All Ajay Ghale wants to do is scatter his mother's ashes in a certain spot in the mountainous Kyrat, but instead he ends up in the middle of a war of liberation. Far Cry 4 has been criticized of being too similar to Far Cry 3, but what does it matter when a game is so darn entertaining and above all, addictive? This here is definitely one of the best games of 2014.
Kyrat is led by the sophisticated, flamboyant King, Pagan Min. A rebel cause named the Golden Path wants to get rid of Min and liberate Kyrat from tyranny. The Golden Path is however led by two very different people that get into conflicts all the time. Amita wants radical changes while Sabal is all about traditions. While Ghale continues to rise up the ranks within the Golden Path organisation, he has to choose between these two. Will it be change or traditions? Amita and Sabal are a big part of the story, while the main villain Pagan Min doesn't get enough screen time. This is a shame, because Min is an interesting and complicated figure that I would've loved to see more of.
The open world of Far Cry 4 is huge and full of interesting places from heavily guarded fortresses to dark bear caves and idyllic little villages. You can go on foot or drive a car, a quad bike or fly an autogyro, which is very handy, by the way. The contrast between for example Southern Kyrat and Northern Kyrat really shows the diversity of the game world. While the story begins in a lush, hot jungle, it eventually changes to autumn leaves and snow, even breezy snow mountains at times. The level of campaign missions varies. You blow up temples, you protect temples, you travel to remote snow mountains and in one very memorable mission, you stealthily infiltrate a heavily guarded enemy fortress at night and kidnap one of King Min's generals from there.
Gameplay is a very addictive mix of all-out shooting and stealth action. Liberating enemy outposts in the game is a great chance of putting your stealth actions to the test. The outposts are full of soldiers, so going in just blasting away is almost always a bad idea. The best way is to go in stealth: take out as many guards as you can with the crossbow, knives and perhaps a sniper equipped with a silencer. The AI of the enemies is believable. Enemies do not magically come after you, they sincerely wonder what's going on around them, and become suspicious of even the slightest noise. After you get spotted, they tend to hit you from a very far distance, though.
The game is so full of activities that sometimes it begins to feel like there's even too much to do. You can sometimes get confused as to what really progresses the story, when dozens of new icons pop up on the map. What you should do is hijack the signals of the bell towers. That way you unlock guns and get new side missions. The game also features some visually amazing yet gameplay-wise shallow hallucination sequences. A good example are the Shangri-La missions that are so visually beautiful that they almost manage to hide the fact that the gameplay is oversimplified and shallow. Other side missions include fetching blood diamonds for a now-religious former war chief Longinus, pointless hallucination missions with two British stoners Yogi & Reggie, hunting, racing, saving hostages and assassinations. You earn money and XP from side missions.
The animals are a big part of the game and essential in making the game world feel lively. I'll never forget the first time I ran away from a black bear through a dark forest armed only with a wooden crossbow, or when I heard loud howling from behind me and turned around to see a bloodthirsty pack of wolves. There are no nice animals, but thankfully they also attack your enemies and even each other: sometimes when you stroll through a forest, you can spot two black bears wrestling with each other. Incredibly hard-skinned rhinos throw cars around like nothing, eagles attack out of nowhere and the best part is that you can ride elephants! You have to hunt in this game. By hunting tigers or wild boars or honey badgers or whatever, you increase the size of your wallet and more. It's not even safe in the water, because overgrown barracudas called "demon fish" lurk in the lakes.
Far Cry 4 looks incredibly beautiful. The amazing scenery manages to amaze right till the end. The waterfalls are pure eye candy and even the trees look real. The characters are very detailed. The game lags very rarely and I've only encountered two harmless bugs. The voice acting is very good and special mention goes to background music, which is a vital part of the atmosphere.
All in all, Far Cry 4 is a great action package. I've played the game for almost 40 hours and I still can't get enough. There's so much content and so much variety. Even though Far Cry 4 is clearly similar to Far Cry 3, Ghale's adventure in Kyrat is one of the best games of 2014.
The Good: Awesome graphics, huge game world, a lot of content, gameplay is incredibly addictive, the animals make the game world feel lively, humane AI
The Bad: Surprise attacks by the hostile animals can be irritating at times, shooting while driving doesn't work that well, Pagan Min doesn't get enough screen time
REAL SCORE: 9.2