Windows: FarCry3

[Huntn]

Anyone playing and enjoying?

I just finished reading the PCGamer FarCry3 Review and am tempted to get this title. I remember the first FarCry and really enjoyed it. I like the idea of an open landscape, especially on a tropical island, in other words the game is not on rails (as in Half Life). My only decision will be to get this for PC (Mac Bootcamp) or XBox. Opinions?
Thanks!

[Wardenski]

I would go PC but I don't own an Xbox or PS3.

I am not sure what GPU is needed to make it look as nice as the console versions though and it is a console port after all.

I intend to buy this game but I think I will wait until the end of the year when I whore out on a gaming PC.

[TedM]

I own it. Its really fun. I'm just about to beat it I think too. But its been interesting most of the way. I'm not really a fan in how they use the environment. It is an open world, but its difficult to travel to places sometimes. And that base thats far out typically isn't worth it. I don't like gun games either. So I've resolved to kill people with the bow and knife, its been really fun. I'd absolutely recommend it.n The voice acting is superb. You'll love it I'm sure.

[ugp]

I went with Xbox. I tend to like playing games more on a Console than PC anymore.

I have the title for both PC and Xbox. On the PC side you can Mod the game and have a little more fun with it if you are into that sort of thing. The game experience is going to be the same on either platform though. It all comes down to really if your Mac can run it. I have the latest 15" MBP and the game runs well at a decent frame rate.

[alvindarkness]

Love it. The reviews seem to state the multiplayer aspect was just tacked on and is nothing special, but Ive actually enjoyed the multiplayer as much if not more than the single player, especially the co-op.

I went PC, those detailed textures and amazing environmental effects running on a 2560x1440 monitor with a gtx680, its pure heaven.

[sammich]

Loved it.

Getting around is the greatest annoyance since there's no map pathing system (the terrain is very mountainous) and getting to a particular point from a 2D map is frustrated, to say the least.

That may have contributed to my 25-30+ hours on the game but I enjoyed most of it. Killing stuff, oh so much fun. Must admit, I don't get the bow, at, all. Takedowns or sniper all the way.

EDIT: just saw your sig. Item for item, you have almost the exact stuff as I do, down to W7 64. Save for the 16GB of RAM and the fact I just sold my iPad 3, it's the same. IIRC, I played it at native on 1680x1050 at medium I think, but that was a month ago now. No OC.

[MacRumorUser]

OK i have finished this a short while ago and I did so on Bootcamp.

I bought the game retail, and it forces you to use U-Play here. I hate u-play.... A crappy poor mans steam...


OK performance wise.....

I'm playing on a MacPro 2.6Ghz Octo core, 32gb ram, HD5870, 750gb Maximus XT HDD/SDD combo running Windows 8

I ran at 1920x1080 with settings mostly on High / Very High with post processing set to Low.

The framerate still fluttered mostly it was smooth but often dipped.

There are problems with Far Cry 3 and AMD chips for a start and you will have to do some adjusting of the settings if you want smooth performance.

Firstly..

Run in DX9, DX11 its defaults has more issues on AMD GPU's including a kind of stuttering when traversing regardless of what resolution or quality settings you try.

However doing so means you wont be able to enable MSAA or some SSAO options.

Secondly the V-Sync has issues again in game so best to leave it set to off and use Catalyst Control Panel to enable V-Sync. You will get better stable peformance.

Thirdly, the new patch that came out and will automatically patch the game when you first launch, gets rid of the option for multi-core rendering, so having a decent CPU doesn't give you too many benefits. Apparently for some when enabled it caused the game to crash, so they just removed it in a patch rather than fixing the issue.

Given the 6750 in your iMac is less powerful than my 5870 I doubt you'll be able to play in anything but low to medium at default resolution.

Disabling post processing completely in cfg file will give you a really good boost in fps, but means you lose all depth of field effects.


So basically go for the PC version if you can put up with spending a good amount of time tinkering and realising your never going to be ever fully satisfied. I tinkered with settings throughout my entire 30 hour campaign...

Yes it could look better than the 360 version, but peformance could be erratic to say the least, and you will have to deal with U-Play unless you get it off Steam....

With the 360 you will get 'consistent' performance and you'll spend your time playing the game rather than the games settings.


If i was to do it again, i'd buy the 360 version....

----------

Originally Posted by alvindarkness

I went PC, those detailed textures and amazing environmental effects running on a 2560x1440 monitor with a gtx680, its pure heaven.

Yeah the game runs a lot better on NVidia hardware, especially something as sweet as a GTX680 :-)



________

Edit

Ubi have a 42 page thread of users experiencing the micro stuttering i mention above, so it seems fairly common.

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php...cro-stuttering

[lightz39]

Just started playing it. I'm surprised how high I can crank up the settings on my macbook. Good game so far.

[Huntn]

Originally Posted by ugp

I went with Xbox. I tend to like playing games more on a Console than PC anymore.

I have the title for both PC and Xbox. On the PC side you can Mod the game and have a little more fun with it if you are into that sort of thing. The game experience is going to be the same on either platform though. It all comes down to really if your Mac can run it. I have the latest 15" MBP and the game runs well at a decent frame rate.

Originally Posted by MacRumorUser

If i was to do it again, i'd buy the 360 version....

I wonder if there is a significant difference in appearance between xbox and a PC with a good graphics card? Can you save the game whenever? I assume if it's free roam, you can.

[MacRumorUser]

Originally Posted by Huntn

I wonder if there is a significant difference in appearance between xbox and a PC with a good graphics card? Can you save the game whenever? I assume if it's free roam, you can.

Yes you can save mostly anywhere unless you are on a mission in which case you can only save after the mission is complete.



http://youtu.be/psXF1wpxm8I

Not as dramatic difference as you would expect.

[ugp]

Yeah overall the game is pretty much the same. When they develop for all platforms they have to start with the lowest and scale up so the rest kinda suffer.

[Huntn]

Originally Posted by MacRumorUser

Yes you can save mostly anywhere unless you are on a mission in which case you can only save after the mission is complete.



http://youtu.be/psXF1wpxm8I

Not as dramatic difference as you would expect.

Wow, great dialog, seriously, good voice acting. Actually the xbox version looks a little better. Thanks!

[Rocksterz]

Amazing game, but it contains to many tutorials. So some times i get bore.

[Huntn]

Originally Posted by Rocksterz

Amazing game, but it contains to many tutorials. So some times i get bore.

Tutorials, or dialogs?

[cluthz]

Originally Posted by Huntn

Wow, great dialog, seriously, good voice acting. Actually the xbox version looks a little better. Thanks!

This review clearly shows the difference:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...cry-3-face-off

In the video at about 1 minute mark you can see how lightbulbs glows much more on PC than xbox, and the PC lighting is better in all ways.

Also the consoles does not have real MSAA and no SSAO.
However this won't matter on the MBP as you will not get the full PC experience unless you have a fairly recent NVidia GTX series card or a high end Radeon.

I do believe that you will possibly have a similar experience with an xbox and your MBP, with the options of modding the PC version.

As for my own opinion I feel that FC3 is over hyped. The game is good, but I kinda lost interest about 10 hours in where it kinda felt repetitive, mixed with a awkward inventory system. While the story has some great characters, well at least one, but he is truly amazing, the story is not that spectacular.

I might pick it up again at a later point when there is more mods out and things like inventory is better.

[Huntn]

Originally Posted by cluthz

This review clearly shows the difference:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...cry-3-face-off

In the video at about 1 minute mark you can see how lightbulbs glows much more on PC than xbox, and the PC lighting is better in all ways.

Also the consoles does not have real MSAA and no SSAO.
However this won't matter on the MBP as you will not get the full PC experience unless you have a fairly recent NVidia GTX series card or a high end Radeon.

I do believe that you will possibly have a similar experience with an xbox and your MBP, with the options of modding the PC version.

As for my own opinion I feel that FC3 is over hyped. The game is good, but I kinda lost interest about 10 hours in where it kinda felt repetitive, mixed with a awkward inventory system. While the story has some great characters, well at least one, but he is truly amazing, the story is not that spectacular.

I might pick it up again at a later point when there is more mods out and things like inventory is better.

You've given me something to think about. I remember I petered out on the first Crysis about 10 hours in. Free roaming is fun, but you still have to be engaged.

As far as the video link, the PC display has more subtle effects such as the shadows are more blurry, while the xbox shadows are sharper (less refined), and the sun/lighting is better on the PC, where you can see sunlight through the trees, where on the xbox that effect is mostly missing. However, if they were not side by side, I don't think I'd have noticed. There is a difference, but I see no compelling difference between the xbox and PC displays that would significantly add to or take away from the overall game experience, imo.

[iMacFarlane]

Originally Posted by MacRumorUser

With the 360 you will get 'consistent' performance and you'll spend your time playing the game rather than the games settings.

And BOOM! goes the dynamite.

Exactly how I think now that I've got an XBox after decades of PC gaming.

[cluthz]

Originally Posted by Huntn

You've given me something to think about. I remember I petered out on the first Crysis about 10 hours in. Free roaming is fun, but you still have to be engaged.

As far as the video link, the PC display has more subtle effects such as the shadows are more blurry, while the xbox shadows are sharper (less refined), and the sun/lighting is better on the PC, where you can see sunlight through the trees, where on the xbox that effect is mostly missing. However, if they were not side by side, I don't think I'd have noticed. There is a difference, but I see no compelling difference between the xbox and PC displays that would significantly add to or take away from the overall game experience, imo.

You can tweak blurring effects as you like on PC.

FarCry 3 is a good game, but unless you really want it, I'd suggest picking it up once the price drops, because atm I can come up with many things I rather use $60 on
I got the game from trading some TF2 items I had lying around and I'm not really into TF2 anymore.

[MacRumorUser]

Here they just dropped the price for retail version in most places to €30 for PS3 & Xbox version (which you can trade in later for a few €), compared to €45 retail for pc or €49.99 on steam.

[Huntn]

Originally Posted by MacRumorUser

Here they just dropped the price for retail version in most places to €30 for PS3 & Xbox version (which you can trade in later for a few €), compared to €45 retail for pc or €49.99 on steam.

I'll have to check that locally. Thanks!