When I played Far Cry 3 last week, I was impressed by a lot of things—but chief among them was the audacity of the in-game drug sequences. Not many games have your character straight-up take hallucinogens, but why the heck not? As games like Alan Wake and Batman: Arkham Asylum demonstrated, it's possible to creatively re-use in-game assets to build surreal, fascinating dreamscapes.

Sequences like the ones in the video above can also be used to creatively fill in backstory (Note the voice that I'm assuming belongs to Jason's girlfriend telling him that she got the role), and can generally be a lot of weird fun.

I pulled out the two better drug sequences to give a sense of what I'm talking about. Hopefully the full game will feature a lot more of these.

As I edited together my video preview of Far Cry 3, something struck me. More accurately, something stabbed me. You sure are going to kill a lot of people (and animals!) using a machete in this game!

I edited the initial preview video while on a plane, and I started to feel a bit self-conscious after a while. I swear, fellow United passengers, I'm not actually obsessed with stabbing people! This is just my job!

I thought I'd go through the B-roll Ubisoft sent and pull out only the stabbing. It turned into a heck of a lot of stabbing.

In my big honkin' video preview of Far Cry 3, one very funny part kinda stood out. Well more accurately, it jumped out.

It happened about ten minutes into the video, so I didn't want anyone who didn't have time to watch the whole thing to miss it. So, I pulled it out and made it its own video.

(It's okay to laugh, they make it through the jump okay. Somehow.)

Is this a shocking moment of real-feeling clumsiness? A hilarious bit of motion capture that somehow just seems funny in slow-mo? I don't know. I just know that I laugh every time I watch it.

You'd think that with all of the not-so-subtle hints Ubisoft PR dropped, that I would've figured out that there was going to be a tiger at our Far Cry 3 preview event last week. "It'll be grrrrreat!" they wrote. "Be sure to come on Wednesday, as we'll have a… special guest!"

And yet when I walked in, the first thing I did was look to the right and say, dumbly, "There's a tiger here!"

Not just any tiger, but Katie, the tiger from the famous bathroom scene in The Hangover. It's probably not the greatest gig getting carted around and trotted out in front of people at various PR functions, but at least Katie didn't meet the fate of so many tigers in the game itself...

Between XCOM and Dishonored, most gamers are probably unable to even think about anything on the horizon—the present is just fine, thanks! The horizon can wait!

Last week, I headed over to Ubisoft and spent about four hours visiting that horizon, playing a big chunk of Far Cry 3's single-player campaign. I've had my doubts about the game since it was revealed, though over the course of the last few months, many of them have been assuaged. After my time playing the game, any remaining doubts all but vanished. Far Cry 3 is serious business.

Most of what we've seen of the single-player story up until now has involved narrow, linear setpieces. But what about the massive, explorable island, the open-ended missions, the sidequests and collectables? What of the stuff that makes Far Cry Far Cry?

That's what I got to finally see last week. I was very impressed. Observe the following equation:

Far Cry 3 = Far Cry 2 + Uncharted + Red Dead Redemption.

Yeah. Granted, there's still a hint of what I can only call "That Unique Ubisoft Dumbness" to everything, but so much of the game was so impressive that I couldn't help but be won over. I can't wait to see and play more.

In the video above, you can get a feel for just about every element of Far Cry 3's single-player experience. The massive island, the teeming wildlife, the array of vehicles, and the amazing, performance-captured first-person cutscenes—the video is cut together from b-roll that Ubisoft sent over after the event; I saw most everything in the video, though I'm not quite as good at the game as the person playing the video.

But hey, just because I made a video doesn't mean I'm not gonna give you some bullet points.

• Far Cry 3 lifts its vantage-point system from Assassin's Creed. You'll climb radio towers in the game and, once you reach the top, you'll unblur a section of the map, highlighting the various points of interest. You'll even perform a sort of "leap of faith" to get down—only except of swan-diving, you'll zipline.
• You have a camera that you can use to reconnoiter enemy camps, tag foes, identify points of interest, and of course, take pictures. As a big Dead Rising fan, I must say I am excited to be able to take pictures in another open-world game.

• Everything is much more video-gamey than Far Cry 2. That's not really my thing, but it does let you have access to a lot more information. If only they had a map that your character holds in his hands! Alas. I'm sure some people will rejoice at this news, though.
• Oh, before I forget - even if you're not watching the video, for a good time, skip to 10:55.
• I don't know why that shit cracks me up like it does, but it does.
• There are a ton of optional sidequests, most of which you get either from quest-givers or from bulletin boards strewn around the map. They range from hunting challenges to stronghold captures to assassinations.
• Once you've captured a stronghold, it stays captured—no more respawning guards like in Far Cry 2. You'll have much more of a sense of progress in Far Cry 3. (Though of course, the futility of your actions was one of the narrative themes of Far Cry 2. Okay, I'll shut up about Far Cry 2.)
• The game has a hugely ambitious crafting system. There are a ton of collectible plants and animal bits, and you can use them to craft medicine, power-ups, and even bags that will expand your inventory.
• The island's ecosystem interlocks to a hugely ambitious degree. The last game with a wildlife system as massive was Red Dead Redemption—bold words, I know! It is remarkable how Ubisoft has managed to fit so much life onto a single game disc.
• Animals don't just fight you—they fight one another and can be set loose upon enemy bases. I'm sure we'll get some pretty funny glitch videos out of this.

• The game looks fine on all platforms, but the PC puts the console versions to shame. It was running smoothly and without a single hitch at 1080p, though I didn't see what kind of PCs Ubisoft was using. I got stuck on the PS3 version, and it was markedly inferior. Lots of screen-tearing, particularly during cutscenes, a smushed draw distance and some rough, ugly texture compression. Granted, the game still played fine, and most console owners won't care, but the PS3's graphics weren't looking so hot. The Xbox 360 version, from what I saw, looked somewhat better—less tearing, and darker textures, though still nowhere near the quality of the PC version. This game feels stuck between the current generation and the next one, and it appears to be just a bit beyond the capabilities of current-gen consoles.
• This is going to be one long-ass game. The Ubisoft folks were cagey about exact numbers, but they alluded to spending well past 50 or 60 hours on the game, including sidequests. Factor in collectables and relics, and that number keeps climbing.
• The stealth system is robust and transparent. You'll get a warning indicator on screen when a guard can see you, and it gradually fills as you stay in their sights. You can always toss a pebble to distract a foe, making stealth much more tactical and approachable than it was in Far Cry 2. (Sorry, I know I said I'd shut up about Far Cry 2.)
• The home-base area is idyllic. Almost too idyllic. You can go there to play minigames, resupply, and get quests.
• Gun shops are located all over the place, even in vending machines. Almost every single building lets you buy and customize guns.
• Far Cry 2's grisly (and awesome) low-health healing animations are back—get too injured and you'll rip fingers back into their sockets, dig out bullets and cauterize wounds. It's gnarly, and totally cool.
• A great deal of work has been put into placing you inside your character Jason's body. You'll be thrown around all over the place, and it's immersive to the point of being motion-sickness inducing.

• Far Cry 3 is not an easy game; especially at first, you'll be dead meat if you go too far out into the jungle without skills and proper equipment. Similarly, you can't just run into a firefight—you'll have to be smart, and use the environment (and often, the animals) to your advantage. In this way, it feels much like Far Cry 2—circle, circle, circle.
• The facial capture is truly astonishing—some of the most impressive I've ever seen. Ubisoft has used the same tech in other games, but I've never seen it work this well. Characters effortlessly convey fear, terror, patience, madness, and vacancy, not just in their faces but in their body motions. At least in the first-person cutscenes, Ubisoft has almost entirely escaped the uncanny valley.
• Your tattoos mark your power-ups, and as you get more powerful, they become more elaborate. You'll earn experience that lets you unlock more advanced moves, from stealth abilities to creative knife kills.
• The designers have had a lot of fun with the drug sequences. They're some of the best hallucinations I've seen in a video game in a long time, and are legitimately trippy.
• I shot a bear, and a bunch of boars, and I got eaten by an Aligator. (Crocodile? It's so hard to determine species when you're getting eaten.)
• The game has a curious "loot" system where you'll pick up various bits and bobs all over the island, each of which can be cashed in for money. I'm not sure the full depth of it, but I found a huge variety of items in only a few hours.
• Jason's talking during the story missions gets a bit annoying. It isn't endearing, and while sometimes it gives a good sense of how desperate he's feeling, it can also feel like overkill. Time will tell whether it works in the game overall, but I've got my doubts.

• Don't freak out, but the story actually made me feel a bit like I was living Battle Royale. Granted, it was a less-wicked-cool version starring a bunch of white American twentysomethings, but still, the whole "Fighting against your will on a deadly island playground" vibe often channeled Kinji Fukasaku's desperate, violent, brilliant flick.
• That said, I worry that the whole "spring break gone wrong" plotline will wind up feeling thin and inconsequential. Vaas is a terrific bad guy, and the acting and writing are fine moment-to-moment. But do I really care about the journey of this one dude? It lacks the historical grandeur of Assassin's Creed, the ticking-clock tension of the Rainbow Six games, the romance of Prince of Persia. It just kind of seems like a B-movie, like The Ruins or another horror flick. The story just doesn't seem as sophisticated as the tech, performances, and design.
• Then again, I really don't think the game will suffer all that much for that. But the story could wind up being what holds it back from being truly great.
• Vehicles handle with an unexpected degree of shift and slide—I found myself pulling through wild, spun-out turns as the physics reacted in ways I wasn't prepared for. It's cool, and will lead to all manner of nifty stunts once you've mastered it.
• In something I think we'll all agree is an upgrade from Far Cry 2, the hang gliders actually work, and let you glide for a good long time.

• So there you have it. It's a lot of game to take in, and I'll be looking forward to seeing how it all really hangs together once the game comes out. Far Cry 3 will be out on December 4 in North America.

  
  

An innocent tour of Ubisoft's studio sends this poor traveler smack in the middle of the crazy, savage Far Cry 3 world.

FinalCutKing's journey is part beautiful, part incredibly dangerous, much like the game itself will be.

There must have been quite a lot of drugs inhaled in that mask.

Vaas and Buck are two of the most savage, brutal characters you'll meet in Far Cry 3. They're prone to stabbing, and setting tigers to feast on your limbs.

But here's the thing about being this particular brand of crazy: it's usually followed by a heavy dose of delusion. Case in point: "We're not the savages. We are the shepherds." Ooookay my friend. A little too many drugs there. Cause you know I'm going to shoot you a lot—probably, hopefully to death—on November 29th, when the game comes out for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Like a few other writers here, I've been enjoying Sleeping Dogs this week. But not necessarily for its combat, or driving, or story. No, I'm enjoying it mostly because of where it's set.

The game, in case you don't know, is set in Hong Kong. Not a photo-realistic recreation, but a caricature that's close enough. Being an open-world game, it lets you explore, chat with random strangers, see the sights, soak up the virtual atmosphere.

It's not the same as actually being there, of course. It's not even close. But it's something. For a few hours, you can turn off the lights, lie back, and pretend you're actually walking the streets of one of the most vibrant and fascinating cities on Earth.

You can be, for want of a better term, a virtual tourist.

Maybe you don't game like that, and that's fine. We all play for different reasons and get different things out of the medium. But me, I don't play for a challenge, or competition. I play to escape, and prefer a game where I can lose myself in another world, one that doesn't involve the boring, everyday and mundane.

Sure, that means I love my epic fantasy games or sweeping sci-fi extravaganzas, but I also enjoy games like Sleeping Dogs, ones which let me visit places in my world that I wouldn't otherwise be able to get to. At least not easily or on the cheap.

It's a big reason I love the Yakuza series. Tokyo is one of my favourite cities on Earth, and while I've been there plenty of times, I always look forward to going back. It's nine hours and $1000 away, though, so that's usually out of the question. But when I slide a Yakuza disc into my PS3 I can, for a night, make a half-assed trip, complete with karaoke-laden adventures and endless runs to convenience stores for snacky treats.

It's not that the game is simply set in Japan that makes it useful as a tool for virtual tourism. There are tons of games set in Japan! It's that the Yakuza games manage to capture the trivial so well. That makes it sound awful, but it's the trivial, incidental stuff that really encapsulates your experience of a foreign country. I never associate famous landmarks or events with an international city. That's the stuff of postcards. I remember them for the immediate experiences and sensations I feel; the sound of their train chimes, or the smell of a dining district, or the way the average person the street was dressed.

All things Yakuza games get just right.

The same goes for Far Cry 2, if for slightly different reasons. Now, the middle of a conflict-stricken African state is not somewhere I've been, nor somewhere I'd really want to go in real life. But it's somewhere real, and more importantly, somewhere different, a place and time that video games rarely venture outside of themed platformers or racing games. It's the other side of the virtual tourism experience, at least for me.

Yakuza, Sleeping Dogs, the GTA series and even The Getaway let me visit places I like to go. Far Cry 2 takes me somewhere I probably should see, a real place with real problems that don't involve drug lords or super-villains threatening the same old American cities. Which is just as important as idle tourism!

There are other games I'm not mentioning, and there's no doubt obvious ones I overlook (maybe because they're not as foreign to me as they might be to you!), but I know that there's always room for more. Not every video game with an open and vibrant world needs to take place in a big American city. It's a big world out there, and while there are millions of people who enjoy and can identify with the USA, it'd be great if more publishers took the risk of bankrolling adventures set somewhere else. Especially for Americans! GTA IV isn't exactly foreign if you happen to live in New York City.

After all, it's done wonders for Sleeping Dogs.