Far Cry 3 is just way too Easy (even on the hardest setting)
I'm about 12-15 hours into the game, playing on Warrior difficulty, and while the game is a vast improvement in quality over Ubisoft's prior entries in the series, I feel like it's just too easy. I realize that Far Cry 1's difficulty was a bit on the extreme side, in the way the AI could shoot you down from a mile away like they're cyborgs with bionic vision and aiming (which I loved); I was never expecting FC3 to match FC1 in terms of hardcore, raw difficulty.
However, all that being said, I still feel FC3 is way under-par compared to the difficulty of most modern shooters--COD and Battlefield, to name some examples. Dishonored and Borderlands 2 are in many ways similar to FC3, and they're not extremely difficulty games, but even they offer a stiffer challenge overall. Syndicate and Darkness II, to name a couple more, were shooters released this year alone that outmatched FC3 in terms of difficulty level.
Sadly, Far Cry 3 is not 10% as hard as Far Cry 1, and not even half as hard as Far Cry 2 on its hardest setting! You can basically carry a ton of health syringes and green herbs, and heal yourself forever, and this is probably the biggest reason it's so easy. The enemies are also very easy to kill, and their aim isn't particularly good. Most of the time I run into a group of enemies, I don't even have to use a single health syringe! And I'm not even sniping, I'm just using an assault rifle from behind cover, and can easily kill off groups of enemies in a few seconds.
This game could really use a patch perhaps to balance the game out a bit for more of a challenge. For example, some things that could be patched:
- Enforce strict limits on health syringes you can carry
- Require 2 green herbs instead of just 1 to craft a health syringe, and also enforce strict limits on green herbs you can carry
- Make enemy AI tougher--i.e., have better aim, and take more bullets to kill (doubling enemy health would be a good start)
As I said, I feel the game is very well made in many regards, but I feel like Ubisoft was too busy just finishing the game and polishing other aspects, but neglecting to balance the game's difficulty level. In its current form, it's pretty much a cakewalk for anyone who is moderately proficient at shooters. However, I still feel hopeful that the difficulty can be easily patched in a couple different ways (simple tweaks to enemy AI variables/damage would be enough) to be more of a challenge and thus more enjoyable.