I'm about 20 hours in, and hopefully more than halfway done with the campaign. At this point, the experiences have had enough time to marinate and allow me to form some relatively solid opinions on the game:
- The campaign is very reminiscent of Far Cry 2, in that it is very boring. None of the missions are particularly memorable, and the "decision moments" seem like a cop-out so Ubisoft didn't have to commit to a linear narrative (which is apparently a bad thing).
- The characters are also pretty bleh. Pagan Min and his buddies don't seem very interesting except for Paul, who was the first one you had to deal with. Noore could've been interesting with some development, but I don't know what happened there. Overall, the campaign feels rushed and repetitive, like the developers knew it wasn't really the focus of the game, which is a shame.
- The amount of side content is ridiculous and overwhelming. There's very little breathing room in this game -- no wonder they let you turn off the HUD. The amount of filler aka "collectibles" is also staggering and disheartening. I much prefer having a small number of collectibles that actually mean something (the memory vaults in Psychonauts, Jackal tapes in FC2) than this dreck. I don't need an incentive to explore the world in an open world game, guys. Have a little faith, jeez.
- The "karma" thing is weird. I like random encounters, but the idea that murdering soldiers is a good deed is questionable.
- I'm over halfway into the story and so far the game seems to have nothing to say about the blurry line between terrorist and freedom fighter, the nature of patriotism, returning to your birthplace as an outsider, or anything significant really. People gave Far Cry 3 shit about using tropes and cliches, but at least they tried. Here's hoping for a redeeming final act.
- The grappling is pretty sweet. The map design as a whole seems solid, although honestly it all kinda blends together. The buzzard is also pretty cool, but kind of gimmick-y, as are the elephants.
Once I finish it I'll wrap the whole game up with a real review, but I like this as an in-between. Still interested to see how it all shakes out.
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