At PAX East this weekend, Ubisoft let the gaming public try out a multiplayer build of Far Cry 3. None of the single-player was available, which was a shame, but the multiplayer itself spoke volumes about the game.

Let's start at the beginning. Getting into a match is about the same as any other FPS. You get into a lobby, wait until the host is ready to play, and off you go. Then you get into the game itself, where the graphics will immediately astound you. Far Cry is set in a jungle environment, and that means that you'll be met with lush green vegetation, sparkling blue waters, and lots and lots of blood flying everywhere. It's easily one of the best looking games I have seen on this generation of gaming hardware. There is truly no good way to describe this in words, but let's just say I was simply amazed by how realistic and vibrant the environments looked.

Once you get past the amazing graphics engine, however, the game falls rather quickly into the same modern day first-person shooter routine. The standard formula is all here, from individual class-based loadouts to aim-down-sights shooting to regenerating health. It's the same FPS formula that we all know and love, only with a jungle theme this time around.

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There were a couple things, though, that set Far Cry 3 apart from the rest of the shooter pack. For one, the kill cam is one of the best I have seen so far. As soon as you die, the game shows you a ghostly overlay of where you were when you died and where your opponents were when they fired the killing shots. It also shows you the exact trajectory of the bullet (or bullets) that killed you. This allows you to see exactly what areas of the map are vulnerable and safe, and where your opponents are coming from. So instead of simply running out into the open and dying over and over again, you can use this kill cam to formulate a new strategy upon your next respawn.

The booth rep also described a "special team ability" which unfortunately wasn't all that well explained. Essentially, the better you do, the more a number increases next to a box on your HUD. Once during the match, you can "cash in" your kills to give your whole team a boost of some sort. Since I was not very good at the game, I never saw my kill count go up very far and the only thing I saw this do was give my team an XP boost. Even so, this was useful, as XP was what determined the winner and loser of each match.

In addition, there is a yellow bar on the side of your HUD which also fills as your team does well in battle. Once again, this was not explained that well to me, but it seemed as if this was essentially building up to killstreak rewards in almost a fighting game "super meter" style. The more kills you get, the more the meter grows. Once the meter reaches an icon, you're able to activate an extremely powerful ability that benefits your entire team. Once again, my team was pretty bad, so we didn't get to see this happen all that much.

I applaud Far Cry 3 for doing something that no other FPS has managed to do well so far: insert a narrative into the multiplayer. After every match, the high scoring player actually gets to choose what happens to the opposing team (or the opposing team's high-scoring player.) In the case of the demo, the high-scoring player was tied up with a bag over his head, and the winners got to choose whether or not they wanted to leave him as a hostage or brutally murder him. They obviously chose to brutally murder him after every match. What ensued was a cutscene that showed each member of the opposing team (complete with username and score floating over their head) kicking and punching our team leader until he was unconscious or dead. It gave an interesting cinematic touch to the story, and the reps at the booth said that gamers will be able to customize their own cinematics. I'm guessing we're going to see a lot of teabagging animations.

Far Cry 3 doesn't re-invent the wheel when it comes to shooters. It's really just the same shooter formula that we have seen before with a few cosmetic tweaks and a different set of environments. That being said, it's still a fun multiplayer game that is easily as enjoyable as the big boys like Call of Duty or Battlefield. If you have any interest in competitive FPSes at all, then you should at least give Far Cry 3 a try when it comes out.

By Angelo M. D'Argenio Contributing Writer Date: April 11, 2012