Ubisoft’s latest installment in their Far Cry series, Far Cry 5, is a fun and wild ride with lots of entertaining activities to do and follows an interesting story, but it has a few issues.
Far Cry 5 is set in the fictional rural landscape of Hope County, Montana that’s been overrun by an extremist religious doomsday cult called The Project at Eden’s Gate, which is led by Joseph Seed.
Without giving away too much of the story, the basic rundown is that the player takes on the role of a junior deputy (called “Rookie” or “Rook” throughout the game) who travels all over the county to link up with the Resistance to rescue their captured squad from the cult and liberate Hope County from the psychotic Seed family: John, Jacob, Faith, and the big bad himself, Joseph Seed.
John, Jacob and Faith are the heralds of their own region in the county and have “abilities” or brutal tactics that keep the citizens of Hope County in fear. As the Rookie you have to build up resistance points to get to each underboss, then finally get to Joseph himself. The game does a great job building up the Seed siblings as terrifying and disturbing people which helps you see why the citizens of Hope County are so afraid of them.
The Seeds are incredibly interesting and tragic people because of their upbringings, which makes them work great as villains. It’s possible to relate to them, but Joseph Seed is an amazing main villain, and in terms of Far Cry villains he’s one of the best. He calls himself “The Father” because he believes he’s the “Chosen One”, and like the rest of his family he’s a charismatic and intimidating man (albeit really creepy sometimes) and it’s understandable why people have flocked to his cult. He’ll do whatever it takes to build up his following and doesn’t shy away from using violence as a tactic. His goal is to bring his following to the “New Eden” after the world ends, hence why they’re called “The Project at Eden’s Gate”. It’s an interesting game of cat and mouse between the player and Joseph because he wants the player to understand his cause and join him, and will do whatever it takes to make it happen.
As said before, Rook has to build up the Resistance in each region to get to the Seed family and there’s tons of things you can do to get points. You’ve got main missions in each region, side missions, liberating outposts, saving people from being abducted, blowing A LOT of cult stuff up, and so much more. It’s definitely fun, but it can get a bit repetitive if you don’t take a break.
Game play is pretty much the same as the previous Far Cry’s but now your character can have up to two companions. There’s nine specialist companions you can meet through missions and three others you can randomly pick up wherever you want. The three animal companions are called Fangs for Hire, and Boomer – a looting and weapon retrieving dog – is the most popular (and cutest). If you don’t want the in-game companions you can send an invite to a friend and play the game in co-op. You can now also customize your character down to gender, what they look like, and what they wear.
And if you need a break from the main narrative there’s also a lot of other activities to bide your time doing in the game’s very large open world. Players can go fishing, hunting, discover pepper stashes, search for Bigfoot, perform stunts littered all across the map, buy and customize cars and planes to drive or fly around in style, go wingsuit flying, or you can just explore the world and unlock new parts of the regions. And any animal you catch or skin you can sell to purchase new weapons and clothing.
The only real issues with the game is the audio which sometimes goes out of sync during cutscenes, and sometimes flying can lag the game a bit. But these issues may differ on different consoles. Also the story can be a bit predictable if you really pay attention to it, but the game has three different endings so that just depends on you.
Overall, Far Cry 5 is not perfect game but it’s fun and has a wild and interesting non-linear campaign. The graphics are superb so the game is beautiful, there’s a lot of stuff to do, the villains are amazing, the soundtrack is stunning, Boomer is a good boy, and despite the few issues the game has they don’t take away from the experience at all. Therefore, Far Cry 5 is a great game and so far one of the best of 2018.
