Introduction

Now let me preface this by saying this is my first Far Cry game, yep. I just wasn’t attracted to playing FPS games with controllers, and I never had a PC that could handle new games until recently, so that’s the story behind that. The other thing I should let you know is that I haven’t finished the game. Have you tried clearing a Ubisoft game in less than a week? Not a healthy prospect. I’ve poured in around 20 or so hours into it. So think of this as an impressions video, or maybe review lite, if you will. And I’ll be updating it later on, especially if there’s a lot more to unpack of this game.

So let’s begin, you play the role of Dani, and you find yourself thrown into the fray of fighting for the guerillas trying to overthrow the iron hand of the cunning and captivating Anton Castillo. You don’t have a lot to your name, but that can change if you help the many citizens living under the foot of the oppressive government. So off we go into the land of Yara and the many adventures that lie ahead.

Production (4.5 / 5)

The first thing that caught my attention were the faces, they’re very highly detailed and animate well. The lip synch is pretty on point, and leave very little to look jarring. When cutscenes are played out I don’t feel particularly bored watching them since everyone communicates so much in their voice and their movement. The texturing of various surfaces keep the immersion consistent, whether it be the ground, the walls of the building, or even random objects like barrels or windows. The vehicles in particular also look convincingly used. Having scratches or dents here and there, or maybe a bit of a faded paint job. This is further expressed in vehicles that you own.

Considering that I’ve been playing this on the PS4, the frame rate and picture quality are still pretty top notch. Though it does make some understandable compromises. There is a drop of frame rate if you have enough happening on the screen but this hasn’t really gotten in the way of gameplay. Sometimes I could see that edges around objects could be softer, as well. If you fly high enough, you’ll be able to tell the limitation on draw distance, but it’s still pretty far.

The performances of all the voice actors, at least the ones I’ve encountered so far, are very convincing. To no one’s surprise, the performance for Anton Castillo is the stand out from everyone. His calm, cool voice and choice of words seem to constantly veil his true thoughts. Constantly unimpressed, won’t think twice to kill you. Commands every scene he’s in, love watching the guy.

Mechanics (4.5 / 5)

So, I think I’ve made it clear that playing an FPS game on controller is an, adjustment for me? So initially, shooting was very uncomfortable for me. But about 5 hours in I think I’ve adjusted to the point that I can reliably hit a target. Aiming down sights and firing from the hip do feel like they serve well where they should, at range and in close quarters, respectively.

Movement in my opinion could be better, particularly for negotiating ledges. It gets quite frustrating trying to climb to higher areas when It turns out that you can only do that with very select areas. Running through even knee-high walls requires vaulting and it’s not always obvious when you’re in the middle of a gunfight. Luckily, a lot of the game doesn’t revolve around movement.

You get a passive regeneration once you’re out of combat long enough, you also get a free heal that goes on cooldown once used. It’s great that I don’t have to think about healing items since getting a substantial amount of damage in Far Cry seems to be one of the easiest thing to do for your enemies. So far, this balance between healing and damage successfully makes for good tension in combat, particularly for a player like me who has no sense for finding cover during a gun fight.

Speaking of guns, you get a lot of them, and for each gun type you can craft a certain assortment of attachments. From bullet to barrel. You can even give them special modifiers that you more commonly find in looter-shooter types such as poison damage, or charging your ultimate faster per headshot.

Oh, did I say ultimate? I meant Supremo, which is, well, s your ultimate skill. You’re initially given something that fires homing missiles, but you can change this depending on what you want to get. There’s a type that shoots out a poison cloud that makes enemies fight each other, one that bursts out an EMP charge, and there’s probably more down the line. You can assign each one with the sort of throwing weapons you’d like to carry around with it, and like the guns have special mods that modify your stats. The clothing you wear also gives you certain abilities such as moving faster after receiving damage, detecting enemies easier, picking up more loot than usual, the list goes on.

And finally, you have an amigo, a handy animal friend that initially starts out as a crocodile, but you can find other furry, feathered, and scaled pals to join you on your adventures later on. Each of them behaves differently, so you’ll want to pick one that suits your playstyle the best.

As you can see, I  have not mentioned anything about getting bonus health or damage. And that’s because the game never really tells you any of that. You do seem to get stronger as you gain rank but you’re never told explicitly how much. Rank increase also seems to be the only way to directly improve your base stats. And the only real way to do that is through clearing map objectives and to a greater extent finishing quests. Yes, you do gain a bit of experience by causing mayhem around the map, but you really don’t want to max out that wanted level.

You might have noticed that most of my encounters are approached through stealth, and that’s how I like to do things because I have a lot of trouble fighting enemies when I don’t know where they are. It’s also the cheapest way to fight in terms of resource. However, it’s pretty evident that you can play however you like, so long as you’re putting together an arsenal and a setup that matches that way of playing. You can be a one-man army geared up for mass destruction, a ninja, or even something that’s near immortal. Finding and grinding the materials needed to get there could be an issue, though. Still, I like it because it also means I can freely change how I play so long as I’m willing to grind for it. It encourages multiple approaches to a situation and exploring these options aren’t too hard. I’m genuinely having fun with it.

Content (5 / 5)

When you’ve picked up one of the big Ubisoft titles, it becomes pretty obvious how similar they are to each other. It’s always this large map with multiple objective points on it and you’re pretty much free to handle it as you like. The problem with this is either having a large map with a whole lot of nothing to find or a overpopulating it with objectives that it’s overwhelming and paralyzing since you have no idea where to start. How do they tackle the balance here?

It looks like they’ve taken a page from the Ghost of Tsushima playbook. Where how much objectives or whatnot on the map is visible depends on how much you want to know. By leaving random notes to read, or NPCs that tell you of another base to raid or quest to take on, it’s up to you if you want to engage them and have yet another objective to clear on the map. It literally allows you to move at the pace of your choosing, which I greatly appreciate.

Far Cry 6, so far appears to be focusing the story on three huge story arcs with a big finale arc planned in the end. Where you get to pick how exactly you progress. Every major story seems to involve you getting entangled with a trio composed of a joker, the serious guy, and the guy with a problem. Not to say they’re interesting characters, so far, I’ve liked dealing with everyone I’ve met, so doing quests for them is hardly an undertaking I have to perform while grating my teeth. I’m not going to go into detail for any of these stories and leave it for you to discover. What I can share though, is other things you can do than shooty-shooty bang bang action.

In my 20 or so hours of gameplay I’ve gone fishing to little success, I’ve raided caves for treasure, which are more or less traversal puzzles, I’ve raced on a jet ski, I’ve commanded raids, I’ve hunted a powerful boar, a powerful rooster, a powerful rooster as a rooster, yes this is a full-on fighting game with a roster of roosters, weak and strong attacks, dodges and super bars, I was blown away. There’s probably more that I’ve yet to discover, but there are certainly many gems for the 20-minute adventures that the game offers you if you just don’t feel like progressing the story yet. And really, what’s the point of rushing an Ubisoft game?

There’s also content specialized for the multiplayer experience, where you can’t access the map so you may have to rely on others lest you blow up for being in the sun too long. Sounds like real life.

Features (4 / 5)

Let me start with the many accessibility features and audio-visual adjustments you can make with the Far Cry 6. There’s a lot of them, I find it hard to specify what’s significant, but you’ll probably be able to play this even if you’re colorblind or whatnot.

Far Cry 6 will be letting you play Co-op and that seems pretty epic, being able to do these missions with a friend would be great. Just that I don’t have many friends that would have early access to the game so I wasn’t really able to test this out.

There’s also more content planned in the future should you choose to buy the season pass, you can probably sit on that, there’s a lot to chew on from the base game’s offerings.

Finally, there’s the occasional bugs that you normally find in open-world games, like NPCs getting stuck in certain areas, or poorly performing AI that get stuck in a certain state. Though these are pretty rare.

Conclusion

Not gonna lie guys, there were two reasons I was dreading playing this game. The first one would be the controller FPS experience, which turned out to be not so bad. The second would be the tiring experience I had with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. And I’m happy to say that, at least for the current amount of time I’ve poured in (and yes that amount of time is a lot for me in a week), I’ve found myself constantly engaged with Far Cry 6. Everything I do seems to contribute to something further down the line, there’s a lot of exploration to do and not only of the gigantic map but also of the quest lines and possible setups you can make use of for Dani. I want to continue playing it as I write this script to see where the next event leads or to try out this new weapon I just got.

Far Cry 6 has created a world where I don’t need to know much else to enjoy it, and appears to be pushing the Ubisoft formula to its limit to my delight. Far Cry 6 has shown to have covered many of its bases, scoring a 4.5 out of 5.

If you’ve been on the fence about getting this game, I hope my review lite has given you some information that would find helpful, or at least have you taken some interest in this well-crafted game.

This game will be out on Xbox One, Xbox X, PS4, PS5, and PC.