FAR CRY 5 REVIEW: HELL COMES... — You Don't Read Comics

Mar 28

Mar 28 FAR CRY 5 REVIEW: HELL COMES...

Welcome to Hope County Montana! Big Sky Country!! Where the Bad Guys abuse the holy shit out of the "Unlimited Everything" Game Genie code....and the Government don't give a single fuck!

First things first....it's a Far Cry game so it's a pain in the ass...but I digress. Now I can get behind the suspension of disbelief and ignore the fact that White Trash County U.S.A. somehow has literally infinite helicopters, airplanes, guns, ammo, people, and bears....and that the U.S. Government has basically decided to ignore it on every level. Sure....in this day and age, it's not a huuuuge stretch....but the rest of the "Meta" kind of pisses me off....

Anyways...the "Meta"....The game straight up tells you to burn your clothes and change into something else so you're "unrecognizable", it spends half a cut scene explaining that you need to blend in and be a civilian....except every single person KNOWS YOU ON SIGHT!! Even people who have been kidnapped, locked in shipping containers, and abandoned in the middle of nowhere for God knows how long, are just like "Oh yeah! You're that Deputy...i heard about you!"....How!? How, Sway!? And the bad guy grunts who ignore plenty of normal people, can not wait to unload every bullet they have in your general direction, just at the glimpse of your dingy ass flannel shirt! Did I miss the A.P.B.? Does the Doomsday Cult have the World's greatest predictive sketch artist? And it's not like "oh, the mobs shoot everything on sight.." They will happily ignore the camp of hippies dancing and singing 20 feet away....but crinkle a bush 100 feet away and the peaceable religious types turn into Borderlands Psychos! It makes stealth important...but it makes the early narrative laughably pointless. Even if you change your clothes after every encounter and you leave no human or animal alive in a square mile radius....it doesn't matter (I tried it)....the Infinite Helicopter Spam Cheater will automatically know who you are....in dense brush....from 200 feet in the air. Like I said....it's kind of a pain in the ass.

Besides all of that, Hunting and Fishing were supposed to be "refreshing" aspects of the game....except the Devs cranked the encounter dial to 100, then broke it off and poured Red Bull on it. Forget about quietly, peacefully, hunting deer in the serene forest, or finding the best fishing hole to relax at. Mountain Lions will absolutely swim a mile across the river to murder you....that's IF the wolves, wolverines, bears, or helicopters don't get you first. And God have mercy on your poor sweet soul if you EVER have to talk to an important NPC near a road. You will never finish that conversation because the Unlimited Helicopter Magician also shits out Unlimited Dirty Pickup Truck Convoys....or Four-Wheelers, or Vans, or Semi Trucks....there's more traffic on these dusty ass dirt roads than there is on any Interstate I have ever seen. That NPC will aggro to every single one of them. And you can't talk to them "In Conflict"....It's frustrating to say the least.

The Gun/Fang for hire system isn't bad...you have a "roster" of random generated nobody NPCs you can hire, as well as a plethora of actual characters and animals that all come with unique abilities. Scout the Dog is a walking UAV that marks every enemy nearby...as well as conveniently bringing you stuff you may or may not need at random, unpredictable intervals. "I need a Molotov!!" *brings prickly lettuce* "Good Doggie!" Cheesburger The Bear will soak up all the aggro for all of 30 seconds ...until it dies and you have to run to where all the aggro is now ironically centered, so you can Res your fucking bear...The pros to having animal companions ...is....well.... that you have animal companions...I've almost abandoned them completely for the perk of having some human person with you that can also Res you back to life if you go down (and you will go down....you fucking will.)

The Big Bads: Joseph Seed and Co. are pretty interesting antagonists. The whole family is bat shit Cray-Cray, and not necessarily in the cliche "mindless bloodthirsty maniac" kind of way...There was some significant thought put into making them the right amount of creepy enough to be scary without being obnoxious. I wanted to make sure I got that point across...the whole game isn't complete shit.