one of my favorite new shooters, Far Cry 3. There is simply too much to do; bandits must be killed, towers must be unlocked, animals must be skinned, bags must be made, and a fake game of poker with virtual natives DEMANDS my attention!!

Let me clarify, the story so far has been nothing but riveting, and the antagonist, Vaas, is one of the most interesting characters in all of gaming, but I just can’t seem to bring myself to make progress. I’ve sunk twelve hours into the game and have barley saved two of my pals…This wasn’t as issue in Far Cry 2, I enjoyed the wandering gameplay, but the repetitive nature of the game served as an excellent motivator to complete the storyline as soon as humanly possible. And don’t even get me started on Skyrim, I’m level fifty-two and I haven’t even learned my fus-do-rah.

You may think this article is a bit tongue-in-cheek and not meant to be taken seriously and while that is partly true, I do think there is a legitimate problem here. Too much player choice ultimately breaks narrative immersion.  There, I said it. At the end of the day, when the player is running around skinning pigs to craft a new syringe belt, the main objective (saving your friends from kidnappers) seems neither urgent nor vital. Sure, call me crazy but you know as well as I do that at least three of the ten hours of your Mass Effect 3 play through were devoted solely to getting into Ashley’s pants, meanwhile planet Earth and the human race was getting glassed by a giant purple crab.

So, what strikes an appropriate balance between narrative and wanderlust?

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.

You can explore to your heart’s content but sooner or later you will run into an impassible obstacle that requires an item obtained from the main quest line to overcome. Before I wrap this up, I want to state that I am not saying that Grand Theft Auto 5 shouldn’t be made.

I’m merely stating that when that game does release, I am going to do the same thing that I have done for the past four installments; take a baseball bat to some pedestrians and go burn down a mall.

Far Cry 3's map editor is an excellent tool that Ubisoft is shipping alongside the game, letting players create custom maps and share them online with other players. Mod tools of this nature are not uncommon, particularly in the PC community, but such high-quality tools being shipped right alongside the game from day one is great.

Community modders have already been hard at work, not only creating some excellent original maps but also recreating some of our favorites from iconic first-person shooter franchises including Counter-Strike, Battlefield and Call of Duty.

Fan favorite maps like Dust from Counter-Strike or Wake Island from Battlefield are being faithfully recreated in Far Cry 3, as can be seen in the videos at the bottom of this page.

All of these projects were taken on by YouTube user ShadowZack, with some pretty amazing results. At the bottom of the page, you can see the following classic FPS maps in action:

• Counter-Strike - Dust and Aztec
• Call of Duty - Nuketown
• Battlefield - Wake Island

Check out the maps below and visit ShadowZack on YouTube for even more maps, including Nosahr Canals from Battlefield 3 and Dust2 from Counter-Strike. These maps are only currently available on PC.

Source: MP1st

Ubisoft released Far Cry 3 earlier this month, to pretty much universal acclaim. The game is great and offers hundreds of hours of gameplay, but don't take our word for it. Take James' word for it; Far Cry 3 has the touch.

If you were on the fence about picking up Far Cry 3, James is here to change your mind and he can do it in three and a half minutes. Harnessing the might of rock 'n' roll, coupled with turtle-slaying mayhem, the video below probably should have been used as an official trailer for the game. Indeed, we're expecting a call from Ubisoft's public relations department any moment now, requesting the use of this video for promotional spots for Far Cry 3. Ubisoft PR, if you're reading, we'll say yes.

In all seriousness, Far Cry 3 is really good and if you're even remotely interested in first-person shooters, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Multiplayer is a ton of fun and has enough unique and classic aspects to make it worth sinking some time into and the solo campaign pretty much speaks for itself. When they say it's like Skyrim with guns, they mean it. There is so much to do in Far Cry 3's singleplayer story, beyond the core campaign, that you won't get bored easily. 

Watch the video below to learn why you should check out Far Cry 3 and how you, too, can avenge the untimely death of Steve Irwin.

Far Cry 3 has been out for a week now, and strategies are slowly being formed on the best way to rack up kills and gather ammunition and weapons in the game. One of those strategies is going stealthy.

As YouTube user Beausafk illustrates in the above video, players in Far Cry 3 can use a simple approach to getting stealth kills for great results. The tactic is simple and easy, but yields great results. Using their inherent ability to throw rocks at things, players can lure in enemies to a nondescript location. Pick your spot wisely, make sure your back and sides are not exposed and be sure that you are in control of the engagement.

So, lure them in with the rocks while you lay in wait and attack them with your knife quickly and ruthlessly for the silent takedown. If you do it right, you will have lured them away from their partners resulting in a quick, clean death that nobody except you is aware of. Continue this process until you've eliminated the enemies in your area and proceed.

It's that simple!

In doing this you will be able to stockpile a much greater supply of ammunition, which you will want for future enemy encounters where stealth is not an option. Check out Beausafk's channel at http://www.youtube.com/beausafk for more great Far Cry 3 videos and much more.

Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 both easily have a spot in my top 20 shooters of all time. That being said, there are some major differences between the two titles. I know fan boys have a tendency to whine at the slightest change, so to break the mold I will confess that I think a lot of the changes made are for the better, but I will definitely miss some things too.

First off the largest change has to be concerning ammunition. In Far Cry 2 when you unlocked a weapon it was available in any quantity from any safe house around the map with a full complement of mags. The weapon system is much the same in the sequel, however ammo is in extremely short supply - especially at the start of the game. You can refill a single magazine whenever you visit a store or swap out a weapon but that’s it. Don’t expect to stockpile three hundred rounds for the AK unless you have cash to spend and space to hold it.

This adds a very different dynamic to the game, one that definitely enhances the experience. Each shot carries a weight to it, you’re taking a calculated risk that you will be able bring down a foe with fewer bullets than you will loot from his corpse. The majority of enemies use assault rifles and as such drop AR ammunition, so using a sniper rifle (while devastating) is going to be a limited affair until you have the means to supply it more frequently. Another reason why this system works so well is because having ammo to spare makes you feel like a total badass. After picking your shots and using stealth to your advantage for an hour or so it’s nice to change up the pace by just rolling through an enemy outpost with sheer force. In the sort of way that Arnold Schwarzenegger did in the beginning of Predator.

Another change for the better is the hunting system; I suppose it’s not as much a change as it is just a pure addition. But let’s talk about some of the things that detract from the experience, well...there is really only one in my mind; the protagonist Jason. In Far Cry 2, you could choose from a plethora of stoic and silent heroes. It really let you get immersed in the experience and play the game you wanted to play it. You could imprint your own identity on your character and feel like a part of the story.

In Far Cry 3 however, Jason whines and moans his way through the first half of the campaign. However, the story is a drastic overall improvement from it’s predecessor if not for this minor oversight. He does “sack up” later in the story which I suppose is supposed to signify his passage into the life of a warrior, but it’s too little, too late in my opinion.

The final change in the game that I want to discuss (there are countless improvements I haven’t mentioned) are the enemies. The enemies in Far Cry 2 were definitely tenacious and devious, they would flank you and use other tactics to try and get the best of you. In Far Cry 3, each enemy is a trained killer. They will stalk you until there is no evidence of your existence anymore. You can kill hundreds of them and then run into one that will do something that surprises you, it really keeps you on your toes the entire way through the game and prevents it from feeling monotonous at any point.

If you’re a fan of the second game then the third is without a doubt the next logical step. Check out Far Cry 3 at http://far-cry.ubi.com/. The game is out now on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

One of the great aspects of Ubisoft's open-world shooter, Far Cry 3 - released this morning - is the ability to hunt animals and use their resources to enhance your experience the open-world game. Bringing down deer or goats will enable you to craft new items, including much needed storage options for weapons and equipment.

Before you jump headlong into Far Cry 3, however, it's time we introduced you to one of the last, great art forms of mankind; Grenade Hunting.

You see, the art of Grenade Hunting is a practice that we don't think gets enough credit. When you're looking to take down some big game in the jungles of Far Cry 3, you may try to do it with a traditional weapon. And the animalmay laugh in your face as it runs away from harm, unscathed.

A well placed grenade, however, will provide guaranteed results, 100% of the time (that you are not facing off against a turtle).

Check out James' quick and handy tutorial on Grenade Hunting above, and make sure you subscribe for more great videos at http://www.youtube.com/FPSGeneral!