WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
An open-world first-person shooter set in the absolutely massive and beautiful fictional Himalayan country of Kyrat where your avatar, wanting to scatter his mother's ashes, gets entangled in a huge civil war and is now faced with the immense challenge of helping out the local resistance and clearing out a map filled with an absolutely insane amount of icons
PROS:
- Mind-boggingly massive, yet so well-realized, map of huge cliffs, long rivers, beautiful vistas, long roads, rich wildlife and loads of locations to venture forth and loot at (despite feeling pretty derivative in some places), which effectively provides a good reason for you to clear up the map of those collectible icons in addition to providing easy XP and money
- Great gunplay and destruction effects, matched with pretty much the same but less extensive skill tree from the previous installment, with even more variety of weapons and nice customization options sure to splatter blood to the hundreds of dumb crimson-wearing militia of Kyrat
- Nice character animations both in cutscenes and the way the avatar moves/drives about in the massive world, matched with great sound design and effects
- Breathtaking environmental design and effects, especially the Himalayas and Shangri-La (more especially the latter), which makes the bulk of the positive things about this game
- Absolutely action-packed campaign and side missions, where you'll almost always certain will have you shooting guys in the head either stealthily or through gunrunning, which perfectly makes up for the relatively weak backstory that supports them
- The sheer amount and variety of things to do, though the many instances of each one (not to mention the sheer repetitiveness of each instance) makes the game a big daunting chore to complete that you won't probably bother finishing
CONS:
- The pervasive feeling of "much of the same thing", especially when you've played Far Cry 3
- In addition to being oddly accented, the antagonist has a generally weak presence in the game (as compared to the now-legendary Vaas, whose exposure was also cut short halfway through), much of the time only reduced to mere phone calls of intimidation every time a campaign mission is finished which would really make you question, "if he knows what's going on with me, and the Golden Path for that matter, why the hell won't he sent his entire army on my arse and get it over with?" (until you see the ending)
- The prevalence of the "you-do-everything" syndrome, due to the sheer incompetence of the resistance movement and the game falling to the narrative plot hole of a fish-out-of-the-barrel protagonist who's suddenly a one-man freaking murder machine, just like in previous installments
- The generally weak and uninteresting main story and side missions, which will basically just have you shooting guys in the face either stealthily or wildly, introduced by annoyingly long and unskippable cutscenes and characters truly hard to root for, which is a gigantic bummer when reattempting abandoned missions
- The oftentimes annoying stealth-requiring missions that automatically fail if one guy sees you, instead of adopting to the situation and letting you just chase after that freaking commander if he runs away
- The laughable (and highly repeated) dialogue of much of the world's enemies/NPC's, not to mention that accent which is exactly the same as the last two Far Cry's for some reason
- The fact that liberated outposts sometimes get attacked by a hoard of enemies literally minutes after you drive away from/get near it, which can get pretty darn annoying especially if you're in the middle of somehting and you'll be forced to hammer those guys with your precious bullets
- The minute changes to mission design in taking either mission from one of the resistance leaders, and the final world state absolutely not changing at all despite of all the choices you've made. Also, for some reason, enemy forces still keep attacking despite conquering the whole map
- Collectibles that add absolutely no content other than easy XP
- Annoying and absolutely repetitive radio dialogue filled with out-of-place modern day pop reference that resets everytime you turn it off and on
OVERALL:
Newcomers to the Far Cry franchise (and the Ubisoft scheme of things) would definitely find loads of fun and pleasure from the loads of opportunities for violence (and not much else) the game offers and the sheer beauty of the world in this installment. Otherwise, there might be a few reason to even bother finishing the game at all. However, if Far Cry 3 left you clamoring for more, Far Cry 4 perfectly fills that need