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Far Cry 5 review

Ever since playing Far Cry 3 with Rich in co-op I’ve always looked forward to the next game, I didn’t enjoy Far Cry 4 as much and never got round to primal, but I’ve had an absolute blast with Far Cry 5.

If you are looking for something different from the game then you will be disappointed, you’ll still be hunting animals, infiltrating outposts and creating all sorts of chaos with remote explosives. All without feeling overwhelmed by another open world game.

You play a Sheriff’s Deputy who forms part of a task force sent to Hope County to arrest Joseph Seed, a religious leader that needs taking down, as you would expect, things don’t work out too well and that where the game begins for you. You can customise your character, as you play you’ll unlock new outfits to wear, but its only your co-op partner that will notice changes as you are referred to as ‘The Deputy’ throughout the game and you are mute throughout.

In order to take down Joseph, you’ll need to get to the rest of his ‘family’ first in three different regions. As you complete missions, side quests and tasks within each region you’ll unlock resistance points. When you fill meet the required amount of points you can take on the leader of that area.

The main missions are all varied, while the side missions give you a sense that you are really trying to help the people around you out. Thanks to nature of Far Cry, you can approach you mission from all angles. The outposts have returned, in which you need to kill all the enemies in the area to regain control. Taking a stealthy approach is key, especially if you can disable the alarms before you are spotted, which will stop reinforcements arriving.

The more you travel, you’ll begin to realise just how much there is to do in the game. Especially at beginning, you can feel overrun with enemies, simply driving down the road will present you with challenges such as stopping the ‘peggies’ from killing hostages, being shot at and driven after and if you are on foot, being attacked by wild animals. As you begin to regain control of the area things begin to ease off. There is much better access to vehicles such as Helicopters and Planes in Far Cry 5, so there is a good chance you’ll move around Hope County through the air, unlock a weaponised vehicle if you really want to light the enemy up.

Talking of weapons, you’ll never be short, there is something to sort all play styles. Snipers, Assault Rifles and trusty RPG’s are all available, complete with all sorts of attachments to make your arsenal even more potent. At the beginning you’ll only be able to carry one weapon, but you can unlock more slots via the rather good perks system. Rather than unlocking perk points by gaining experience you’ll have a list of challenges to complete that unlock a certain amount of perk points to spend on upgrading your character. Challenges range from killing people with certain weapons to skinning a required amount of animals, none of the challenges are difficult, they just require you to possibly play a little differently.

If you have played any of the recent Far Cry games, especially Far Cry Primal, you’ll be glad to know that any animal can be hunted down and sold on for cash, there is something joyous about fishing in one of Hope County’s big lakes and catching a fish that’s going to make plenty of profit. Other animals are fun to hunt and of course you can collect bait to tempt more tricky animals out into the open.

The story doesn’t particularly drill down as deep as people were expecting, but even so I enjoyed battling with the bosses of each area and learning about how they had come to be the way they were, Faith was a particular favourite, with her use of the drug, Bliss. Her sequences don’t quite go as far as the previous drug related themes in Far Cry but they were still really enjoyable. I really enjoyed taking on Jacob Seed too.

With so much to do in Far Cry it only seems fair to play alongside a friend and thankfully you can, except it’s a bit of a let-down. First of all, only the host can make progress with their campaign, so if you finish a mission that has an achievement attached to it, only the host gets the points. Also the game only lets you move a small distance away from your partner, before killing you for being too far away, whilst in co-op recently, we both decided to use our wingsuits, except one of us was much faster than the other and had to respawn as a result. It’s seems like an odd decision to make for an open world title.

If you don’t have a co-op partner to play with, you can make use of the Guns for Hire, a set of characters that will join you on your journey. They all have a specific set of skills and you can order them around and they’ll even pick you up if you get downed. You’ll unlock a bear called Cheeseburger and even a dog called Boomer who will attack the enemy and sometimes bring you their weapons, who’s a good boy!

The game looks great, the scenery is incredible and will have you exploring for hours if you wish, the highlight for me however, is the soundtrack. You’ll pick it up on radios as you travel round, but if you get a chance to check it out properly on your streaming service of choice then you’ll get what I mean. I got so sucked in to the wonderful folky songs that I almost felt bad striking down my enemies. Despite being done with the game, the soundtrack is still on repeat.

Away from the main title is Far Cry Arcade, where you can enjoy infinite Far Cry experiences built by the community. You can play by yourself, with your friends, or even against them (up to 6 vs 6). There are already some great levels available to play with and the editor is fun to use. There are lots of assets from all sorts of Ubisoft games so if level making is something you enjoy it’s worth checking out.

Of course, this a Ubisoft game, which means lots of game bugs. There isn’t anything that can’t be overcome, but it’s worth remembering that at some point, something weird will happen to you. Overall though, it never really affected the fun I had with the game, you meet some really interesting characters (and some odd ones) but you’ll take part in some awesome missions and you certainly won’t regret your purchase.

Thanks to Ubisoft and Xbox for supporting TiX

Dave Moran
Hello! I'm the owner and Editor-in-Chief of the site. I play too much Rocket League (and Fortnite for that matter) and I wish I was better at Rainbow Six Siege!

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