Seconds are ticking away. The score is 45 to 40 with just under two minutes remaining in the match.
“Watch out guys! There is a huge gorilla chasing me,” exclaims my teammate. I turn around to see an oversized gorilla decimating my team, and I hear bullets from the enemy team buzz over my head. The last few seconds of the match are filled with a feverous effort trying to fend off the hellish assault from the punishing primate while maintaining the ongoing war between the two teams.
Ubisoft’s “Far Cry 5” is a fast-paced venture into a little piece of quaint America, one that keeps you on edge as you try to save Hope County from a disillusioned cult.
The latest entry in the action-adventure “Far Cry” series takes a new approach to the game’s storytelling. In past games, you were an established character that had relationships, to a degree, with the world around you. The new installment changes the player to a customizable avatar that is a fresh face to the town you hope to eventually liberate from the occupying cult and its leaders.
The game thrusts the player into a fictional warzone-like region set in a modern version of Montana, known as Hope County.
Hope County is chock full of dangerous outposts, hazardous terrain, irate cult members, and vicious predators, among others. Taking a few steps into the picturesque scenery can turn a simple stroll into a rancorous fight for your life with the sheer number of treacherous obstacles laying in wait.
The gameplay stays true to the mechanics that “Far Cry” fans have come to know and enjoy. One noticeable and welcomed change to the gameplay is the exclusion of tower climbing to reveal a new region of the map. The new way of uncovering the map is also key to meeting new characters and unlocking missions to help aid your fight against the sadistic cult. Ubisoft’s inclusion of “Guns for Hire’ and “Fangs for Hire” from past “Far Cry” games also adds a fun and exciting mercenary mechanic to help the player liberate Hope County.
The story consists of systematically taking down the cult and its leader in no particular order. The cult is overseen by the charismatic Joseph Seed, with the map being broken down into three territories that are controlled by Seed’s “family.” Each one of these leaders is unique and has a function they perform for the cult. It is up to the player to choose which leader to tackle first and help liberate the surrounding lands from their malicious grip.
After taking down the leaders of the three regions, the player is tasked with chasing down the cult’s frontrunner. The ending is up to the player, as you get to decide Seed’s fate.
Outside of the single-player campaign, which is entirely playable with one other person in a CO-OP, there is the “Far Cry Arcade.” The Arcade is a multiplayer mode that supports teams of up to six people, who can team up or compete against one another. The multiplayer section offers a slew of different modes of gameplay. There are two main categories that are divided into “Single-player and CO-OP” or “Multiplayer.”
The “Single-player and CO-OP” game modes are made up of smaller and more tactical matches, where the players are given tasks to perform and complete to earn a victory, such as liberating an outpost or bounty hunting.
The “multiplayer” game mode is the more standard game mode that one would expect in a traditional online game, offering standard single and team death matches.
One of the biggest aspects to the Arcade is that the maps are player created in-game using the “Arcade Map Editor.” The map editor uses assets from a collection of previous Ubisoft games, including “Far Cry 4,” “Assassin’s Creed: Unity,” and “Watch Dogs,” just to name a few. With the listed assets and the deep map editor, where the player can craft the entire map from the ground up, there is a virtually endless number of maps to be crafted in the years to come.
“Far Cry 5” is a bold and welcomed game in the series. The game is a living and breathing world that is teaming with wildlife and active characters that are at the player’s disposal. While some may be put off by the game’s harsh take on one of America’s last vast wildernesses and the people who live there, the game is more than worth the $60 price tag.
I rate “Far Cry 5” eight out of 10.
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