After months of looking at Amazon pages waiting for a price drop that would never come (a thought which, as I inspect further, is almost worry of a thread all its own in this age where every game is $40 two months removed from its release, typically especially so for a Ubisoft title), a friend let me borrow a copy of Far Cry Primal on PS4, and WOW am I enjoying it.
In the past, I've greatly enjoyed both Far Cry 3 and 4, though I was unable to get into Blood Dragon, so the change of setting led me into Primal without a solid idea of what to expect. I found myself pleasantly surprised in a number of ways:
Even though there are only three primary weapons (at least, so far in the 8 hours I've played), with the bow providing essentially the same thing it did in 3 and 4, the club and the spear feel unique from any of the weapons in the previous Far Cry installments. Throwing these weapons in particular is quite a lot of fun, though it is infuriating how good these things can be hiding in tall grass.
Turning the "tag enemies with your camera/binoculars" trope on its head and replacing it with an owl is, in a word, ingenious. While I could go for slightly better owl controls, getting an overhead view is incredibly useful, and as the dive bomb attack involves, I can tell the owl will be a force to be reckoned with.
Sneaking around an enemy camp with a jaguar you can have attack people is just awesome.
Finally, the game is just beautiful. The way that the lighting, particularly at sunrise, interacts with the foliage and shines through the trees is just stunning, and it really sells the idea of a prehistoric world.
But all of this left me wondering: where does this leave the Far Cry franchise? Is the name "Far Cry" just an expectation of some variation of outposts and watchtowers? Is it Ubisoft's franchise with which they're willing to experiment, exchanging the "Brotherhoods" and "Revelations" of Assassin's Creed with moonshot settings you won't find anywhere else? Do we have an expectation of a Far Cry 5 that takes place in a roughly modern setting, with AK-47s and an evil dictator to topple, or are we going to just draw one of the settings from the January 2015 Far Cry Survey hat and see what works?
For memory, those settings were:
A Far Cry game in remote Alaska about surviving extreme wilderness
A Far Cry game in a futuristic, sci-fi setting on another planet
A Far Cry game set in the Vietnam war during the 1960s
A Far Cry game set in the cocaine trafficking jungles of Peru
A Far Cry game where you can fight against or join vampires
A Far Cry game in the Spaghetti Western style set in the late 19th century Americas
A Far Cry game that is set during a zombie outbreak
Blood Dragon 2. A sequel to Blood Dragon with more Rex Power Colt
A Far Cry game set in a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic world
A Far Cry game in the present day, set in a Jurassic Park Style island of dinosaurs
A Far Cry game based on the world of Shangri-La from Far Cry 4
I think there was an expectation that Primal came out of this, but it seems like a rushjob for a game to come out a year after the survey that revealed its setting, and Primal doesn't feel like a rushjob. So what's next? Which of these would you want? And should we expect one of these to be Far Cry 5, or its Blood Dragon/Primal?
In the past, I've greatly enjoyed both Far Cry 3 and 4, though I was unable to get into Blood Dragon, so the change of setting led me into Primal without a solid idea of what to expect. I found myself pleasantly surprised in a number of ways:
Even though there are only three primary weapons (at least, so far in the 8 hours I've played), with the bow providing essentially the same thing it did in 3 and 4, the club and the spear feel unique from any of the weapons in the previous Far Cry installments. Throwing these weapons in particular is quite a lot of fun, though it is infuriating how good these things can be hiding in tall grass.
Turning the "tag enemies with your camera/binoculars" trope on its head and replacing it with an owl is, in a word, ingenious. While I could go for slightly better owl controls, getting an overhead view is incredibly useful, and as the dive bomb attack involves, I can tell the owl will be a force to be reckoned with.
Sneaking around an enemy camp with a jaguar you can have attack people is just awesome.
Finally, the game is just beautiful. The way that the lighting, particularly at sunrise, interacts with the foliage and shines through the trees is just stunning, and it really sells the idea of a prehistoric world.
But all of this left me wondering: where does this leave the Far Cry franchise? Is the name "Far Cry" just an expectation of some variation of outposts and watchtowers? Is it Ubisoft's franchise with which they're willing to experiment, exchanging the "Brotherhoods" and "Revelations" of Assassin's Creed with moonshot settings you won't find anywhere else? Do we have an expectation of a Far Cry 5 that takes place in a roughly modern setting, with AK-47s and an evil dictator to topple, or are we going to just draw one of the settings from the January 2015 Far Cry Survey hat and see what works?
For memory, those settings were:
A Far Cry game in remote Alaska about surviving extreme wilderness
A Far Cry game in a futuristic, sci-fi setting on another planet
A Far Cry game set in the Vietnam war during the 1960s
A Far Cry game set in the cocaine trafficking jungles of Peru
A Far Cry game where you can fight against or join vampires
A Far Cry game in the Spaghetti Western style set in the late 19th century Americas
A Far Cry game that is set during a zombie outbreak
Blood Dragon 2. A sequel to Blood Dragon with more Rex Power Colt
A Far Cry game set in a Mad Max style post-apocalyptic world
A Far Cry game in the present day, set in a Jurassic Park Style island of dinosaurs
A Far Cry game based on the world of Shangri-La from Far Cry 4
I think there was an expectation that Primal came out of this, but it seems like a rushjob for a game to come out a year after the survey that revealed its setting, and Primal doesn't feel like a rushjob. So what's next? Which of these would you want? And should we expect one of these to be Far Cry 5, or its Blood Dragon/Primal?
