Far Cry 5 - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Far Cry 5 is my least favorite Far Cry experience to date. And as someone that loooooved the third and fourth entries in the series, this was a challenging conclusion to reach. For a while, I just didn't believe it. I wondered if I was overanalyzing the game, or unfairly comparing it to its predecessors, or perhaps I was always sitting down to play it while in a foul mood. But after finishing the campaign twice, all roads loop back to this dour epiphany: Far Cry 5 has exhausted what made the series exciting for me.

A major part of that is honestly due to fatigue—Far Cry really hasn't changed the much since the third game. Sure, the newest installment gives you allies and lets you progress through its narrative in any order you want, but beyond that? Everything else is vividly familiar. There are outposts to infiltrate, side-missions that prioritize action over caution, cutscenes where villains drill their worldview into you, perk trees to navigate, and a plethora of collectibles to gather. There's barely a noticeable change in the weaponry or enemies either; every aspect remains proudly Far Cry, right down to the game's narrative rebuking you with "what if YOU'RE the bad guy?!"

In a way, it's very comforting. There are still hundreds of delightful moments that will sneak up on you, like say, a boat ramming into you while you're fishing, or a panicking pedestrian slipping into a vehicle you've rigged to explode. Those unscripted bits never failed to put a smile on my face, but Far Cry 5 tries to up the ante by flooding the world map with patrolling goons. Whenever you snipe an enemy driver with your bow, you'll barely have time to savor that unlikely headshot, as more enemies are always close behind. And antagonizing the regional leaders just makes the game worse, as limitless aircraft get called in to deal with you—and I have no damn clue how someone could enjoy fighting over a dozen planes with a measly assault rifle.

Due to the bolstered number of enemy vehicles, I had to keep a rocket launcher with me for a majority of the game, which only left me with two primary weapons to switch between—a significant step down from Far Cry 3's four weapon slots. While dealing with the increased enemy forces was a huge source of sourness, what also dampened my enthusiasm was the lack of intrigue into the world. Part of this may be due to the fact that Hope County is a less exotic locale to pick, but I also didn't feel any particular attachment to the companions or NPCs (besides the animals). And don't get me wrong, the visuals are downright breathtaking at times (especially when the sunlight drips through the trees), but the "wow" factor that carried the other games just wasn't here.

Which finally brings me to the narrative. On its surface, Far Cry 5 looks primed to sink its fangs into the rural American culture, ready to offer a scathing critique on the influence of religion in the region. Except that it doesn't really do that. And nor does it offer any kind of in-depth critique on the lifestyles of a Northwestern American. If anything, the game is strangely patriotic, content to paint Hope County as a land filled with hardworking, meat-loving Americans that merely want to see the red-white-and-blue fluttering high in the sky. Sure, you encounter some crass personalities (like Hurk Drubman Sr.), but almost everyone acts as a kind of caricature of an American persona, rather than an incisive target of satire. And seeing as the series has always been eager to paint your allies as both incompetent and monstrous, its bizarre that Far Cry 5 completely shies away from this approach.

Even the game's central antagonists did little to mesmerize me. Joseph Seed is an admittedly fresh take on the "madman that speaks the truth" trope that the series is known for, but his stoic, calm demeanor belies the shallowness of his words. I mean sure, Far Cry 5 does build up to a nice twist at its close, but the game barely says anything about the central force in the land: Project at Eden's Gate. The PEGgies are not that creepy, nor are they sympathetic, and their propensity for brainwashing makes them less interesting than mere mercenaries. The performances for each of the major villains is excellent, but the material itself leaves you with very little to ponder—like with the Americana aspect of the game, the use of a Christian cult felt superficial and absentminded. It's almost as though Ubisoft sought not to step on any sensitive toes, so they opted to use a cartoonishly evil cult in an exaggerated, toothless depiction of rural America.

There's a dramatic irony in the fact that what led me to the Far Cry series was its innovative and multiplicitous approach to combat. I thought it was so cool how you could go in with guns blazing, or sneak through a facility planting bombs, or snipe your opposition from a far-off mountain ledge. But after liberating what must be over 100 bases by now, the Far Cry series has begun to feel formulaic. I know to take out the snipers first, then silently take down the heavies, and to throw remote explosives onto any enemy reinforcements that show up. The action is still fun, but each stronghold offensive felt more and more like I was checking items off a list, instead of proving my guerrilla mastery. And compounded by the lack of a strong central plot, I don't know if this fault lies squarely on Far Cry 5's shoulders, or if I'm simply yearning for something new.

Far Cry 4 - Thoughts

[contains spoilers]

Far Cry 3 was easily one of my favorite games that I played last year. It's funny looking back on it—after just the first hour with Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, I was ready to give up on the series, whereas after the final hour of third installment, all I wanted to do was sing its praises to high heaven. Therefore playing Far Cry 4 was an absolute no-brainer; I was more than happy to hop back into Ubisoft's hostile world of improv madness, bow and C4 in hand. While the gameplay is not nearly as fresh as it was in 3, the younger Indian sibling improves upon nearly everything else—visuals, content, and story have been refined to create the perfect FPS adventure romp.

The gameplay in the Far Cry series is a well-established formula by this point, and Far Cry 4 doesn't stray far from the ruleset. This can be disappointing if the previous game didn't grab you, but I was personally thrilled to start from square one and amass my armaments and abilities once again. The world feels a bit bigger this time around, and while Kyrat is missing the seawater and tropical mood of the Rook Islands, it comes with its own (gorgeous!) mountainous landscape, riddled with native mystique and an absurd amount of quests. There's racing, sniping, hostage saving, bomb defusing, animal hunting, fortress-taking, and poster-burning, and none of these even advance the main story! Plus, despite the increase in quantity, the quality thankfully remains more or less the same (though many missions will blur together).

The most significantly change in gameplay for me came from the minor adjustment to your loadout—one of your four slots is now reserved for a sidearm, intended to be used during vehicle sections. My beloved tetralogy in Far Cry 3 was the bow, sniper rifle, shotgun, and assault rifle; I begrudgingly had to change up my arsenal, but it did lead me to experiment around with more weapons. I stuck closely to the sawed-off shotgun as my sidearm for a while but towards the end of the game I became enamored with the portable grenade launcher and various LMGs. Nothing wound up topping the bow however, as that trusty tool still remains the most invigorating to use when silently conquering an outpost (the sniper rifle makes the game child's play, even on the hardest difficulty). Most of my other gameplay insights have already been covered in the Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon entries, so I'll get on to (what I feel) is one of the most important things Far Cry 4 gets right—the story.

Honestly, the narrative was better than it had any right to be. I've voiced my disdain for Far Cry 3 quite extensively; the indelible Vaas deserved more exploration than he got before his untimely demise. The main antagonist of Far Cry 4—Pagan Min—is cut from the same luny cloth that Vaas is, but lacks the same level of appeal... at first. After the wild intro, Pagan Min takes a back seat to your two questionable allies in the game, Sabal and Amita, as the plot attempts to explore the rough paths one must take to ensure the success of a revolution in a war-torn country. Since both of the Golden Path leaders have different visions on how to achieve this (old vs. new), whomever you side with will determine the outcome of Kyrat in a way that's purposely ambiguous.

But this isn't the interesting decision in the game (well, it can be, but it feels a bit too contrived for me). At the end of the game you're given a choice of whether to kill Pagan Min or not—a decision that would be a no brainer to most players. Yet the kicker of the whole shebang is that Pagan Min does nothing to fault you. Sure, he's the leader of an army of people willing to shoot your head off the moment they smell your American cologne, but while you're killing his lieutenants, stealing his treasures, and smashing his idols, all he tries to do is plead with you over the radio to come to an understanding. The guy has done some obviously heinous things since he was instated, but he's never done anything to personally attack you. When I walked into the final encounter I was fully expecting a QTE shootout with him after what I've done, but instead the two of us just sat down to dinner and he asked me to rethink my choices.

Far Cry 4 is brilliant because it succeeded at the subtle meta-commentary that Far Cry 3 struggled with. The ultimate question posed to the puppeteer behind Jason Brody was, "are you trying to play this game realistically or do you just enjoy killing dudes?", but it was abandoned during the Hoyt arc until a hasty revisit at the end. Here, its presence is finely woven into the story. The first (and only) blurb of cutscene text is from your mother telling you where to lay her ashes to rest, and as soon as Pagan Min captures Ajay, the player's very first instinct is to go out and blow stuff up. So when the end of the game comes around and Min poses the initial task yet again—will you do what you came here to do or continue to be a blood-thirsty maniac?—the player is given Far Cry 3's dilemma without the hamminess of slice your girlfriend's throat. Pagan Min is an evil eccentric but would having Sabal or Amita in command be entirely different? The decision is arguably arbitrary but what's more important is whether or not the player feels they have a responsibility to honor their mother as Ajay would; shooting Min brings the player no closer to Lakshmana than at the very beginning of the game, but it instead satiates this weird, unnecessary bloodlust that he/she revels in throughout the entire journey (seriously, watching bodies ragdoll out of an exploding vehicle is pretty entertaining). I just found it so fascinating that the game handed you essentially one objective to keep in mind from the start, but by its closing you're left to decide if you even care what the game (or any game!) tells you to do.

Most of the plot threads outside of the main path are cute, but not nearly as interesting. Hurk and the stoner twins get too much screen time considering how shallow their characters are, whereas I would've liked to hear more from dialogue Noore and De Pleur (I had an especially strange moral dilemma regarding whether to kill Noore or not, and I wish I read more about her character other than her various perfectionist demands regarding the arena). Rabi Ray Rana is the most affable out of the entire cast and I enjoyed piecing together The Goat notes, though it's disappointing that that thread didn't lead anywhere. I was trying to get a better understanding of just who or what The Goat was, at times wondering if we were perhaps the same person, but by the last mask it seemed as though it was nothing more than another checkmark collectible. These activities, like with the holy land segments and drug trips, were interesting diversions that added a little more color to the world at least.

The biggest fault I can find with the game is that it is too similar to its previous title; Far Cry 4 lies somewhere between an expansion pack and a true sequel, retreading ground with a similar core theme and symmetrical gameplay. I can discredit the game for that, but the problem is that it's so much fun that the repetition hardly becomes a bore due to the numerous ways you can go about playing it. The story being as thoughtful and interesting as it was is precisely what I wanted from a sequel to 3, and though I was lukewarm on the plot during the outset I hold no shame in thinking it's one of the best AAA tales of 2014 along with Wolfenstein: The New Order. I think if Far Cry 5 fails to change things up I'll likely burn out on the series (especially since the games contain so much content to wade through), but so far Far Cry 4 hits all the right notes and feels like the definitive experience.

Far Cry 3 - Thoughts

[contains spoilers]

After cleaning up the neon tropics of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon I immediately jumped into Far Cry 3, salivating for some more open world mayhem. I was stoked to run through a game that was bigger and more customizable than Blood Dragon's, eager to pick up my bow and get back to tearing the local regime a new one. Though a handful of the mechanics were quite different (there's a perk tree!), I felt right at home with a lot of it—even more than I did in its nostalgic cousin. And 40 hours later, what conclusion have I drawn after raiding every base and completing every side mission?

Far Cry 3 is a great game.

Most of my adoration for the series was pontificated on in my Blood Dragon review, but I'll briefly recap here—Far Cry is fantastic because it allows you to approach its world more or less however you want. When encroaching on enemy territory, you can snipe the guards from afar, plant mines along their patrol routes, go in loud with the shotgun, or just avoid the confrontation altogether (and more!). The sheer variety offered in combat keeps the game constantly entertaining; no matter what position you find yourself in, there's always a multitude of ways you can carve through it. Improv planning is a key component too, considering that enemies will fight with both the wildlife and resistance, leading to some unexpected interruptions in your best laid plans. But most importantly, the game rewards you for clever thinking with (besides XP) the sheer gratification that you're the king of this domain—this island is your home, and you are the most dangerous man on it.

You begin your journey to the top by being woefully underpowered, but soon you'll have a grip on the layout of the land, driving across mountains and hunting down wild animals. The fauna is far more valuable here than in Blood Dragon since you need their hides to craft better goodie pouches (with a reasonable number of pelts required), and some of the side missions throw you into pretty tricky situations (I played on the hardest difficulty so having an assortment of ability-boosting syringes on hand definitely helped). As you level up you can choose which skills you want to hone in on, though a few of became useless by the end of the game (why would you want improved pistol accuracy or to use a turret longer?). In the arms department there's a solid selection of weapons to choose from, and you'll definitely find favorites amongst the lot (like the absurdly dangerous Z93 with its sound suppressor attachment).

After I finished the main campaign I continued to explore the lush emerald paradise, yearning to test my skills further. The best parts of the game are some of the little moments you'll experience between destinations, like attempting to drive up a hill that is clearly not meant for vehicles and making long distance shots with explosive arrows. Perhaps because I enjoy the gameplay so much I'm more easily sucked into the world, but I feel that the Rook Islands are a fantastic, gorgeous setting that's never boring to run around in, striking a great balance between seaside coves and dense woods. Exploring this world is similar to that in an Elder Scrolls game, except it lacks the plentiful dialogue and slow pace, letting you mess around with the locale in a delightfully meandering-yet-meaningful way.

The game is fantastic but it isn't perfect. Like with Blood Dragon it falls apart when the story takes the wheel, unable to escape from becoming a disappointment by the end. I'm going to speak at lengths about the plot ahead, but keep in mind that the gameplay and visuals are so lively, elegant, and engaging that Jason Brody's adventure could've had no story at all and it still would be one of my favorite shooters.

The most obvious bummer is the loss of Vaas two-thirds through the campaign, resulting in Hoyt's ascension to the role of antagonist. The kingpin doesn't remain nearly as menacing as the pirate though, despite how often the game tried to peg him as such; Vaas commanded so much attention every time he was on screen while Hoyt only seemed able to mimic his creativity in somewhat boring, unconvincing ways. The plot shines with brilliance in a couple moments (like the dark nod towards Keith's sexual abuse and the infamous definition of insanity talk), but it does little to expand or develop those threads. Near the end, the game frantically chucks Alice in Wonderland quotes at the player in a Deadlight-esque attempt to add another layer of depth to the story, though all it amounts to is a simple "do you like killing dudes in the jungle or do you wanna go back to your inane life?". Honestly it's an intriguing question to ask (since it's essentially "do you like being a hyperactive killer in games or are you trying to play them realistically?"), but Far Cry 3 only touches upon this critique briefly in its cutscenes, instead being more concerned with scripted sequences and senselessly violent twists.

There's a myriad of other strange design decisions you'll wade through as well, consisting of missions that feel like bloated filler in a game already packed with content. All three expeditions to retrieve the golden compass pieces involve cinematic escapes that become terribly predictable, and the magical item is never seen again after Buck's death. Similarly, the entire Privateer's infiltration feels utterly pointless—you've spent the better half of the game shooting anyone that gets in your way, but suddenly it becomes best to curry favor with the bastard you're trying to kill? There's even a moment where you meet Hoyt face to face but can't do anything other than beat up your own brother in order to appease him (which, considering how bombastic the end of the game gets, feels very senseless). From a gameplay standpoint the last handful of missions are pretty abysmal as you go from turret section to turret section, throwing out stealth and forcing you to play it as a straight-up first person shooter. There were admittedly good ideas in the Privateer chapter, like the mission where you're allowed to walk around the enemy base and plan out your method of attack from within, but otherwise it largely feels like an insult after the great finale to Vaas' arc. At least Sam Becker was mildly entertaining, even if the only purpose his death served was just to shock the player.

If you jump into the jungle looking to write your own tales rather than listen to the ones told to you, the wilds of Far Cry 3 are certainly worth your time. I played it almost obsessively the week I bought it, enthralled the entire time by the beauty and massiveness of it all, the lows of the experience being overcast by the mountainous highs. I lost track of how many small, wild, unscripted encounters impressed me, and had a blast succeeding in my undetected base captures (in one of them I freed a bear to help me fight back against its captors, but then had to protect the bear from my allies in the resistance as they attempted to down it—all the while trying not to get mauled myself!). I was glad the game was everything I hoped for and more, and I'm genuinely curious if the other games in the series will outdo the precedent that Far Cry 3 has set.

I suspect if the writing is stronger, they just might.
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Logo obtained from: hdwallphotos.com

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon - Thoughts

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was the first Far Cry game I played, as strange as that may sound. During the Steam Summer Sale I saw it priced low and was hungry for a light-hearted FPS that I could finish in a handful of hours. The prospect of running around an open island to do primarily whatever I wanted was perhaps the biggest selling point of the series to me, and I reasoned that this little chunk of stylized DLC could handle that fix. Though the opening hour was somewhat underwhelming, once I got into the groove of the game I was thoroughly impressed—rare few shooters can compare to the sense of satisfaction you get when everything goes right during a mission.

First though, I'll touch upon the most notable aspect of this content—the distinctive 1980's aesthetic.

Boiled down, Blood Dragon contains a superb idea—take an intentionally niche and goofy remembrance of a single decade and mix it with the AAA production of a Ubisoft franchise, baking it until it forms bite-sized DLC. Thankfully the game is a standalone entry so people apathetic towards Far Cry 3's plot and setting can jump right into the neon paradise (though at its core it remains a tropical island entrenched in gorilla warfare). There's a variety of stupidly awesome details added to the game to accentuate the mood: the main character is a cyborg equipped with glowing shurikens, enemy mobs speak in bitcrushed tones and are decked out in futuristic biker gear, and there's wild Tyrannosaurus-like beasts called "dragons" that fire explosive optical lasers. One of my favorite flourishes is the way the the screen shakes and the visuals become chromatically distorted when the shotgun fires, giving the weapon a really satisfying kick (and the reload animation for each armament is hilariously flashy).

Despite the noteworthy effort the designers and animators put into making the game as radical as possible, Blood Dragon doesn't always hit its mark. This problem is exemplified best during the cutscenes—long discourses that slow down the action for lengths at a time, containing only a few good laughs here and there. I think the core issue is that the dialogue aims for a serious satire that comes across as mostly haphazard, rather than a bombastic display that hits you fast and hard with dumb 80's jokes. If you watch the opening cutscene I think it'll give you a good idea of what I mean, and how the writing drains the fun out of the ridiculous premise.

But the greatest offender is the opening tutorials—they're given as splash screens of text accompanied by a robotic voice over, which pokes fun at the hand-holdy nature of modern games but unfortunately succumbs to its own mockery by putting you through an extremely boring process. When I started the game I just wanted to run around a wreak havoc, and the length of the first few tasks alone, combined with the plodding pace, linearity, and constant reminders on "how to do side missions and buy stuff" made me question my purchase... but luckily my fears were alleviated.

When the game gets going, it really hits the spot. Perhaps Blood Dragon's greatest appeal is the variability in the encounters; there were a few times where I would jump into enemy territory and the operation would go terribly wrong, forcing me to camp a doorway and mow through any living creature that takes one wrong step across my shotgun-guarded rubicon. After the carnage settled and I could explore the base freely, I realized how many options I had open to me before they had all been squandered on a noisy approach: perhaps I could've slid in via a cable overhead, or lured the nearby dragon in for a frantic feast, or taken an underground path to slowly chip away at my opponents one by one from the shadows. This is especially prevalent during the main missions, where entire concrete playgrounds can be wasted if you don't proceed patiently.

Of course the mechanics are far from perfect—there's a handful of irksome design choices, like certain hostage rescue assignments where enemies tightly patrol an open area, meaning stealth becomes far less viable than running in guns blazing. This is further compounded by the inability to quietly take out heavy troops until you reach a certain level, meaning you have to use loud, lethal force to subdue them (unless you enjoy plunking arrows playfully against their armor). Other issues are small but remain prevalent, like the pointlessness of the island's non-dragon wildlife and the cost of supplies often outgrossing the reward you get at the end of each mission. All of the main missions are pretty long too, so if your game crashes mid-level (as it happened once in my case), expect to spend another twenty minutes or so trekking over familiar territory just to get to the spot you were previously at.

Luckily the game is so much fun that I didn't mind redoing most missions from scratch; each replay provided an opportunity to make sure I performed flawlessly this time around. One of my favorite memories was during the northwest base infiltration, where I sniped the pilot of a standing helicopter only to draw everyone in the compound over to that position. I snuck around the back and stabbed a guard, which was yet another reckless move on my behalf as it caught the attention of his nearby cohort. I planted a mine beside the corpse as I backed out the door and once it triggered on his curious companion, three more enemies were pulled into the corridor. A quick toss of C-4 and an instant detonation later, the base was all but taken care of—and no one knew where I was the entire time. It's these situations, where your impromptu reactions are put to the test during a sudden kink in the plan, that feel so fulfilling, as your success is entirely due to your crafty thinking and not merely left up to some lame QTE that you passively mashed X through. Essentially, it went well because you played well.

Early on it was quite apparent that I wasn't interested in what the story had to offer; the lively locale was my true calling. I drew much entertainment from the adaptive insanity that ensued as I attempted to save each hostage and dismantle every stronghold. Player creativity in each situation isn't just Blood Dragon's greatest strength from what I gathered, but the Far Cry series itself. In that sense I came to understand the draw of the franchise, and I decided to purchase Far Cry 3 after the credits rolled... but not before the techno resort was free of biker mooks. Boy howdy it was one hell of a vacation while it lasted.
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Logo obtained from: bloody-disgusting.com