LONG BLOG
Far Cry 4: First Impressions
Hello Dtoiders, so I went out on Tuesday and got Far Cry 4 for PS4. I've played 10-12 hours so far and I just wanted to share a few thoughts on the game with you.
I'm not gonna bore you with story details, but let me just say it's miles ahead of Far Cry 3 in that department. While many people loved Vaas, he was not really the main villain pulling the strings, but merely a puppet. A couple minutes into FC4 we meet Pagan Min, the dictator of Kyrat, and I became hooked instantly. This is solely due to the great Troy Baker. He does a brilliant job (doesn't he always!?) of portraying this psychopath. Unfortunately, so far he hasn't shown up again aside from some radio chatter, but as I progress in the story there surely will be more of him.
For anyone familiar with FC3, they will feel right at home gameplay-wise. This is essentialy the same gameplay maelstrom of freeing outposts, liberating towers, hunting animals in order to craft better equipment, driving, doing main missions and so on. So, if you're tired of Ubisoft's open-world formula, this won't change your mind. But, Ubisoft Montreal did a great job of diversifying what's there. Now you have many random events taking place in the world, so called Karma Events, like animals attacking helpless people, enemy couriers driving around, soldiers taking hostages or outposts you previously freed being under attack. Complete enough of these Karma Events and you will earn tokens which let you summon mercenaries who fight by your side. Pretty neat.
Thankfully you can also shoot while driving now, or you can press L3 and activate auto-pilot, sit back and take in the sights. And sights there are. The game looks beautiful on PS4, with long draw distances, smooth framerate and a colourful, diverse world. The only thing missing so far is weather effects, but that might come as I make my way higher into the mountains.
The real star of the show is co-op though. I've played roughly four hours with a good buddy, and the fun is only amplified. You can do everything together there's to do except for the main story missions. Attacking outposts is so much more fun when you have a friend and work out your plan of attack to perfection! On a side note, the player joining the host is there to support the latter, which means any outposts or towers you liberated or missions you completed won't carry over to that person's single player progress, which means you have to do the stuff again if you're on your own. Little bit of a bummer, but we just take turns "assisting" the other.
I would say so far Chris Carter's and all the other positive reviews are spot on, this game is a blast to play! For anyone who even remotely enjoyed it's predecessor, Far Cry 4 is a must-play. Great mission variety, fun co-op, gorgeous graphics, riding elephants into battle, helicopters(!), interesting story, Troy Baker (!!)... What's not to like?!
Also, I haven't encountered any bugs or frequent glitches as in Ubi's other big franchise iteration this year, Assassin's Creed Unity. Online co-op works like a charm as well. Thank God!
Cheers, Saul.
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