The extraneous shit (not that there is any really) is the only thing that is okay about the game (and it really is shit still since there really isn`t much to do at all). Get rid of that, and you have an even shittier shit game.
Nah, less time spent developing cookie-cutter side quests and more time adding main missions would always improve these "sandbox" games. The only side-mission type I liked was "Wanted Dead" which actually highlights a lot of the game's strengths. Had there been more sequences where you were restricted and at a disadvantage, as in those missions, the game would have been way better.
The environment is not that great and there never really was any kind of ecological feel to it. The sharks were more or less cartoon like and the random alligator attacks that you can escape just by hitting the button fast are a joke. Then you have the bow and arrow which is just as powerful if not more powerful than the Rocket Launcher 
. I like how you can shoot a bear in the head with an exploding sniper rifle round and it doesn`t kill it. Just moronic.
While it's still better than the vast majority of FPS games, I agree about the silly quick time events though, and over-powered animals. Again, the challenge level to this game is waaaay off, agreed. Animals should have been quicker to kill and be killed. The bow and arrow was a really fun weapon. Yeah, it's silly how it was as powerful as a sniper rifle, but that's not a huge complaint imo. The other guns should have just been stronger.
The shooting is nothing new or different from any other First Person shooter. What stealth mechanics? The one where you have an unlimited amount of magical rocks in your pockets to throw in order to "distract" the enemy. Oh brother. Yes, the eye-roll again. Or that you can literally walk around the outposts in crouch right in front of everyone and they somehow don`t see you? hahaha
The shooting/moving is very well done. I'm not sure what other FPS gives your character such a wide range of behaviors. You can perform stealth kills of several different varieties (chaining with knives, from above, from below, chaining with guns, explosive suicide bomber), drag bodies off, crouch, slide, run, glide (in the latter half of the game), mantle, look down sights, peek behind cover (very cool mechanic, never seen this before), heal yourself two different ways (with advantages and disadvantages to each), throw rocks for stealth purposes, swim, slash, survey and mark enemies with your camera, and so on. All in all, these abilities make Jason more dynamic than any other FPS character I've played as (though I'm not a fanatic of the genre, I at least know the possibilities here shit on genre watermarks like Half-Life, Halo, and COD).
Yeah, the "marking enemies" was ridiculously overpowered, yeah the enemies were too dumb given your stealth capabilities, yeah your rocks are unlimited, yeah your arsenal was ridiculously overpowered considering your opposition. But these issues, along with almost every other in the game, are symptoms of the same underlying cause: underpowered, under-aggressive enemies. That's why I say the game was "almost great". All the pieces of the puzzle are there, if they just made you actually HAVE to use everything in a skilled manner by making the enemies hit harder and more often, less forgetful, less blind, etc. the game would have undoubtedly been one of the best ever FPS.
Having to build up your abilities by hunting, scavenging, etc. is also a good idea in theory, but a bit poorly executed. These upgrades should have been less "free form" and more structured to coincide with ramp-ups in game difficulty. Should have been fewer in number and correlated with significant in-game events. Again the worst parts of "sandbox game design" rear their head -- spend a couple hours randomly doing rinse-and-repeat shit and end up with all the upgrades
. These improvements I've suggested would have been easier to implement if they spent less time creating random quests ("listen as the guy confesses his wife's been cheating on him" wtf lol), multiplayer modes which no one is going to play, or "extraneous shit" in general, and more time on the meat of the game.
This isn`t a story about an ordinary guy rising up at all. Its a mish mash of the shittiest Grade F movie cliches thrown together in a loose toilet based narrative and flushed around like the piece of fecal excrement it is. The characters are worthless and thin, bro this bro that all taking place with dumb contrived scenario after the next and on and on and on.
The whole thing falls apart because it was never together in the first place. Its really an exercise in monotonous stupidity with nothing really to offer at all.
I disagree. Jason is absolutely an "ordinary guy" cast into do-or-die circumstances, and rises to the challenge throughout the course of the game. I liked that part, at least. I didn't like how he eventually comes to regret all his actions (or, if not, dies as "punishment") in the ending... bunch of dissonant, moralizing bullshit if you ask me.
You raise a lot of valid points, but I think you go too far. Just making the enemies deadlier, more alert, etc. (which is all stuff based, from a programming perspective, on simple parameters that could be modified relatively easily) would have made the game very, very good. Implementing the rest of the ideas I talked about would really polish it off and make it incredible.
