StandrdWhiteKid
4 reviews liked by StandrdWhiteKid
I despise mw19 and mw2 as much as anyone but those campaigns were some of the best of the franchise and instead of capitalizing on keeping the main core together, you make a shitty wannabe openish campaign that has no idea what it wants to be, the linear levels that we’re used to are barely even on the same scale as before besides the finale which was amazing but yeah inexcusable garbage which stained what could’ve been an amazing trilogy and killed one of the few bright spots of modern call of duty for me. treyarch save us
- 5.5 hours played
As you can tell by the score, Hellblade 2 wasn’t a game for me. Which is sad seeing as I loved the first game. I’m a fan of walking sims and games where not much actual gameplay is required. Games like Until Dawn, Firewatch, Everybody’s gone to the Rapture and the Telltale games. If gameplay is lacking you have to offer something else to hook me. This game sadly didn’t do that.
For some the hook is the visuals. This game does look amazing and it’s one of the very few games I have played this gen that I can truly say belongs on this newer generation graphically. The motion capture performances are fantastic and the environments look stunning. But that’s not enough. Because the game whilst stunning, is mainly stunning caves and rocky hillsides. It doesn’t matter how beautiful that mountain off in the distance is if I’m stuck following a very linear path and can’t get anywhere near it. The environments offer no level of interactivity. Senua can’t pick up and investigate items. She’s doesn’t talk about details in the environment. She can only mantle ledges, open doors and pick up balls for the puzzles. She doesn’t feel like she exists in these places so you just breeze through them on a track. Holding LB and up on the left analogue. It’s a very pretty rollercoaster ride with very few rises in the track. There are two cool set piece moments but these end up offering the same gameplay of sprint behind cover and time your next sprint. All that’s different are the visuals and the fact you have to hold onto the cover in the second sequence. Also the world of Hellblade is brutal and oppressive. I’m actually glad it was only 5 hours long because it’s a depression fest. There were some seriously grim scenes in this game of violence, decapitation and murder. It’s also audibly horrific. The music, the way the enemies shout and the guttural noises being made all mix with the visuals to create a fever dream of horrific images. But it’s all looks because in its gameplay it’s severely lacking.
It’s a walking sim and a very cinematic one at that. Gameplay involves walking forwards. Sometimes running when the game allows. Some basic flashy combat and rudimentary puzzle solving. There’s been a 7 year gap between this game and the original and nothing has improved other than visuals and animations. Combat feels worse. It’s looks amazing. The enemy transitions between each fight are very fluid and cinematic. But it’s extremely basic. You have a light and heavy attack. A block/parry and a dodge. And you also have a focus meter that slows time. Every fight in the game is a simple 1v1 no matter the story situation. The animations between each 1v1 fail to make the encounter feel grander. And every enemy you fight is either a man or a humanoid creature. There’s nothing like the big hell dog monster from the first game. Fights are here to offer variety but lack that element themselves. Therefore they just get mixed in as another boring element of a boring game. The puzzles are no better, they are another tedious element of variety that actually do more damage than they do help. I was bored of the walking and talking but I preferred that to solving the same visual puzzles from the first game. And the new find the ball and place it on the pedestal puzzle this game offers is no better. Neither the combat or the puzzles had me scratching my head in confusion or frustration which would have helped me feel something at least. It’s a very linear game where nothing stopped me moving forwards at all. In the end it all became a rather rote experience.
Now the story. The one element that usually carries a walking sim. This also failed for me. Senua is in a better place this time around but still suffers her psychosis. She’s still hearing the voices. She’s on a quest to avenge her people after the north men murder some and took the rest as slaves. The mental health issues are no longer a major part of the story and therefore this game lacks what made the first special. Here they are just voices and become one of the many ingredients instead of the games special sauce. We meet other characters along the way and they seem to take a lot of the limelight but at 5 hours this game doesn’t have enough time to flesh them out. Also one character is “redeemed” by the end and I just couldn’t buy into it. Because the things that character has done have been horrific and 5 hours is not enough time to forgive that. Sure Senua spent longer in game than the 5 hours I spent but it’s not conveyed very well how much time has passed and by the end I couldn’t believe in the redemption. Also the first game had Senua as the sole character. What made that interesting is that anything that happened in the game could be taken as either literal, or her mental battle against her demons and psychosis. Now in this game with 3 villages worth of people all experiencing the same things as her makes you believe they are happening. But a twist at the end may mean it’s maybe all not as it seemed. And once you start pulling on that chord, the whole middle of the game unravels and starts to make no sense what so ever. Also unbelievably for such a short game, the ending is super abrupt.
The credits rolled on this after 5 and a half hours and I was glad. I think this is a game for a very niche audience. It was not for me at all and to be honest it barely felt like a game. I only paid £8 for gamepass to play this, I can’t believe they are charging full price for this physical. I’ve also seen some people state that this game is reveloutionary in the graphical department but I disagree. It is beautiful but as an overall package it’s severely lacking, therefore I don’t think it will be remembered or talked about enough to change anything.
As you can tell by the score, Hellblade 2 wasn’t a game for me. Which is sad seeing as I loved the first game. I’m a fan of walking sims and games where not much actual gameplay is required. Games like Until Dawn, Firewatch, Everybody’s gone to the Rapture and the Telltale games. If gameplay is lacking you have to offer something else to hook me. This game sadly didn’t do that.
For some the hook is the visuals. This game does look amazing and it’s one of the very few games I have played this gen that I can truly say belongs on this newer generation graphically. The motion capture performances are fantastic and the environments look stunning. But that’s not enough. Because the game whilst stunning, is mainly stunning caves and rocky hillsides. It doesn’t matter how beautiful that mountain off in the distance is if I’m stuck following a very linear path and can’t get anywhere near it. The environments offer no level of interactivity. Senua can’t pick up and investigate items. She’s doesn’t talk about details in the environment. She can only mantle ledges, open doors and pick up balls for the puzzles. She doesn’t feel like she exists in these places so you just breeze through them on a track. Holding LB and up on the left analogue. It’s a very pretty rollercoaster ride with very few rises in the track. There are two cool set piece moments but these end up offering the same gameplay of sprint behind cover and time your next sprint. All that’s different are the visuals and the fact you have to hold onto the cover in the second sequence. Also the world of Hellblade is brutal and oppressive. I’m actually glad it was only 5 hours long because it’s a depression fest. There were some seriously grim scenes in this game of violence, decapitation and murder. It’s also audibly horrific. The music, the way the enemies shout and the guttural noises being made all mix with the visuals to create a fever dream of horrific images. But it’s all looks because in its gameplay it’s severely lacking.
It’s a walking sim and a very cinematic one at that. Gameplay involves walking forwards. Sometimes running when the game allows. Some basic flashy combat and rudimentary puzzle solving. There’s been a 7 year gap between this game and the original and nothing has improved other than visuals and animations. Combat feels worse. It’s looks amazing. The enemy transitions between each fight are very fluid and cinematic. But it’s extremely basic. You have a light and heavy attack. A block/parry and a dodge. And you also have a focus meter that slows time. Every fight in the game is a simple 1v1 no matter the story situation. The animations between each 1v1 fail to make the encounter feel grander. And every enemy you fight is either a man or a humanoid creature. There’s nothing like the big hell dog monster from the first game. Fights are here to offer variety but lack that element themselves. Therefore they just get mixed in as another boring element of a boring game. The puzzles are no better, they are another tedious element of variety that actually do more damage than they do help. I was bored of the walking and talking but I preferred that to solving the same visual puzzles from the first game. And the new find the ball and place it on the pedestal puzzle this game offers is no better. Neither the combat or the puzzles had me scratching my head in confusion or frustration which would have helped me feel something at least. It’s a very linear game where nothing stopped me moving forwards at all. In the end it all became a rather rote experience.
Now the story. The one element that usually carries a walking sim. This also failed for me. Senua is in a better place this time around but still suffers her psychosis. She’s still hearing the voices. She’s on a quest to avenge her people after the north men murder some and took the rest as slaves. The mental health issues are no longer a major part of the story and therefore this game lacks what made the first special. Here they are just voices and become one of the many ingredients instead of the games special sauce. We meet other characters along the way and they seem to take a lot of the limelight but at 5 hours this game doesn’t have enough time to flesh them out. Also one character is “redeemed” by the end and I just couldn’t buy into it. Because the things that character has done have been horrific and 5 hours is not enough time to forgive that. Sure Senua spent longer in game than the 5 hours I spent but it’s not conveyed very well how much time has passed and by the end I couldn’t believe in the redemption. Also the first game had Senua as the sole character. What made that interesting is that anything that happened in the game could be taken as either literal, or her mental battle against her demons and psychosis. Now in this game with 3 villages worth of people all experiencing the same things as her makes you believe they are happening. But a twist at the end may mean it’s maybe all not as it seemed. And once you start pulling on that chord, the whole middle of the game unravels and starts to make no sense what so ever. Also unbelievably for such a short game, the ending is super abrupt.
The credits rolled on this after 5 and a half hours and I was glad. I think this is a game for a very niche audience. It was not for me at all and to be honest it barely felt like a game. I only paid £8 for gamepass to play this, I can’t believe they are charging full price for this physical. I’ve also seen some people state that this game is reveloutionary in the graphical department but I disagree. It is beautiful but as an overall package it’s severely lacking, therefore I don’t think it will be remembered or talked about enough to change anything.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Mental Health Portrayed in Gaming
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice creates a unique atmosphere compared to any other game out right now. Unlike your popular online games or your high-budget, major triple-a single-player games of recent times, Hellblade feels lonely. While there are action segments throughout the game, most of the time, you're exploring this somber world as Senua, completing puzzles and experiencing the narrative the game sets out to tell. To get this out of the way first, Senua is a woman who struggles with psychosis and deals with voices in her head. I do not have any mental health struggles, haven't experienced psychosis before, or know anyone who has, so I am not the best person when it comes to tackling this subject matter, if I describe Senua's mental health wrongly, or in an insensitive manner, I apologize.
The folks at Ninja Theory apparently got real doctors and real patients who have psychosis, to be a part of the development of Hellblade, to which I applauded them. Even though I do not struggle with any of Senua's psychosis, I find how the way the game uses audio engineering to simulate Senua's voices to be one of my favorite ways audio mixing has been used as a device to expand a narrative. Headphones are a must if you play this game, Senua's voices vary depending on the volume of each voice, some are louder, while some are quieter, little details like this make me close to connecting to Senua as a character, small design choices like this help the game so much when it comes to putting the player in Senua's shoes, and somewhat educate others on psychosis. Also, graphically, for a low-budget game, the graphics look fantastic. I was playing this game on my PC on 4K with 60 FPS, and it just looks stunning.
The strengths of Hellblade come in its story, worldbuilding, and atmosphere. The story is about Senua, on her journey to save the soul of her deceased lover, while exploring the Norse underworld. The story is pretty good and kept me engaged to progress further into the game. I feel Hellblade's best moments when it comes to it's story are within certain moments in the game, instead of the overall story, start-to-end. An example of this is during a part in the game, where Senua has to complete curtain trials before getting a key item that progresses the story, in these trials, it pushes Senua to face her fears and past, and this sequence is brilliant, for not only showcasing Senua's past to the player but also connecting to Senua deeper than before, it's a wonderful execution.
These are when the story and narrative shine, however I feel that around the second half of the game, is where the story just kinda drags. The pacing just feels like a slope, with nothing to add onto, and it doesn't help when the gameplay isn't the best when in combat. Combat feels tacky, it feels like a theater play, rather than an actual fight. This critique about the combat, with the pacing of the second half, just drags the game down from the interest of the first few hours into it. Overall, Hellblade is a unique game, with a great protagonist, a great story, great setting with dull gameplay. I hope in Hellblade 2, the combat gets improved, and the story gets some better flashed moments near its second half. Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice is a great, short game to pick up if you want to try something a little different than anything else in your backlog.
Stats:
Played on PC
Hours into Game: 9 Hours
Score: 8/10 (4/5)
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice creates a unique atmosphere compared to any other game out right now. Unlike your popular online games or your high-budget, major triple-a single-player games of recent times, Hellblade feels lonely. While there are action segments throughout the game, most of the time, you're exploring this somber world as Senua, completing puzzles and experiencing the narrative the game sets out to tell. To get this out of the way first, Senua is a woman who struggles with psychosis and deals with voices in her head. I do not have any mental health struggles, haven't experienced psychosis before, or know anyone who has, so I am not the best person when it comes to tackling this subject matter, if I describe Senua's mental health wrongly, or in an insensitive manner, I apologize.
The folks at Ninja Theory apparently got real doctors and real patients who have psychosis, to be a part of the development of Hellblade, to which I applauded them. Even though I do not struggle with any of Senua's psychosis, I find how the way the game uses audio engineering to simulate Senua's voices to be one of my favorite ways audio mixing has been used as a device to expand a narrative. Headphones are a must if you play this game, Senua's voices vary depending on the volume of each voice, some are louder, while some are quieter, little details like this make me close to connecting to Senua as a character, small design choices like this help the game so much when it comes to putting the player in Senua's shoes, and somewhat educate others on psychosis. Also, graphically, for a low-budget game, the graphics look fantastic. I was playing this game on my PC on 4K with 60 FPS, and it just looks stunning.
The strengths of Hellblade come in its story, worldbuilding, and atmosphere. The story is about Senua, on her journey to save the soul of her deceased lover, while exploring the Norse underworld. The story is pretty good and kept me engaged to progress further into the game. I feel Hellblade's best moments when it comes to it's story are within certain moments in the game, instead of the overall story, start-to-end. An example of this is during a part in the game, where Senua has to complete curtain trials before getting a key item that progresses the story, in these trials, it pushes Senua to face her fears and past, and this sequence is brilliant, for not only showcasing Senua's past to the player but also connecting to Senua deeper than before, it's a wonderful execution.
These are when the story and narrative shine, however I feel that around the second half of the game, is where the story just kinda drags. The pacing just feels like a slope, with nothing to add onto, and it doesn't help when the gameplay isn't the best when in combat. Combat feels tacky, it feels like a theater play, rather than an actual fight. This critique about the combat, with the pacing of the second half, just drags the game down from the interest of the first few hours into it. Overall, Hellblade is a unique game, with a great protagonist, a great story, great setting with dull gameplay. I hope in Hellblade 2, the combat gets improved, and the story gets some better flashed moments near its second half. Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice is a great, short game to pick up if you want to try something a little different than anything else in your backlog.
Stats:
Played on PC
Hours into Game: 9 Hours
Score: 8/10 (4/5)
Far Cry 6
2021
I was going to skip this game, because everyone hates it and Cuba honestly seemed like a pretty tired location and the place you take your "revolutionary" games series to when you're out of ideas, but then it showed up on PS+ and I had tiem left over and gave it a shot. At first, I hated it and asked myself why I was playing another Ubisoft game, but then the game won me over little by little until I decided that while this game doesn't come close to the heights of Far Cry 3, I find it to be a much more enjoyable gameplay experience than 5 was, even if this is the worst script and villain the series has seen so far.
The first thing I noticed about this game, and what kept me going when I initially disliked it, is that they brought purpose back to the world! Where you could find nothing of interest in FC5's world, they've brought back armor, loot and collectibles to be found, which gives the world so much more purpose for me. All of the pretty farmsteads and orchards with absolutely nothing to find in them in FC5 is what killed this game for me, and FC6 brings back the excitement and satisfaction in exploration. That's a big deal for me with this game and is a major reason why I like it more than FC5. Because, other than that, this is just a typical Far Cry game. You run around a beautiful world, you sneak through some enemy outposts until they're cleared and you "liberate" the outpost and occasionally you play through a mission setpiece.
This game is at its best either when I'm sneaking through a medium-sized outpost, silently killing guard after guard until I've cleared it all out without raising suspicion, or when I'm simply driving a classic convertible across the rain-slicked streets in the sunrise while Havana plays on the radio. The latter is not to be underrated, because the digital tourism aspect is a major thing for me with Ubisoft games and this one delivers on making me dream away to hanging out on some cuban beach while Havana plays in the background. I really like that song, OK? I'm oblivious to mainstream trends so while I think I've heard it once or twice before, it's not tired to me. Also, that spanish cover of Snow's "Informer" is super fun too and was a delightful surprise.
Ultimately, and while this game isn't great (and I'm getting to the bad parts in the next paragraph), that's really enough for me. The gunplay is solid enough for me, at least with a good sniper rifle, and you spend enough time doing the things I enjoy in this game that I ultimately enjoyed the game overall, despite its flaws. This game is candy when other games are a delicious steak, and that's fine. Sometimes candy is what you want even if it doesn't fill you up and isn't especially healthy.
Here come the "however", though; this game does ultimately kind of suck despite the fact that I enjoyed it. Like I said, it has enough of the content that I enjoy that I can confidently rate it a 3/5, but it also has so many flaws that I can't possibly rate it any higher, nor will I ever recommend that anyone plays it unless they're as into the camp-taking and digital tourism as I am.
Starting with the obvious: Giancarlo Esposito was a big waste of money with this script. He's just a miserably poor villain, as is the script overall. Esposito does nothing wrong, and tries, but his "cool villain lines" just aren't cool. His "menacing villain lines" just aren't menacing. The "unsettling relationship with his scared son" just isn't unsettling enough, because it's not developed enough, and I can tell you exactly why this script sucks. Because this writer's room was preoccupied with being smartass fucking comedians. Everything is a joke. I obviously know that Far Cry has always had humor in it, but this game makes a mockery of itself. This is what happens when no one cares and writers compete over who can come up with the most jokes - or the most tired 80s references, like how someone says "bitches leave" in a situation where it makes no sense because "REMEMBER ROBOCOP?" - instead of competing over who can come up with the best drama or maybe the darkest situations, which is fitting for a game like this. And while I fucking enjoy some fucking swearing, this script is pathetic in how expletive-filled it is. It's in every single line, I swear. Try a little harder than that.
On top of that, and aside from the fact that they brought back features missing in FC5, the new gameplay mechanics just aren't hitting either. The big new thing, the "supremo" backpack, just plain sucks. The devs thought we'd love it when they wrote in many, many lines of NPCs being very impressed by your cool backpack, but these things are entirely uninteresting. You start with one that shoots a few guided missiles and then there's like a 5-minute cooldown. We don't even get a stealth supremo. The one labeled "stealth" apparently "unleashes an EMP pulse that knocks over enemies and makes vehicles hijackable", according to the description. I never even tried it because what the fuck is stealth about knocking every nearby guard on his ass and thereby signaling my presence? Furthermore, the game tries for an RPG system where, like, flame magic is incendiary rounds, water magic is armor-piercing rounds and so on, and enemies have "flame resistance" and "water resistance", but that whole system is invalidated by the fact that you never need anything otgher than armor-piercing rounds in order to crack through helmets for headshots. There is never a situation where you need all of the various gear that boosts other ammo types. Oh, and whle I'm complaining, the weapon wheel sucks so bad. It has 8 slots but 5 of them are wasted on useless shit, like permanently having to have the vehicle repair tool in there even though it's useless. Who stops and repairs a car over and over instead of just fast traveling and fetching a fresh one? Or just stealing one that's driving like right there beside you?
So, yeah, this game is wonderful digital tourism, stealthily taking camps is fun as ever, Chorizo is very cute, the world has purpose again in the loot (even though the loot runs out before the chests do and the exploration goes back to feeling fruitless by the end), the final unlockable supremo/weapon combo is extremely overpowered and fun, and cuba, the graphics and the soundtrack are all delightful, but this is probably an objectively weak game. Are Ubisoft games as outright terrible as russian money-laundering asset flips on Steam? Of course not. Of course they're leagues above that, and these are passable and often enjoyable games, but as always with this company, it's hard not to be frustrated by the wasted potential and the amount of problems running a 20,000-employee company brings. These games can just never be tight so long as a small country works on them. You cannot coordinate that many people. Ubisoft has to realize, at some point, that no one wants these massive worlds made by massive teams. Split these giga-teams into three teams and let them make three smaller games instead. Let them try making something else than the Ubisoft formula every once in a while.
Ah, well, current rumor is that Far Cry 7 will be North Korea, so I'll definitely be back for that. See you in a year or three for another review that boils down to "I really like just wandering/driving around in this world but the gameplay design kind of blows" or some such, as I feel like we all know in advance that this is exactly what the game is going to be. Again. For like the fifth time in a row in this franchise.
The first thing I noticed about this game, and what kept me going when I initially disliked it, is that they brought purpose back to the world! Where you could find nothing of interest in FC5's world, they've brought back armor, loot and collectibles to be found, which gives the world so much more purpose for me. All of the pretty farmsteads and orchards with absolutely nothing to find in them in FC5 is what killed this game for me, and FC6 brings back the excitement and satisfaction in exploration. That's a big deal for me with this game and is a major reason why I like it more than FC5. Because, other than that, this is just a typical Far Cry game. You run around a beautiful world, you sneak through some enemy outposts until they're cleared and you "liberate" the outpost and occasionally you play through a mission setpiece.
This game is at its best either when I'm sneaking through a medium-sized outpost, silently killing guard after guard until I've cleared it all out without raising suspicion, or when I'm simply driving a classic convertible across the rain-slicked streets in the sunrise while Havana plays on the radio. The latter is not to be underrated, because the digital tourism aspect is a major thing for me with Ubisoft games and this one delivers on making me dream away to hanging out on some cuban beach while Havana plays in the background. I really like that song, OK? I'm oblivious to mainstream trends so while I think I've heard it once or twice before, it's not tired to me. Also, that spanish cover of Snow's "Informer" is super fun too and was a delightful surprise.
Ultimately, and while this game isn't great (and I'm getting to the bad parts in the next paragraph), that's really enough for me. The gunplay is solid enough for me, at least with a good sniper rifle, and you spend enough time doing the things I enjoy in this game that I ultimately enjoyed the game overall, despite its flaws. This game is candy when other games are a delicious steak, and that's fine. Sometimes candy is what you want even if it doesn't fill you up and isn't especially healthy.
Here come the "however", though; this game does ultimately kind of suck despite the fact that I enjoyed it. Like I said, it has enough of the content that I enjoy that I can confidently rate it a 3/5, but it also has so many flaws that I can't possibly rate it any higher, nor will I ever recommend that anyone plays it unless they're as into the camp-taking and digital tourism as I am.
Starting with the obvious: Giancarlo Esposito was a big waste of money with this script. He's just a miserably poor villain, as is the script overall. Esposito does nothing wrong, and tries, but his "cool villain lines" just aren't cool. His "menacing villain lines" just aren't menacing. The "unsettling relationship with his scared son" just isn't unsettling enough, because it's not developed enough, and I can tell you exactly why this script sucks. Because this writer's room was preoccupied with being smartass fucking comedians. Everything is a joke. I obviously know that Far Cry has always had humor in it, but this game makes a mockery of itself. This is what happens when no one cares and writers compete over who can come up with the most jokes - or the most tired 80s references, like how someone says "bitches leave" in a situation where it makes no sense because "REMEMBER ROBOCOP?" - instead of competing over who can come up with the best drama or maybe the darkest situations, which is fitting for a game like this. And while I fucking enjoy some fucking swearing, this script is pathetic in how expletive-filled it is. It's in every single line, I swear. Try a little harder than that.
On top of that, and aside from the fact that they brought back features missing in FC5, the new gameplay mechanics just aren't hitting either. The big new thing, the "supremo" backpack, just plain sucks. The devs thought we'd love it when they wrote in many, many lines of NPCs being very impressed by your cool backpack, but these things are entirely uninteresting. You start with one that shoots a few guided missiles and then there's like a 5-minute cooldown. We don't even get a stealth supremo. The one labeled "stealth" apparently "unleashes an EMP pulse that knocks over enemies and makes vehicles hijackable", according to the description. I never even tried it because what the fuck is stealth about knocking every nearby guard on his ass and thereby signaling my presence? Furthermore, the game tries for an RPG system where, like, flame magic is incendiary rounds, water magic is armor-piercing rounds and so on, and enemies have "flame resistance" and "water resistance", but that whole system is invalidated by the fact that you never need anything otgher than armor-piercing rounds in order to crack through helmets for headshots. There is never a situation where you need all of the various gear that boosts other ammo types. Oh, and whle I'm complaining, the weapon wheel sucks so bad. It has 8 slots but 5 of them are wasted on useless shit, like permanently having to have the vehicle repair tool in there even though it's useless. Who stops and repairs a car over and over instead of just fast traveling and fetching a fresh one? Or just stealing one that's driving like right there beside you?
So, yeah, this game is wonderful digital tourism, stealthily taking camps is fun as ever, Chorizo is very cute, the world has purpose again in the loot (even though the loot runs out before the chests do and the exploration goes back to feeling fruitless by the end), the final unlockable supremo/weapon combo is extremely overpowered and fun, and cuba, the graphics and the soundtrack are all delightful, but this is probably an objectively weak game. Are Ubisoft games as outright terrible as russian money-laundering asset flips on Steam? Of course not. Of course they're leagues above that, and these are passable and often enjoyable games, but as always with this company, it's hard not to be frustrated by the wasted potential and the amount of problems running a 20,000-employee company brings. These games can just never be tight so long as a small country works on them. You cannot coordinate that many people. Ubisoft has to realize, at some point, that no one wants these massive worlds made by massive teams. Split these giga-teams into three teams and let them make three smaller games instead. Let them try making something else than the Ubisoft formula every once in a while.
Ah, well, current rumor is that Far Cry 7 will be North Korea, so I'll definitely be back for that. See you in a year or three for another review that boils down to "I really like just wandering/driving around in this world but the gameplay design kind of blows" or some such, as I feel like we all know in advance that this is exactly what the game is going to be. Again. For like the fifth time in a row in this franchise.