What We Played #80: Far Cry 3, The Walking Dead

Time for gaming has very much been at a premium lately. I’m still only playing either Borderlands 2 or Mass Effect 3 depending upon which friends are online – and little more than a couple of hours a week of each.

Peter has been having similar problems finding time for games but has been playing Far Cry 3 when he gets the chance. Did you catch his videos earlier in the week? His initial impressions are that “it’s very good, if a little rough around some of its edges”.

That roughness manifests itself as things like “some of the dialogue that isn’t central to the main missions is a bit wooden and it has that usual degree of open-world glitchiness that we all know and love”. You want an illustrative example?

I hunted a boar who ended up stuck half in a tree when I killed him with my AK-47 so then I couldn’t get the prompt to skin him and had to find myself another boar to hunt. Some people will read that sentence and think “clipping glitch led to incomplete objective” while others will only see “shot a hairy pig with an AK-47”. If you’re in the latter camp, you’ll love Far Cry 3.

Dan meanwhile is still playing Forza Horizon. While he’s not normally one to chase achievements he “felt compelled to go for the ‘Road Trip’ one (drive on all 216 roads)”. With that mission accomplished he’s moved onto the Paradise-like “smash all of the 100 Forza billboards. 81 down…”

[drop2]FIFA 13’s “very regular server problems resulting in coin and point loss” and leaving Aran considering giving up on Ultimate Team. “I would have reached Division 1 had it not been for the fact the game thought I had left the match when in actual fact it was a closely fought draw. It’s pretty bad that problems are still ongoing almost 2 months after release.” Perhaps he should write to the BBC’s Watchdog?

So where has he turned for entertainment? Shadows of the Damned as it allows him to “destroy demons with big guns”. I can see the appeal in that. Aran says that Grasshopper “have made a fun game that doesn’t take itself seriously”. It has become one of those few games that he will be sad to finish “because of how much fun I’ve had”.

Zombies have been Blair’s main theme this week. The first to die for a second time were those in CoD: Black Ops II a game which receives plenty of praise. His capsule review goes “Zombies is good, multiplayer is frantic fun as ever and the single player campaign is an absolute blast!”

He’s also been playing PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale for our review and his subsequent addendum contrasting it further with Super Smash Bros. The tl;dr version of his review is that the game’s “absolutely fantastic. I’m so glad that it didn’t disappoint.”

And because you can never have too many zombies in your gaming he then turned to completing episode five of The Walking Dead game. “I am speechless. Everyone needs to play this – the story is absolutely incredible, it’s so different from anything else on the market and it’s definitely my Game of the Year.”

Tuffcub has been trying to finish some of his unfinished games before investing in anything new. So his eclectic mix has included Skyrim, LittleBigPlanet 2, a very quick bash on the Sine Mora demo and lots of Alien Breed on Vita.

Have you started clearing your back catalogue in preparation for any expected Xmas presents?