Review! Far Cry 4

System:  Playstation 4 (also available on pretty much anything that isn't handheld)
How far did you get:  One campaign completion, did most of the important side stuff, didn't touch multiplayer

 Far Cry 4 is in a different position than Far Cry 3 was.  Far Cry 3 came off the heels of the frustrating Far Cry 2, and set a very high bar for the series.  Far Cry 4 comes off the heels of one of the best games of 2012, and unfortunately feels a bit like a rehash. 

Most of the things that were great about Far Cry 3 are still here, but that's a double edged sword.  While it's a beautiful game, controls well, and hits most of Far Cry 3's high marks, I still felt like I was playing something I've already played before.  This works for competitive games like Call of Duty, but the large and detailed campaigns are Far Cry's focus, and doing the same thing again is going to get boring after a while.

There are a few differences, but most of them are not for the better.  The setting is fine, but the story in Far Cry 4 is far less interesting.  The character you play as is painfully dull and puts you in the shoes of an obnoxious yes-man.  The two characters who send you on main story missions are both insane, and ask a ridiculous amount from you, and you're character just accepts it all.  He doesn't even ask why, he just does whatever they say.  The only reason you're in Tibet to begin with is to bury your mothers ashes at the specific place she asked, and without a single question, you agree to join a civil war.  Yeah, ok.  The side mission characters come off as so cartoony that you can't take any of their missions seriously.  The only character in the game that has a pretty great personality is the main villain, and he's criminally underused.  The only really interesting side missions come from putting a painting back together.  Each time you get a piece, you are taken to the spiritual world of Shangri-La.  You get to use some pretty cool powers here, and it has it's own story.  It also has the only real final boss this game has, and actually has real battle mechanics to figure out.  It's trippy, visually interesting and better than the main game most of the time. 

I didn't play the multiplayer component, but one pretty great thing added to Far Cry 4 was campaign co-op.  You have to unlock it about an hour into the game, but you and a buddy can join up and work out strategies on taking over base camps.  That's a welcome change over Far Cry 3's broken extra co-op missions.


Far Cry 4 is Far Cry 3 with a slightly shinier coat of pain, better co-op, and a bad story.  It's a competently made game and it is fun, but innovation seemed to be overlooked, which is too bad considering the series seemed to be going in the right direction.

Rating- 70/100