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There are lots of things to celebrate in Far Cry 3, Ubisoft's best game since Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, but the thing I keep coming back to is Rook Island itself. There's often a lot of unremarkable space in open-world shooters, but this vast, mountainous patch of fictional grass and rock in the middle of the Pacific has been created by people who believe that every inch is important, and who have refused to compromise or sculpt any part of it with less than an artist's attention to detail.There are 18 radio towers to scale as you make your way through the game, each of which highlights new objectives on your map and opens up new weapons to buy at local shops, and each tower is a unique first-person climbing challenge - a peaceful ascent through a creaking spiral of steel that's fraying at the edges, revealing beautiful panoramic views before sending you back down to earth on a thrilling zipline.
There are over 30 enemy outposts to stalk and reclaim, each of which gives you a new safehouse and reduces enemy influence and presence in the surrounding area, and while there's some familiarity in layout, each is woven carefully into its surroundings - recessed into the foot of a mountain surrounded by jungle, perhaps, or swaddled in corrugated iron at the top of a hill, or perched on a rock at the edge of a wide beach approach.
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