[rwp-review id=”0″]
When you first arrive taking the very scenic bus route to the fictional nation Kyrat, you’re welcomed to a nice primitive community, lush wildlife and inevitably fall right into a civil war, among other things. You play as Ajay Ghale, a Kyrati with American citizenship, naturally, who has come to his hometown to scatter the ashes of his departed mother as per her last wish.
As Ajay begins to see, nothing goes to plan right from the very beginning where he encounters the despotic and twisted dictator ruling the land. Pagan Min is a vain man whose arrogance and ostentatious nature know no bounds. He rules with an iron fist but surprisingly has a soft corner for Ajay whom for reasons unknown invites you to dine with him in a civil manner, by putting a bag over your head and looking forward to “tearing shit up”. If his sense of violence doesn’t shake you at first, his dining options certainly will. Monkey heads along with a side of Crab Rangoon await you as you witness how truly cruel Pagan can yet eloquently polite to Ajay, owing to the fact that Ajay’s mother and Pagan were “close”. This is all revealed when Pagan samples some of the ashes from the urn to get some serious nostalgia. All of this follows up to a basic tutorial in a Michael Bay-esque car chase which welcomes you to Kyrat.
“The most chaotic and rational person you’ll encounter in Kyrat.”
Far Cry 4 is a massive game that will take you a fair amount of time, hours, and days even to complete it. If you’re a completionist, you’ve gotten a fine investment. The game does have its basic skeleton laid out from the previous games, the stealth take-downs, the weapon upgrades and the ability to approach the mission in a style that catches your fancy. The key differences are that the choices you make aren’t as obvious as you’d think. When Ajay’s fighting in a civil war, you’re ironically fighting for a rebel group called “The Golden Path” founded by his parents whose current leaders, Amita and Sabal though fighting for the same cause, have diverging interests which ultimately fall on you to choose. The choice you make outlines the story and the missions that follow until the next power struggle. If you’ve played Far Cry 3 you’re going to see some coincidences which involve a flamethrower and burning drug fields.
“Trust C4 to save your life on many occasions”
Far Cry has always been about thrilling and challenging you whenever you play it and in the Himalayas, there’s plenty of that. You can stealthily attack an outpost using your knife and silencers or you can ride an elephant and wield a rocket launchers and charge with all guns blazing. It’s rather obvious to see which one you’ll enjoy more. The map is vast and navigating it will take you some time, luckily solved with the introduction of gyrocopters which you can conveniently attack from a great height, by either dropping a grenade or throwing bait to lure predators to the area which you’ll realize wasn’t the best idea if you’re not prepared to deal with a honey badger that can be a bullet sponge and kill you.
“A simple, mission. what could possibly go wrong?”
“This mission is totally optional but it means you forego an important upgrade, It’s a nice touch how the game tries to not take itself too seriously.”
“They were right, this honey badger is the definition of evil.”
“Everyone and everything in Kyrat wants to kill you.”
In the context of sounding overly political, it seems Ajay plays the part of “the American guy who saves the town” and everything depends on him but the plot itself doesn’t go more into developing the characters beyond their primary roles.
With all of these offerings to make you feel chaotic, Far Cry won’t give you the impression this is any easy but it balances it out with the tools at your disposal. If the AI companions seem to be always getting killed, you can call in a friend online to help you to deal with the dangers of Kyrat in way that makes you feel like you’re in a Rambo movie. You can even equip a bow with rocket head arrow tips to go with that. Far Cry 4 will prepare you for a long night in and the games open sandbox will give you plenty to do, often repeatedly. When you liberate an outpost, the game suddenly tells you it’s under attack again, giving you a chance to gain experience points. If you fail to reach in time, you’re told you failed though this leaves little consequence.
“Say hello to the Noisy Cricket (Men In Black reference for those who don’t get it)”
On the list of new features include, the grappling hook for you to scale the mountains and the blessed autodrive feature which allows you to drive automatically and wield a side arm so you can attack enemies during drive-bys. It’s not the perfect method as you’ll learn that Far Cry’s open world can sometimes complicate things for you. I experienced several moments of this where I encountered the games’ cursed animal predator that kept ruining missions for me. Black Eagles are now in the game and they can attack you from anywhere, anytime especially if you’re in the open. In a stealth mission, I had to sneak up on a soldier and nearly gotten it but it was all ruined when an eagle came from behind and the soldier resumed to attack me and the bird instead. It’s moments like these that make you wonder how imperfect the sandbox is and that’s not necessarily a bad thing but all of this immersion into the game leaves out the important factor of the story which sadly pales in comparison.
“Well-developed sandbox”
In the context of sounding overly political, it seems Ajay plays the part of “the American guy who saves the town” and everything depends on him but the plot itself doesn’t go more into developing the characters beyond their primary roles. The best character is undeniably the antagonist, the same we saw with Far Cry 3. Brilliantly voiced by Pagan Min, he’s missing through most of the game and the campaign missions often run into problems especially with the same open ended sandbox like I previously mentioned. Freeing radio towers means you have a freedom fighter have his own talk show on the radio and I preferred to ride an elephant at a slower pace if it meant avoiding the verbal drivel that kept playing repeatedly.
“When you’re not busy trying to not get killed in Kyrat, take a moment to enjoy the Himalayas, say hello to the townspeople and earn some karma.”
Far Cry 4 is sensational in every way but in ways that you’ve already seen before. It, like the area you play in, is rough around the edges and not in the way you would have expected it to be since it’s the story that I find issue in. Far Cry is visually gorgeous and since optimized with Nvidia, it naturally performs better but AMD users shouldn’t face any striking issues. Nvidia users however will be able to take full advantage of this, especially with newer cards and you’ll be able to see Kyrat the way it was intended to be seen, there are patches out currently that are continuing to optimize it better. A lot of news has surround how Ubisoft has worked their games and there are striking coincidences referencing Assassin’s Creed since many of the gameplay elements in Far Cry have obviously been used before, they still make great games but they are showing their age and it won’t be long before we have another Far Cry on our hands soon.
P.S There are several endings you can take on this game, two of which aren’t quite obvious at the beginning. It’s worth mentioning that this game can technically be completed in just under fifteen minutes (spoiler alert) , if you stick around without doing anything in the initial prologue of the story. That approach will definitely save you the trouble of a week’s worth of gameplay and reminding you that all you had to do was listen.
