Ubisoft has never been a company to court controversy, or even political relevance. But for a couple of reasons, I think they might know what they’re doing this time.
Typos: “dyanamic”
“world world”
You made me want to go visit this place.
Typo: it is “Hans Gruber” not “Han Gruber”.
“… next time you to include …”. Extra “to” accidentally added there.
This game was interesting for a while, but then became repetitive, and by the end I was just trying to finish the main story before I got so bored that couldn’t play any more.
Oh, and then the ending was terrible. Really just awful.
great review
you were definately ‘in the zone’ when you wrote this
Wasn’t sure if I should let my kid play it…but we co-op most everything.
So, we played and 4 hours later, after so much fun, high five’d over and over.
Just a blast.
I didn’t, I wasn’t.
Ha! Love this.
Ubisoft producer reading this review: “Thanks… I guess?”
Great article - Thanks!
For a five star review? That’s only going to help those folks get their Metacritic bonuses. Ain’t no “I guess” about it.
Yeah no kidding. Like they’re even going to read the text!
What happens in 205 days?
Great review. Been looking forward to this after reading your work on Far Cry 2. Totally agree that the game deserves a hardcore mode of some sort and a physical FC2-style map and all the other ideas you mention.
I think the prepper stashes are Ubisoft’s best new addition to the series.
Yeah, I really like the stashes. I wish they had made the story missions more like those. Less corridor shooter, more environmental puzzles and skill challenges.
Companions is a great addition to a game.
I like them in the Mass Effect games and Skyrim, I like them here.
The thing I don’t like with FC4 that seems fixed in FC5 is the size of the map. Is possible to get lost in a forest in FC5, while in FC4 it feels like theres roads everywhere.
I’m torn about the game. While I was playing the open world stuff, I’d fully agree, five stars all the way, GOTY material. I also agree with Tom that the main story stuff definitely is pushed on you rather than sitting there waiting for you to stumble on things. I’ve noted elsewhere that I find the whole game a rumination on agency, or lack there of. I think Tom is better able to separate that awareness from the moment to moment gameplay than I am, at least, better than i can now that I’ve finished the game. While playing, I felt pretty much exactly as Tom did.
I think 4 is better overall, when you take into account how all the parts fit together, but 5 is I think more ambitious, and ultimately better art, largely because of the conflicting reactions it engenders due to the weird juxtaposition of its yin and yang bits, and because the main story IMO can actually sustain some critical analysis, unlike, well, any of the other Far Cry stories.
I gotta say, though, that a lot of the banter, interplay between characters, and local color in the game, while admittedly brilliant, sure reads as a ginormous parody to me; the game is poking fun at a whole host of American tropes, not without affection in many cases. But it’s still definitely parody.
It’s really the worst Far Cry since FC1.
This means the skill “tree” is crap. I’m halfway through the game and have all the skills I’ll need. I don’t even open the skill tree tab. This is a failure of game design. See also - Far Cry Primal for an excellent skill tree where you have to agonize over where to spend those precious points because everything is so useful. I vaguely recall the skill tree in FC4 also being better, though not up to FC:P levels.
Skinning two badgers to carry more grenades was dumb, but it was fun. It made me look for badgers to kill, because I wanted, needed to carry more grenades. Or whatever it was. Now? I could not care less about killing anything I don’t need to kill. Because it’s dumb and boring.
The NPCs are annoying and get in the way and always, always give you away if you’re trying to stealth. Even “parking” them half a mile away doesn’t always work as sometimes they’ll still come running. I only use them because I’m playing on Hard and I need them to pick me up all the time because every damn cultist is a Navy Seal Sniper on Hard.
I’m right there with you. I can’t even be bothered to fire it up, but I do want to finish it just so I can reclaim that 60GB of disk space.
Ya, I agree with most of that stuff.
The world starts out cool… but after a few hours, you’ve seen pretty much all there is to see.
Agreed that the skill tree is pretty meh… It generally has very little impact on how you play the game, other than one or two skills.
I generally liked the pets. It was also amusing to have the two redneck guys together, as they’d yell at each other about stupid shit.
The ending though. Jesus. I looked online to see what the “other” ending was, and it’s apparently even worse. So lulz to that.
I enjoyed thef first few prepper stashes, because opening them actually gave me bonus stuff… but after a while, that seems to not happen anymore. The last 90% of stashes I found only gave me money and skill points.
I feel like having some sort of crafting system beyond what they had would make more stuff useful? Like,you can hunt animals and fish, but… why? You get some money for it. I guess you get some skill points the first time you do it. But I found no real motivation to do that stuff most of the time.