Metareview: Far Cry 3

Far Cry 3 concludes the 2012 holiday review season for big budget games on a high note. Beyond explaining the game's excellence, our review of Far Cry 3 also held a valuable life lesson: "Goats ... are not to be trusted."

• Eurogamer (100/100): "Far Cry 3 is all the best things about open-world gaming. It's a glorious anecdote factory, where you manufacture brilliant new memories every time you wake up in a safehouse and head out into the jungle. ... And it always lets you play, but it also controls the tempo - sometimes a little heavy-handedly, but always with good intentions."

• Gamespot (90/100): "Stretches of unpredictable exploration and free-form hunting alternate with challenging pirate confrontations, sometimes culminating with a rocket blast to the helicopter hounding you from above. This is an ambitious and finely tuned adventure that gets better and better as you play."

• Game Informer (90/100): "After two remarkable but uneven offerings, Far Cry finally pulls everything together in the third installment. The diverse open-world action, compelling story, and an alluring environment that begs exploration are all high water marks for the series. This is an island adventure all shooter fans should experience. "

• IGN (90/100): "Far Cry 3 is important for the same reason as Far Cry 2. It's a shooter that considers shooters thoughtfully, both in the way they're designed and the way we play them, and then asks us to do the same. Should massacring hundreds be a great way to entertain ourselves? Maybe not. But it is. "

• Destructoid (80/100): "While riddled with minor gripes, there is no one overwhelming, glaring fault that threatens to drag the whole experience down. With the third installment in the Far Cry series, Ubisoft has managed to deliver a game that provides not one, not two, but three well-crafted experiences that may vary in terms of longevity but all manage to be of uniform quality."