Playing Far Cry 5 you always know what you get – a quality shooter in a beautiful open world with a simple plot and a colorful villain. The games in the series have not changed much since Far Cry 2, but they sell well. Players are happy with everything. The games are really similar, this is logical, the series has its niche, even its genre, in which there is no competition today.
Far Cry is always about war and savagery, about society going crazy and devouring itself. All hell traditionally takes place somewhere far away, in an isolated exotic place but in the fifth installment, the game is happening right inside the dominant modern civilization – in the USA. Everything is arranged not by an abstract tyrant or a caricature of psychopaths, but by a religious sect.
Heading to the Manic Lands
This time we go to Hope County, Montana – the northern state on the border with Canada. A peaceful place with transparent lakes, dazzlingly beautiful mountain ranges, and plentiful forests. It is full of wild places where time flows slowly, and people live a simple village life. But, of course, with typical American features: checkered tank tops, wrinkled baseball caps, and shotguns in pickups.
The nature of virtual Montana beats to the heart. Mountain rivers, wheat fields, and impenetrable coniferous forests are perfectly combined with well-groomed farms, pastures, and tiny towns, creating an incredibly cozy, warm atmosphere.
Furthermore, there is one interesting point we should note. Montana is one of the places in the United States, where gambling is legal and authorized. Considering the nature of the Far Cry series, vast open-world, and various mini-games, developers supposedly wanted to add gambling elements in the game.
Creating a network of casinos was an idea to make Far Cry 5 even more realistic. It would have been a fantastic opportunity – imagine playing poker and other casino games inside another video game. Also, a casino sign up bonus was considered, which would basically mean giving a player some additional money. But none of those moments was realized in Far Cry 5.
We were promised that exploring the world would be an important part of Far Cry 5 – it is. Hope County makes you climb and explore every forest edge and every hillside, to see all the passes and rivers. And not because there is no longer a mini-map. Not because all side activities are no longer marked on the map and they need to be searched on their own. Not for rewards and quests. Just to enjoy the beauty – not from under the stick, but of your own free will.
The game periodically tries to catch horror with corpses and tearful notes. Here, for example, we have a very atmospheric, creepy introduction and a convincing villain – pastor-father Joseph Seed, sincerely believing in his own deeds, reading soulful monologues, and showing the most realistic, wading cry in the history of the gaming industry. And here are quests to find alien artifacts, a chase on an armored truck and a hunt for bull-filled seed eggs.
Shooting Your Way Through
Inside Far Cry 5, there is another game. A linear story shooter is hidden under the shell of an open map and random adventures.
Well, the charm of the main gameplay – the very adventures in the open world, for which the game exists, is again in the random house. Sectarians can always jump out of the forest on a quad bike and arrange a shootout with the rebels.
Wild moose can fight with bears and transfer the fight to the nearest outpost. Sometimes planes suddenly land on their tail, sometimes they fall right on a group of your allies. A lot of things happen in Hope County, and it is therefore interesting to spend a couple of dozen hours in it.
Far Cry 5 has good core mechanics – it is fun to shoot here, and the shootout game always tries to make it even more interesting. The system will work even if the plot is completely excluded from it. All this is even cooler in the cooperative, which now stretches through the whole game.
True, progress with co-passage is maintained only by the host, so co-op is more for a fun evening than for a full co-passage. If there is no life partner for the game, you can take a computer one – there are nine of them, and they even have unique abilities, but these assistants are stupid scary, I already complained about it in essence. Among the possible friends, there is the cutest Boomer song, the Cheeseburger bear, and the Peach cougar.
There’s a point where the game ceases to amaze, you start to see patterns; you guess in advance when the sectarians will jump out of the forest; and when an enemy plane will appear in the sky. At the same time, activities increasingly begin to overlap and break down. You, for example, try to go fishing, and a boat rushes along the river, and a rocket flies into your face from it. Or you are covered with machine-gun fire from a helicopter when you calmly shoot at a shooting range.
But before Far Cry 5 gets annoying, it will take 20-30-40 hours, and this is a hell of a lot.
Overall
Far Cry 5 is an absolutely ordinary, good game. There is everything for which it is customary to love the series, and on top, there is also a real cooperative, and incredible landscapes – so the game can be considered the best in the series. But the new part will not convince the haters of the franchise, the screams about the conveyor will not subside. Yes, they’ve simplified the pumping, removed the dreary craft and towers, added fishing, and now hunting is only needed to earn money, but basically Far Cry 2 is still the basis.
And there is nothing wrong with it, after all – no one does that except Ubisoft. The game has also a narrative sequel called Far Cry: New Dawn, but unfortunately, it fails to amaze gamers.