It’s very easy to look at Far Cry 3 cynically nowadays. It’s an ubisoft open world game, its narrative is nothing groundbreaking at all or especially original, it helped spawn sequels which gradually become worse in quality and fraught with repetitive content, and it influenced a lot of negative trends in game design and the open world genre. Removing all that baggage and actually playing the game though? Goddamn is it still fantastic. Every single aspect of this game just works across the board and it still delivers as an incredibly fun open world experience. The gameplay is smooth and polished, the combat is energetic and engaging, the story is consistently well written and paced well, the world is fairly detailed and full of content, with collectibles and side missions (while largely basic) actually providing the player with tangible rewards. This quality open world gameplay is also intertwined with some fantastic main story missions and unforgettable set piece moments, whether it be the various hallucination trips, burning the drug farm, or the highly scripted but no less fun chase sequences. Far Cry 3 is consistently varied and it constantly utilizes its mechanics effectively, with the game never getting repetitive or dull, never dragging, never having too long between interesting moments. Chalk it up to bias, chalk it up to deep rooted nostalgia, chalk it up to the quality of more recent Far Cry titles being rough. I still love the shit out of Far Cry 3 and i doubt that’s ever going to change.