For the record, I completed Far Cry 3 and didn't want to shag that bitch who wanted to kill you after a night of hot sex. For my sins, the Ubisoft came out with Far Cry 4.
FC3 was a fantastic game. Simple to understand and with enough slaughtering to keep even Idi Amin in a coma entertained. To live up to that expectation isn't going to be simple so does FC4 deliver?
Gameplay is more of the Same?
I have no problems with the story line, I really do not care if AJ is a mix breed with Asian blood but he sounds the same as the character you play in FC3—Jason Brody. His voice is the same too, and you could have sworn he can't be totally Asian...so onward to Nepal....ahem....Kyrat. The Kingdom where wild elephants don't get altitude sickness.
Pagan Min is your foe. For his part, he's just a bad ass drug dealer dictator which you need to get rid off. The gameplay is more of the same, where you traverse this strange land which bears a huge resemblance to the landscape in FC3. Too bad there are no gun boats on the lake, or for that matter sharks for the taking.
I don't mind developers reusing the code for the landscape but the fun factor is sorely lacking. For example, there are far fewer outpost in the first half of the game than expected. In FC3, the first half was roughly 70 percent of the game, for FC4 it's 50 percent. The game itself is broken down into 3 segments which opens up once you complete the required mission. Bummer.
The take downs, sniping, killing softly without being heard with a knife or Kukri is now the pillar of the FC franchise. This has defined the game but how much of that is pure genius versus stupidity depends on the size of the game. It has gotten bigger thanks to the variety but much of the parameters in which you execute your bloodlust are restrictive. The mythical Shangri-la challenges aren't much in terms of gun play so let's leave that one out. Aside from that, the killing doesn't really deliver the same sense of relish one gets from FC3.
It's Not Open World
No matter how open world the game proclaims itself to be, the missions are all linear. You can't progress unless you complete the necessary missions and you're locked into the Southern part of Kyrat and the game won't let you progress past the King's Bridge in the norther part. And there are so many side missions that don't quite appeal to you but you have no choice but to do it.
You have to slaughter your way to the north. Earning cash has become far easier as you can virtually kill animals and sell the skins for a good price. But guns and ammo are only available to you when you liberate more telco towers. This is where most of the problem lies. You don't get enough of them to have all the choices open to you.
Too many of the missions are tied to conventional and often dumb pretences. For example there are a few missions where you are not to be seen, of for that matter can't be seen by any of your enemy. This sort of bullshit makes the game very restrictive and shows that the developers were running out of ideas. Previously, FC3 made restrictive use of weapons for some of these side missions. That was enough but when it comes to the main mission, you get agitated as not being seen can mean you can't attack them from the air. Flying is cool. I hate driving as I have to put up with the gawd awful DJ and music on the radio. Turning off permanently would be cool but you can't do that. So the driving experience is annoying. You have to remember to turn off the radio each time you get into a vehicle or get subjected to the evil ranting of an Asian DJ.
There is lots more variety in the game and you go around rescuing hostages, making deliveries and killing the odd Royalist for better Karma.
There are more skirmishes on the roads, and attacks by Royalist on outpost you have captured. Defending them is really up to you but in the end, the gameplay suffers as each of these become very superficial. You can replay the outpost takeover with the Outpost Challenge which pits you with the Royalist once again for points. You can even commander an Elephant to help with the attack, a feat which you must earn in the skill tree.
All this means there is a lot more to do but the weakness here is that each outpost becomes relatively boring to attack. This is where the developers thought of the Fortress. This is suppose to be heavily fortified and before attacking one, you are warned that you risk being wiped out if you don't play it in coop mode with a friend. This is utter rubbish of course, as I sauntered into two of these fortresses in my pyjamas, told them to clear out....which they didn't and proceeded to attack me with choppers and mortars and they in turn felt what middle age angst was all about—with bodies piled high and me smoking a cigar after I was done. Unfortunately, there are only 4 Fortresses so you don't get to exercise your blood lust that often.
More attention is being given to side missions, where you rescue hostages, take on delivery challenges, speed around for an action cam sequence and kill some exotic beast for a fashion quest. The taking down of the Towers or telco towers is no big shakes as there are far less of it in the first half of the game.
This restrictive gameplay makes this a non Open World concept. FC3 had better gameplay in the first half than all of FC4.
Weapons let Down
I was mildly disappointed that the developers used the same weapons as in FC3. The AK47, SVD, M700 and all its ilk are all there. This time around, they have given you more signature weapons, which are in most cases derivatives of the main weapons.
I would have appreciated better planning for the game instead of reusing the code from FC3 but hey, it's profit before anything else. Each weapon introduced has to be redesigned and its game mechanics coded. So this cost money. Why not reuse the code right? Enough said.
The only noticeable change is that the game opens up in coop mode after the first act. This means you can play with friend in real time. You get to have your partner sit shot gun with you in a mini helicopter to mow down the enemy while you fly and avoid incoming fire.
Embellishing your weapons with upgrades would seem like a good idea, like maybe use an AK 47 with a silencer or extended magazine. But that doesn't happen. Coding is expensive.
In any FPS game, the gun play makes an important consideration in any attack. That's why they call it an FPS? But that concept has been lost with Ubisoft. For example a range finder scope could be used to determine the effectiveness of a particular type of weapon over a distance, but that's too much code to consider in a game like this. Instead they give you range finding between your and your mission objective. If you can be precise...then why not for your choice of weapons?
Conclusion
I am not entirely sold on the gameplay. For that it gets dumbed down a notch. The enemy AI isn't smarter either. They run around more but they often run pass you like they were blind in one eye. The linear type gameplay spoils the game as not everyone will appreciate the variety. For me, taking on an outpost and liberating towers in FC3 did it for me. The story telling in FC3 where you explore the Rook Islands was far more engaging too. In FC4, you seem to be on the receiving end of beggars as everyone has a sob story to share and want you to be part of it.
The border delineation between Royalist or Rebel territory has also gotten murky. You find Royal army personnel patrolling the same roads as the Rebels so it gets a bit jaunting when you see one up the road from the other. This also makes placing mines for difficult as in FC3, the militia versus the native forces are clearly marked by territory you have gained. They don't patrol areas that have fallen. If you kill the rebels in mistake, you get penalised in Karma points.
The only good thing that came out of the developers was the seizing of the Propaganda stations where you need to destroy the base along with everyone in it. This to me was the winning formula for any FPS die hard. You get to place mines, explosives and take out the enemy as the come round to rescue their own. Unfortunately you don't get a lot of that in the game either.
The Pagan's Wrath side mission is hopelessly easy...and stupid too as you only ambush three propaganda vehicles without them calling for back up. So if you have three C4 charges places correctly, you can take them out all at once.
The introduction of the Mercenary Ticket is utterly useless. For a fee, you can summon a mercenary to help you attack a convoy but they can't help in a main mission. Even if you do summon them, the chances of them getting shot in the first five seconds of a fire fight is extremely high and you can't call for more back up coz you're too busy controlling the situation at hand.
This game is too focused on the story telling, which to me gets rather dull towards the end. The alternate endings where you get to kill everyone and spare Pagan Min is probably comparable to what you get in FC3. That said, it was never the ending but good gameplay that gets people coming back for more. The diverse gaming landscape also detracts from its FPS roots, a point often lost in reviews on the game.
I am not totally convinced Ubisoft has done a good job in continuing the successful legacy of FC3. They tried to make it more challenging with more variety but end up messing up that successful formula.
Rating
