In the first hour of Far Cry New Dawn, an NPC told me a rumor that dogs were being bred on a nearby hillside, and that they were being raised for food by the Highwaymen. Being a dog-lover, and it being right in the middle of my path towards the next story mission, I decided to go there immediately. As I pulled up on an ATV, my gun-for-hire, Carmina Rye holding on to my back, I heard the growing sound of Die Antwoord’s pulsating heavy club beats.
I don’t even think it’s that particularly brutal. She’s expressing what a lot of people feel about this franchise, and that it’s just so exhausting now being the same game over and over…
I am curious to hear more takes about the twins though. From reviews, some seem to think they’re awful, and some seem to think they’re a sort of reaction to the ‘destiny’ plotting of Far Cry 5. They answer destiny with sheer, unrelenting chaos, which is what Far Cry has been STRIVING to be about, hasn’t it?
I dunno, I probably won’t pick this up, but I am really curious when games try and speak on the medium. I’m especially interested when they go after their own game franchise, which Heather Alexandra seems to imply in her review.
I’m curious about the spoilers for this game to see if should be merely annoyed and disinterested in this game or outright furious at it. Is it just stupidly flirting with fascist ideals like most bad Ubisoft games or does it go all the way down into it?
Far Cry is either going to need to succeed in a surprising, unconventional way, or fail in a surprising, unconventional way for me to even consider picking it up, after the unrelentingly mediocre failure of Far Cry 5.
I was there for a fascinating failure. I entered that experience expecting, even hoping it would fail. Sometimes, interesting is more compelling than good. After dipping out a quarter of the way through that game, I just don’t have space or time in my life for anything less than spectacular from this series, on either end of the spectrum. Unfortunately, it sounds like this one is too close to center, yet again.
For all it’s posturing about, “Hey asshole, you’re in a video game… Why are you playing a video game and committing virtual violence, you freak?!” Far Cry really needs have a come to Jesus moment and realize, “Oh… Maybe it’s because I’m making EVERYTHING in this world so gameified.”
I mean, EVERY Far Cry is like this… A lot of Ubisoft titles are.
“Hey, you spotted this dude with your camera, so he’s going to be visible forever. Cool right?”
“Noooo… That doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh, well, you can turn it off.”
“But you built your whole game around these systems… All these systems which keep hammering to me that I’m playing a VIDEO GAME. Why don’t you take some risks and strip me of that power from the get go?”
I feel like I repeated this ad nauseam on this website, but I think Far Cry needs to take some serious lessons from the STALKER series. Hey, instead of having a set number of enemy camps that ALWAYS have black smoke rising from the camps you ‘need to clear,’ hoo about you surprise me by having abandoned camps, or camps that were once abandoned and have since had bandits move in, or perhaps have a camp with bandits hiding in wait for a trap, OR ANYTHING ELSE but the checkbox normalcy I’m so fucking tired of.
Hey, if you want to have choices matter in your games, like every antagonist likes to spout out about how ‘you’re the problem all along,’ why not give me a dialogue wheel? Why not ACTUALLY let me have some choice instead of just copy pasting the narrative surprise of Bioshock over and over again.
Bit of an irrelevant question here but is Far Cry 5 a game worth buying? I never played the Far Cry series before so I’m curious to know what people here who played it think of the game. I heard the political statements they try to make is pretty lackluster, but other than that I don’t know much
There’s some interesting parts to it but there’s a lot of pieces of the gameplay I don’t like, it feels like the game’s insecure and wants to make sure you don’t get bored so it throws shit at you. Things like the stashes are interesting, though, and I think it’s gorgeous. I dunno if the DLC’s turned out alright or not. I really like that it has a level editor in it, however limited it may be.
Honestly you can just play most any major Ubisoft release these days and get a similar experience mechanically. The least politically gross of them is probably Watch Dogs 2, which does have some novelty through the hacking and robot control mechanics. I’ve also heard more positive than negative things when it came to 4, at lest compared to 3 and 5 being thematic disasters (I don’t think 2 is a great game to play for traditional big budget fun, more for its exploration of nihilism in the most honest way the franchise has ever done, and 1 is just a boring piece of nothing made mainly to be a tech demo).
Gonna chime in here and say AC:Origins is probably the best a Ubi game has gotten in terms of its politics. Vehemently anti-authoritarian, connects colonialism to a timeline of violence stretching back to the ancient era, genuinely cares about and respects the people and culture of the setting.
The Egyptian one. AC: Odyssey seems like it abandoned the respect and curiousity for the culture in favour of a wacky swords-n-sandles epic. Origins takes its politics very seriously, especially when showing how the Egyptians are being both culturally and economically colonised by the Greeks, who are in turn being militarily subjugated by the Romans. It’s all linked to timeline of exploitation that the game explicitly says is the result of power being accumulated by a handful of individuals.
Far Cry 5 is not worth buying, IMO. Even as a first time player of the franchise it just makes some weird decisions in terms of progression and world interaction that are straight up bad. Thats not even beginning to mention how terrible the story is in that game.
For modern Far Cry, FC4 is probably your best bet. 3 impressed people at the time for its world and such but yo that game is a colonialist wankfest its intolerable. 4 is to a degree, but your protagonist is native to the fictonal hymilayan country youre trapsing around, and it at least tries to tell a story revolving around different persepctives on a the creation of a post-revolution state which is, lets say, preferable to the white saviorism in 3. It was a step in the right direction.
2 is the most interesting (and unforgiving) of the series but maybe doesnt hold up in terms of gameplay.
I will agree with JKDarkside though and say that if youre going to play an open world game by Ubisoft go with Watch_Dogs 2. Its the most fun Ive had with that formula of game, enjoyed the story quite a bit and had a tonne of fun with the various tools that dont just amount to pointing a pistol at someone and murdering them.
If you want to try a far cry game you’re looking at either 3, 4, or blood dragon. The far cry games have pretty forgettable stories in general but are good at being open world shooty sandboxes, 5 decided what if we made the story even worse and then forcibly interrupted the open world bits to make you play through it even if you’re 1000 ft up in a helicopter
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll look into it but right now I’m pretty busy with school so I’m not sure if I have time to play those games right now. I’ll keep Far Cry 2, 3, and 4 in mind and hopefully have the time to play them
My vote: If you want something fun that actually seems to have a heart to it, I would advocate FC4. I don’t know what it says about me given it’s still very much An Ubisoft Game, but I dug some real pathos out of it and liked what they did with the main character, Ajay, and how he was forced to navigate his own family history, and it was really good. Also Troy Baker eats all the scenery he possibly can, and it’s entertaining.
