This review is rather a little late as I only got to play the game now, six months after it's release. I got the game on steam last week and have sunk nearly 66 hours in the game so far. On its release, Farcry 5 was hailed as a solid game by many review sites, which made me want to play as I was quite surprised at AC Origins, which in some ways made the otherwise stagnant AC franchise, a bit more appealing; having played all Farcry games since Farcry 3 - which in many ways stand out to be one of the best of the series - I expected that somebody back at Ubisoft has breathed fresh air into the studio, if nothing else. So, I got the game on steam for $39.99 without the season pass and installed it. Here is my review.
WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD
System Specs and graphics:
I don't own a beast system: an Amd Saphire 270X 2 GB, a Haswell i5, and 16 GB of ram. However, the Dunia engine, used for this game is the same that was used in Farcry 4 and Primal. Needless to say, except the support of 4k, the rest of it fairly the same - I was able to run the game at 40+ FPS with high graphics preset. Suffice to say that many of you who own better hardware can experience the game at a smooth 60 FPS.
Story:
Farcry games have never been big on stories, let's get that one out of the way; obviously I was not expecting something ground breaking here, yet the setting being rural Montana did get my hopes high. I mean, you have a religious cult in American south, that have militarized themselves. What's not to like? The themes this game could have explored are many, yet despite all of that, it is too soft. The Antagonist is the weakest I have seen since Vaas gave my nightmares in FC3. However, this time around, Ubisoft has lost the plot entirely, so to say.
The story is, in fact, so weak here that in order to build a dynamic between the player and the Antagonist, the game forces you to be kidnapped by the villain and his siblings, multiple times to advance the story - and there's nothing you can do about it. It is infuriating in a game which has excellent elements yet can't combine it into a cohesive narrative. Joseph Seed, is portrayed as a fanatic, but he is forgotten entirely as you play the initial hours of the game. He is hiding behind his three siblings, John, Faith and Jacob seed, each of whom controls a main area of the map. Yet they only appear to be glorified mafia bosses - a lot of bark but no bite. I never felt the urge to just kill one of these bosses. And that brings me to back to my earlier comment on how soft the game tends to be as far as the main Antagonists are concerned.
To illustrate my point, at one point in the game, one NPC, the sheriff, was taken away by Faith seed and is about to commit suicide as a result of brainwashing. The player, that is you, has to kill off a ton of enemies and turn of drug valves that are pouring hallucinogens in the Sheriff's cell. However, after the sheriff tells you to hurry along as he is about to put hang himself, he in the end is saved by you. I really think the game should have just killed the Sheriff, if only to make me pissed off at Faith and make an emotional connection with the game. Sadly, the game wasted a great opportunity to connect the player to the main story. There's a happy ending for you, too happy to be cared about!
In other words there is no sense of loss here, nothing that makes you take out the bad guys. Unlike Farcry 3, where the Protagonist's brother is killed by Vaas, ruthlessly and you are just mad at the sheer injustice of it all. Fortunately, there are dozens of NPC's around which offer more backstories of their own than the main characters in the game.
Gameplay, Bugs and Glitches:
You have heard it said: There's nothing new under the sun! That is unfortunately, literally true for this game. While there are new helicopters and plane rides available, they don't add a lot of flavor to the overall game. Yes you get the occasional "I'm gonna blow this outpost from the air", most of the time it just doesn't work.
There are some very strange game design choices here. While you can expect it to deliver the traditional Farcry experience, this time around they tried new ideas, like NPC's that fight like hired help - only to make a complete mess out of the game. There are too many things to do that don't add anything to the playing experience. Too much of game-play is about punching cows, collecting pipes, skinning animals and catching fish. yet while I was initially excited about some of the things, it ultimately creates a very unbalanced game.
This time around, you don't make experience points, you get Perk points for doing certain challenges, that are available from the get go. Perk points are important as they unlock new abilities. These points are rewarded to you for various tasks, like skinning animals, shooting skills, trying out all weapons, number of kills, using your NPC partners in combat. Although this looks good in writing, the gameplay is anything but. Because you can't earn perk points via the story or experience, you have to try all styles of playing, using all weapons to reach a minimum kill count in order to gain the abilities. That in my view, is so much choice that it ends as a bad taste in your mouth. You can't play with your preferred weapons and gear all the time if you need those perks. It's beyond stupid, as it seemed the devs just wanted you to experience every mechanic in the game, by force. That to me is a lame game-design choice - rather than introducing various weapons in the game via story driven missions or any other way which makes you want to use something specific to get a certain task done, the game makes you try everything and gives you too much.
Here's another: You can use the nine special NPC's in the game, each having a unique skill, to fight alongside you. Their skills vary from stealth to raw power, to enemy detection and hunting bonus' and while some of them are really useful, the game AI doesn't know what is more appropriate and makes no apology for this gross oversight. For instance, if you are playing with the NPC that has a hunting bonus, you can make them kill an animal for you as you need the skin for a mission, however, more often than not the NPC's will use a fire arrow, completely burning the animal so that you can't have the undamaged skin.
Or if you are yet undetected in an enemy outpost, and you are silently killing off enemies with arrows, you'r partner NPC might start firing his Missile Launcher or shotgun, to ruin off the stealth approach.
Let me list some bizarre things here, that are either further bad game-design choices or simply bugs:
1. You can apply a silencer to most of the weapons, including an LMG, however, there are no experience or skill points for stealth kills - none at all.
2. You can shoot down planes and helicopters via missile launchers and .50 cal rifles, however, they are more likely to fall on you. I mean, let's be honest here, there is so much joy in knowing that you two shot a plane with armor piercing armor, only to have it crash land on you, killing you in the process.
3. The game makes you interact with objects like opening a door, that is like a four second animation that is cinematic, unfortunately, enemies can kill you in those four seconds, and you can mash a million buttons on the keyboard but can do nothing about it but to face palm yourself as the animation ends and the screen goes grey-scale showing you that you died during the process.
4. At one point in the game, during a main story mission, you are told to smash and ram through enemy road blocks in a big truck. One of those roadblocks has an oil tanker stationed in the middle of the road to stop you. And when I gleefully rammed it, as the game tells you to, you are blown to smithereens. Yes, start over and this time, gently stop and drive around the tanker. I mean, seriously!
5. You can't really control your NPC's in any meaningful way. They are buggy and usually get stuck in the middle of a road, a field, in a vehicle and stop following you. I had to abort missions, switch the NPC and then switch it back again to have the NPC move.
6. Occasionally you can see farm animals mating as well, which I suppose is there for the sake of being comic, if nothing else.
There are too many bugs to list down here. I am baffled that post six months after launch, Farcry 5 has still so many gameplay bugs.
The damn thing landed on me
Combat:
It is a good shooter but not as polished as was expected by Ubisoft. Don't get me wrong, some of the weapons are an absolute joy to use but those instances are far and few. It's pretty standard Farcry shooting experience. Nothing home to write about. Is it a good FPS, yes it is, occasionally. There is too much going on for any positive experience to remain so for too long, it's either a bug or glitch or some other meaningless activity for some mundane reward that will simply break any good will the game tries to make.
The boss fights are horrendous, to say that least, and I am being generous here. For instance, killing Faith Seed, a boss in the game, is an exercise in mediocrity. She is the lamest boss around. All you have to do is to shoot at her with an LMG and she is toast, however, difficulty aside, the boss battle has all the creativity of tits on a boar. Basically she levitates in the air but stays there ranting about her religious dogmatic beliefs while you can shoot her till kingdom come.
For some reason, since the days of Farcry 3, Ubisoft has some special affection for drug fueled combat. At least in that game, drugs were part of the story and played a part. In Farcy 5, however, is it kind of shoveled down your throat. Instead of offering tactical battles, the game takes you on long cinematic scenes where you experience drugs directly or indirectly, in either case, they are the most boring sections of the game.
That one good thing:
I must say in spite of so many flaws in the game, it really made my jaw drop at a crucial moment within the story where the player - you - experience brain washing, and let me tell you guys, it was a point in the game where I was fed up by reoccurring and repetitive drug fueled trips. I was so fed up, in fact, that I ended up killing an ally just because of the sheer repetitiveness of the task, yes the game makes you do it 4 times, however, you become so adept at it that when I finally turned the corner to see the usual last person to kill in the mission, it was my own ally and without blinking I killed him off. Now, it's not a choice, you have to kill that NPC in order to progress however, what really made me think was that the game kind of indirectly brain washed me. I wasn't surprised that I had killed the character, what surprised me was the robotic accuracy that I had done it with. I had played that mission 4 times (the game makes you) hating it on every repeat, wanting to end it as soon as I could; and by the 4th time I was able to because I remembered all of the enemy positions. I realized at that moment that at least there was one silver lining to all of the rinse and repeat missions. It was moment of sheer genius of the game and I applaud it. It was a great experience. Sadly, there is not much like it elsewhere in the game.
Overall Verdict:
I wonder if Ubisoft is the new Bethesda! Everything works but inconsistently and mostly without no purpose. The map is huge but is filled with meaningless activities. The shooting feels exciting at times but there is nothing here that is out of the ordinary. Farcry 5 is an overall disappointment for me. Only time will tell if Ubisoft will learn from these mistakes and make things better in a future Farcry game.
I'd give it a 7/10.
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P.S I have been wanting to do a God of War review for sometime. Would you guys like to see one? I know it's already too late but I thought, why not? Let me know. Thanks.
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