Far Cry 5 (20$/60$)

This is a drawing. I did this.

Being the fifth game of a popular franchise is like being the youngest son of a billionaire dad.  You got big shoes to fill and the world is going to shower you in piss if you are even close to a failure.  Far Cry 1 I never played but was it said to be good for the time. Far Cry 2 was one of the first games and currently few games with a great fire engine.  It had many annoying features but things like hang gliding, burning people and animals alike in a savanna wildfire, and the large and well populated open world gave the series something to live up to. Four years later Far Cry 3 made a splash at E3 with it’s teaser trailer that set a new bar for game trailers.  Micheal Mando absolutely kills the voice acting in a monologue that shows they really up the insanity from Far Cry 2, and Far Cry 3 delivered on the promise the teaser made. This game had everything; Ubisoft style tower system, a half baked stealth system, a bow and arrow before Call of Duty did, hunting, wingsuits, marijuana burning, and a Skrillex/Damien Marley collab that put the dub in dubstep.  Go and play the mission where you burn down the pot farm with a flame thrower and try not to smile when the game sounds cut away and it hits you with Damien’s deep Jamica voice and Skrillex’s sick Wubz. It is one of my favorite missions of all time. But on top of all of those things they had great writing. You truly don’t see Jason becoming a monster and they were able to humanize Vas so well that you could only help but feel sorry for the guy that has been killing your video game friends.  Far Cry 4 took the series away from jungles and set it in a mountainous region in Asia and was not a bad game either but sadly fell short of the bar set by Far Cry 3 due to not making enough advances beyond co-op and a worse story all around. Then the time came for Far Cry 5 to test itself against 3’s great writing and one of a kind missions, and it failed to deliver. It’s not all bad though, the game is polished to hell. Sure it has a shitty story but driving around on an ATV throwing C4 at bears then launching off a cliff into a wingsuit flight is stupid fun that will last you and a friend dozens of hours of enjoyment.  

In a world full of open world shooters it is hard to stand out and at a first glance Far Cry 5 doesn’t have anything new to offer other than it’s setting.  The game is set in rural Montana and features crazy cultists who are so clearly an allegory for crazy white supremacist Christians. Their cross even looks like a Nazi iron cross.  The setting is cool sure, but the game does not directly say they are christian or racist or anything like that. They instead play it safe with the theme so it works, but doesn’t have anything new to say.  The combat isn’t that special either, but just because it is nothing new does not mean it is not fun. The opposite is true. Being the fifth main line game in a AAA series means that they game-play loop is fun and so clean every head shot feels just as smooth to pull off as taking out an entire base with a shovel and some knives.  There are more vehicles than ever with the addition of planes and helicopters in this game as well as ATV and four wheelers that are perfect for quickly moving up Montana’s many mountains. Wing suiting through trees is a breeze to pull off but you feel like a bad ass every time you do. Also there is no real jank or glitches in this game. The menus of the game are simple and sweet.  There's options for creating arcade maps that are so in depth they allow for recreations of classic gaming maps or things like The Joker stairs. The developers also take steps to make the game world be full of NPC activity so that the player never has to run far to encounter something to shoot or loot. The first ten hours or so exploring this game is simply magical.  

Then you realize the polish has a price.  The simple menus that are great for quickly buying and customizing weapons are simple and quick because every gun has the same customization options.  By the end of your game just about every you have will be outfitted with a scope, extended mag, and a silencer. This pushes you to use the stealth system which is basic enough to let you feel cool clearing a outpost without being seen, but this is not a stealth system that will have you hiding bodies or scared of a firefight.  In fact the only mission in this game that is hard, is the first story mission where you are in the passenger seat of a truck fighting off cultists. After that you are a god that simply can not be killed unless it is due to your own stick of dynamite. The problem with the game-play is that it doesn’t encourage different game-play styles.   It is always stealth mode until you get spotted and then blow everything to bits with your silences Browning light machine gun that has armor piercing ammo. They should have had more weapon customization and perk customization that closes out certain other perks. Essentially create a loose class system ala Metal Gear Solid 5 or Assassin's Creed Odyssey that changes the way you tackle outposts in story missions.  Not that silenced shotguns don’t feel great to use. The missions themselves are almost at Far Cry 3 level but the game is a little too afraid to remove player freedom from the missions. Almost every mission can be started and stopped mid mission, and almost none of the missions have interesting stories behind them. Yet, they are not even mindless fun like a pot burning mission. There are a few missions that would have been amazing to have the pop songs playing on nearby radios take over the game audio for a cinematic few moments.  Disco Inferno plays while a redneck with a flamethrower burns crazed drug addicts alive in his trailer park. They have the license to Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Barracuda by Heart, Slowride by Foghat, Sexual Healing by Marvin Gay, and many many many great songs that are even playing on the radio during some specific missions. But for some reason they don’t use this music to create these game-play moments that so few games have dared to do. Not to say the soundtrack is bad. The pause music has been in constant rotation when I smoke weed and think of a simple outdoor life.  

In most ways this game is an escape into the outdoors.  You can do things in this game that feel exhilarating and you can experience landscapes that can only be described as majestic.   It takes you into a modern lawless western and just like other westerns it features a fair share of cliches that you let slide because that pistol looks cool and that man just wrestled a bear.  The game does not have the shitty feel of a repetitive Ubisoft game. It pokes fun at itself more than any game I’ve seen. But this is not a game that will go down in history as anything more than a stepping stone to the next great Far Cry game.  It’s worth your money with friends, worth your money if it is on sale for 15$ but anything higher than 20$ and this game is not worth it. 20$/15$