Delivers well enough on the Far Cry experience but misses the mark in odd ways. In game design less is usually more, moments where we lose an ability are often even better than moments where we gain one and we paradoxically work towards the "best" gear even though once we attain it the game becomes too easy to remain compelling.
Within an hour of starting Far Cry 5 you'll have a high-powered silenced sniper rifle, a helicopter and companion soldiers to order around. You'll be able to handily rampage virtually any outpost on the map. And you only get more overpowered from there.
Not that it isn't fun but by throwing all the treats at you from the get-go the game very quickly plateaus and left me wondering what I'm aiming for, not in the overall story but in the hour-to-hour gameplay loop. There's an arsenal of weapons and vehicles to unlock, but what is the point of pistol two of five when you get handed ideal weapons for the job right off the bat, or unlocking one of a dozen cars when you can get choppers immediately (and if you run out there's an easily unlocked companion that always spawns with one).
Of course then the answer is to place artificial limits on yourself, I'd give myself an arbitrary loadout for each outpost as it went on, but while this kind of freedom is nice it became a necessity here to maintain my interest rather than just a bonus, and to be honest it's just not as good as the game itself having cleverly integrated carrots-on-sticks.
It would nearly make for a good military larp platform via modding if the AI weren't so basic. Which leads me to the Arcade mode, a particular disappointment as someone who sank many hours into Far Cry 2's map maker back in the day and longed for the tools to make single player-levels with it. The official maps are boring enough and the player-made ones are truly worthless. I tried a generous amount of levels and none had any bite. Blame it on the oddly limited feeling gameplay options or an insufficient algorithm to filter up the good ones (probably both).
The perk tree implementation feels like an afterthought and completely disconnected from your character, where FC3 in paricular had it feel like a natural parallel to your character getting more dangerous. In addition the balancing issues pop up here again, many abilities I loved in previous entries feel pointless by the time they're unlockable compared to the equipment you'll have. Even removing trees and making any perk selectable from the start doesn't get around it.
Story-wise the moral philosophizing, the odd times it pops up, hits on ideas worth contemplating but never awards them much depth. There's a nice lineup of villainous eccentrics, but all four of them feel yet again like a poor impression of FC3's Vaas. At this point I don't know how to solve that as they couldn't be more different on paper, yet encounters here always feel like the same old. There's one great example of effortful ludo-narrative synchonicity (John's conditioning) but little else has stuck in my memory.
Some praise before I wrap-up: the setting is great, the map and soundtrack are really gorgeous. My best moments involved just hiking around Hope County, admiring the mountains and coming across abandoned doomsday prepper bunkers. I also appreciate that despite this game's release at the height of Trump hysteria they avoided forcing in any tortured parallels, there's country hick humor but it's not the same bitter flavor that made a corpse of mainstream comedy around this time, the result is something that should hold up as relatively timeless.
Of course everything I've listed as a fault could make FC5 the peak of the series for someone else, and I understand the need also to differentiate from previous entries in gameplay as much as everything else, for me though this one stripped out the things I liked most and the areas where this entry soars are all too fleeting. My issue runs deeper than surface level comparisons though, while I ultimately enjoyed my time in Hope County it made me begrudgingly realize I don't really want another Far Cry game anyhow - rather I want a new game that feels as fresh and compelling as Far Cry 3 once did.
Within an hour of starting Far Cry 5 you'll have a high-powered silenced sniper rifle, a helicopter and companion soldiers to order around. You'll be able to handily rampage virtually any outpost on the map. And you only get more overpowered from there.
Not that it isn't fun but by throwing all the treats at you from the get-go the game very quickly plateaus and left me wondering what I'm aiming for, not in the overall story but in the hour-to-hour gameplay loop. There's an arsenal of weapons and vehicles to unlock, but what is the point of pistol two of five when you get handed ideal weapons for the job right off the bat, or unlocking one of a dozen cars when you can get choppers immediately (and if you run out there's an easily unlocked companion that always spawns with one).
Of course then the answer is to place artificial limits on yourself, I'd give myself an arbitrary loadout for each outpost as it went on, but while this kind of freedom is nice it became a necessity here to maintain my interest rather than just a bonus, and to be honest it's just not as good as the game itself having cleverly integrated carrots-on-sticks.
It would nearly make for a good military larp platform via modding if the AI weren't so basic. Which leads me to the Arcade mode, a particular disappointment as someone who sank many hours into Far Cry 2's map maker back in the day and longed for the tools to make single player-levels with it. The official maps are boring enough and the player-made ones are truly worthless. I tried a generous amount of levels and none had any bite. Blame it on the oddly limited feeling gameplay options or an insufficient algorithm to filter up the good ones (probably both).
The perk tree implementation feels like an afterthought and completely disconnected from your character, where FC3 in paricular had it feel like a natural parallel to your character getting more dangerous. In addition the balancing issues pop up here again, many abilities I loved in previous entries feel pointless by the time they're unlockable compared to the equipment you'll have. Even removing trees and making any perk selectable from the start doesn't get around it.
Story-wise the moral philosophizing, the odd times it pops up, hits on ideas worth contemplating but never awards them much depth. There's a nice lineup of villainous eccentrics, but all four of them feel yet again like a poor impression of FC3's Vaas. At this point I don't know how to solve that as they couldn't be more different on paper, yet encounters here always feel like the same old. There's one great example of effortful ludo-narrative synchonicity (John's conditioning) but little else has stuck in my memory.
Some praise before I wrap-up: the setting is great, the map and soundtrack are really gorgeous. My best moments involved just hiking around Hope County, admiring the mountains and coming across abandoned doomsday prepper bunkers. I also appreciate that despite this game's release at the height of Trump hysteria they avoided forcing in any tortured parallels, there's country hick humor but it's not the same bitter flavor that made a corpse of mainstream comedy around this time, the result is something that should hold up as relatively timeless.
Of course everything I've listed as a fault could make FC5 the peak of the series for someone else, and I understand the need also to differentiate from previous entries in gameplay as much as everything else, for me though this one stripped out the things I liked most and the areas where this entry soars are all too fleeting. My issue runs deeper than surface level comparisons though, while I ultimately enjoyed my time in Hope County it made me begrudgingly realize I don't really want another Far Cry game anyhow - rather I want a new game that feels as fresh and compelling as Far Cry 3 once did.
2 Comments
I'm talking more about the fact one couldn't engage with any media at all, online or off, without hearing Trump complaints on a loop. It was exhausting and predictable - not least because I live on the opposite side of the Atlantic.
When Trump criticism got brute-forced even into Doctor Who yet this game dealing with cultism in a red state blessedly chose to leave it I have to praise the restraint.
When Trump criticism got brute-forced even into Doctor Who yet this game dealing with cultism in a red state blessedly chose to leave it I have to praise the restraint.
grihajedy
1 year ago