Game Reviews #18 Far Cry 4

Platform: Xbox 360

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Price I Paid: £25.00

Guh. My brother bought this out of his birthday money and played through it saying it was one of the best games he'd ever played. So I had to try it out to make sure he wasn't succumbing to Ubisoft's evil wrath, because Ubisoft have gotten some real bad rep over the past few years, because of releasing sub par games at extortionate prices without trying to fix them, they have become EA 2.0. With that led a trail of naff games including Watch_Dogs and Assassin's Creed Unity. So did Ubisoft Arse redeem themselves with Far Cry 4? No. They did not. But how?

They had such a fantastic set up for the game, the prior games are well respected and known in the gaming community, with Far Cry 3 being a very good game and the previous ones also being fantastically good too. The game is boring, that's the problem. Nothing exciting or unique or original happens. You know what stood out for me? How much this game is like Far Cry 3 but watered down and much, much worse. Let's break it down in bullet point form.

• Variety of ways to heal yourself - featured in Far Cry 3, copied to Far Cry 4
• Skinning animals - featured in Far Cry 3, literally copied the animation to Far Cry 4
• Camp liberation side missions - featured in Far Cry 3, out of place in Far Cry 4
• Un-relatable character - semi-featured in Far Cry 3, full blast in Far Cry 4

So, let's evaluate that. The variety of ways to heal yourself, while the animation is nice, it will get repetitive, fast. It got repetitive in Far Cry 3, but I guess it's nice to have some form of animation, but when you get the same five to six animations every time, it gets repetitive, just like me using the word repetitive, very repetitive indeed.

Skinning animals, no attempt was made of even adding a new animation or changing it one bit. Much like the healing, a variety of animations would've been fantastic, but we're stuck with the exact same animation as Far Cry 3

Camp liberation side missions are out of place. Your character is not a fighter, it's never mentioned that he is, in Far Cry 3, the main character adapted to the land, he grew as a character. In Far Cry 4 however, you're just flung into combat, no growth, just straight in, no difficulty curve, just more and more mundane tasks after another.

The main part of a story should be a good, relatable character. Far Cry 4 seems to have forgotten that. Jason Brody has his character set up in the tutorial of the game, he has a brother, a group of friends and a plot driven story, find his friends. While whatever the hell his name was has a plot drive, which is put his mother's ashes in a shrine of some form, all other information is vague. The only other information we have is that he isn't a fan of Crab Rangu.

How's the gunplay? It's OK. I found it pretty awful when driving, seeing as though RT is usually go forward, it's been taken up by shooting. A logical control to make, but disorienting the first few times you play. Not to mention the vehicles handle like absolute arse.

Poor gunplay, disgracefully bad plot and character development, not to mention the bland characters, however the saving grace is a fairly interesting villain who wears a snazzy pink tuxedo.

Far Cry 4 gets a 3/10