Far Cry 4 Review

Shameless in its familiarity, Far Cry 4 is a mostly fun and occasionally fascinating iteration on Far Cry 3's reward circuit formula, with all meta-narrative ambition stripped away to make room for the real star of the show: the gameplay.

As a fan of the Far Cry series, I found myself experiencing a strange kind of hype whiplash in the months leading up to this one's release. On the one hand, the new environment and the set-up for the story seemed genuinely interesting; on the other, the low level minutia of actual gameplay seemed incredibly similar to the previous game. The information and further gameplay we were shown painted (at least for me) an unprecedented likeness to Far Cry 3, which was a fairly big deal for this series.

Strange Deja Vu  

And after getting 20 or so hours into it, the feelings of familiarity definitely only increased. The mixture of old and new ideas is pretty largely skewed, and on paper the balance doesn't seem too flattering for the game -- but everyone and their dog has already mentioned how "samey" it feels, so I'll save you that trouble. In any case, it was kind of a foregone conclusion given the 1/2 as long development cycle.

It isn't just the gameplay, though -- many of the missions in the campaign are riffs on previous escapades (some more obvious than others), with some pretty standard "decision making" thrown in. From what I've seen, these decisions don't really affect the outcome much, which is both annoying and nice. Annoying, in that Ubisoft thinks I'll enjoy these little decision trees even though they have little bearing on the plot, and nice because in a game with an inexplicable lack of save slots, I just don't give enough of a shit to start over and see how it would play out had chosen Sabal over Amita. Which brings me to the characters.

Characters Welcome?

While I was afraid Pagan Min would turn out to be a half-assed Vass clone, he quickly became my favorite (just as Ubisoft intended, I'm sure). His appearances bookend the game and just like with Vaas, I found myself leaning in and turning up my TV to hear him -- Troy Baker deserves huge props for making a character with a tiny fraction of the screen time as the others the most interesting one.

There really ins't much to say about the headbutting leaders of the Golden Path, Amita and Sabal. Amita is the modernist, Sabal the traditionalist. Neither side is explored in a deep way, and outside of a single drug trip that causes you to hallucinate the "dark side" of the one you've backed, their motivations and goals are incredibly under-developed. Side characters like Yogi/Reggie and Hurk are apparently just here for comedic relief -- the only other one I was interested in listening to was Longinus, the African arms dealer. Other than that, Ubisoft played it pretty damn safe with this cast.

"Skyrim with guns"

The rest of the gameplay should be very familiar to anyone who's played a Ubisoft game -- climb a tower, reveal stuff, do stuff. This time there are even more collectibles to find, outposts to liberate, caves to explore, animals to hunt, and skills to purchase. The new side missions are a mixed bag fun-wise (convoys are great, hunting is bleh) and there is an increased emphasis on leaderboards and replayability. The core gameplay is as fun as before, but the amount of hedging on display here is a little unfortunate.

Far Cry 4 is a fun, mostly engaging game. It's just kind of a bummer to see a franchise that had consistently tried to take risks and challenge its audience become so much of a "paint by numbers" affair. While the "ankle-deep ocean" type experience works relatively well here, I find myself wondering how sustainable the Far Cry franchise can really be with only 2 years between games -- the franchise is at a crossroads, and I think the next game will define the future of the series. Here's hoping for something that isn't such a sure thing.      

Far Cry 4: Halfway-through-the-game impressions

I'm about 20 hours in, and hopefully more than halfway done with the campaign. At this point, the experiences have had enough time to marinate and allow me to form some relatively solid opinions on the game:

- The campaign is very reminiscent of Far Cry 2, in that it is very boring. None of the missions are particularly memorable, and the "decision moments" seem like a cop-out so Ubisoft didn't have to commit to a linear narrative (which is apparently a bad thing).

- The characters are also pretty bleh. Pagan Min and his buddies don't seem very interesting except for Paul, who was the first one you had to deal with. Noore could've been interesting with some development, but I don't know what happened there. Overall, the campaign feels rushed and repetitive, like the developers knew it wasn't really the focus of the game, which is a shame.

- The amount of side content is ridiculous and overwhelming. There's very little breathing room in this game -- no wonder they let you turn off the HUD. The amount of filler aka "collectibles" is also staggering and disheartening. I much prefer having a small number of collectibles that actually mean something (the memory vaults in Psychonauts, Jackal tapes in FC2) than this dreck. I don't need an incentive to explore the world in an open world game, guys. Have a little faith, jeez.

- The "karma" thing is weird. I like random encounters, but the idea that murdering soldiers is a good deed is questionable.

- I'm over halfway into the story and so far the game seems to have nothing to say about the blurry line between terrorist and freedom fighter, the nature of patriotism, returning to your birthplace as an outsider, or anything significant really. People gave Far Cry 3 shit about using tropes and cliches, but at least they tried. Here's hoping for a redeeming final act.

- The grappling is pretty sweet. The map design as a whole seems solid, although honestly it all kinda blends together. The buzzard is also pretty cool, but kind of gimmick-y, as are the elephants.

Once I finish it I'll wrap the whole game up with a real review, but I like this as an in-between. Still interested to see how it all shakes out.

Haken - Restoration

The latest from the standard bearers of modern progressive music is a testament to their improved songwriting abilities - tasteful, yet restrained  

The newest release from progressive rock's saviors, Restoration is an EP intended to slake our thirst for new Haken songs while they write their next album (which will be awesome). Wait, did I say new? Because they aren't really new - they're based off of songs from their original demo CD Enter The 5th Dimension from way back in 2008. I was kinda bummed when I heard that these songs wouldn't be  100% new, original compositions, but after hearing how it turned out I wanted to put out a little review of it. There are 3 songs here, all of which are based on songs off Enter... to varying degrees:

"Darkest Light" - A rock solid opener with a killer lead, "Darkest Light" and it's 2008 ancestor "Blind" have always been favorites of mine. The guys have done a good amount of fat-trimming on Restoration, but the missing parts from "Blind" are the bits I miss the most - the carnival music was cute and I'm always a fan of random samples, but I don't really miss the instrumental stretch.

"Earthlings" - Now this is more like it: a track that sucked originally is redone into something listenable. I'm not a huge fan of either this or "Black Seed", but this version is definitely more interesting. The harmony/Gentle Giant vocals help give this track some legs to stand on, but it's still kinda forgettable.

"Crystallised" - The "epic" piece of the EP clocking in at around 22 minutes, and easily the best song - in fact, this song is one of their best in general. It apes "Snow" pretty closely but probably contains the most actually "new" music to be found here - plus, apparently Mike Portnoy plays a gong at the end? I dunno. Anyway, it's amazing, and they  do the Gentle Giant harmony thing again here, and it's incredible - definitely one of their most emotional tracks.

As for the actual sound of it? It's pretty good. Enter... sounded like it was recorded on an Xbox Live headset (especially Ross' vocals, yuck), so just the increased production value alone makes these songs worth hearing. If you liked Enter... then you'll probably like Restoration, and if you didn't like Enter... then you'll like this even more, as the songwriting is much better on this release.

Far Cry 4: Blurred Lines

So Far Cry 4 is coming out in a couple weeks, and I'm... cautiously pessimistic? There's been a ton of gameplay released on YouTube, which could've been cool, but mostly just shows the same couple of missions and areas, which is weird. At this point, I think we all know what we're getting, which is a problem I have with this game - overexposure.

The game mechanics are another - and yes, I realize the developers had only 2 years instead of the usual 4 for this one, and that Far Cry 3 was such a huge smash that of course they would keep the mechanics in place. My problem is that, while they were pretty sweet, Far Cry 3's mechanics felt very unique to that game - and by re-using them (in a practically identical way, too) in a different title, they won't make as much sense.

A Sequel in Name Only

One of this series' main claims to fame (Pretty good, right?) is that each entry has been pretty significantly (mechanically, at least) different from its siblings. The original was a fast-paced shooter/tech demo with an emphasis on challenge. The sequel went in the opposite direction, with stiff, uncompromising gameplay and a bleak, (unintentionally) nearly-absent narrative that came together to form a very different experience . Then, Far Cry 3 came along and pulled another switcheroo, shoving all these characters into our faces and giving us a deep, if narrow sandbox to play in. 

What's significant about all this crap that you probably already knew, is that Far Cry 4 is clearly recycling a lot of stuff from Far Cry 3 - which is...fine, Far Cry 3 took the setting and camera mechanics of the first Far Cry and that worked pretty well - but I'm worried that some of the stuff they're re-using maybe won't work as well in this new game.

Smooth Moves

First, the "takedowns". These were a huge part of what made Far Cry 3's combat so fun, while also being a great metaphor for Jason's transformation into a monster. Remember these?

One thing should be clear to you: these are not nice ways to kill people. In fact, when you think about it, sneaking up behind someone and jamming a machete down their throat is a really, really crazy (like mentally ill crazy) way to murder someone, and the fact that these moves are so powerful and useful (compared to, you know, guns) speaks a lot to the game's message. Jason/you is kind of a psycho, hence the Michael Myers-esque combat.

And now, we're playing as a totally different guy who seems to be pretty normal, yet who continues the tradition of these over-the-top, horrific killing methods. Just doesn't make any sense.

And that's not even getting into the rest of the same-old stuff, like the bell towers, outposts and "bigger" outposts, and the grab-bag of assorted filler that Ubisoft is known and loved for. With all the negative reactions the game is getting, though, maybe Far Cry 5 will be something different again.