Far Cry 5 (2018)
Boy, what a bummer of a numbered follow up to the pretty decent Far Cry 4. Let’s just get to complaining about this game, since there are only really negatives and I gotta get through it fast before I actually just get angry.
- Nothing your character does makes sense.
As “Rook”.... Yup, your main character, the character you play as in a FAR CRY game, doesn’t even have a name. I thought people were joking when they kept calling him “Rook” over and over again. No one bothers to call you by your first name, which literally would never happen (basically the entire theme of this whole game) Everyone just calls you “Rook”. Met a random person who needed help and had never met before in the middle of the forest at 2am? They call you “Rook”. Meet the handful of horrible dumb AI helpers that talk your ear off and people around them know who they are and have conversations with everyone else using first names? They only call you “Rook”... So as “Ted” because I am giving him a name as Rook is honestly killing brain cells… Ted and everyone else in this entire game are the absolute stupidest people on the face of the earth. The entire game you are running around trying to stop this militia that has basically taken over Montana. So thousands that have been murdered before you show up, instead of them maybe posting something on the internet, getting media access, or actual government help, everyone just tries to fight. The game acts like the internet and phones don’t exist. The beginning of the game you are escorted by a US Marshall and he gets captured and almost killed and nothing happens. I”m sorry, but if a US Marshall went missing, crap would go down. Nothing about this game makes a lick of sense.
2. The overused “religious” stuff.
Like Amazing Grace? Prepare that to be the only song you hear for 30+ hours, over and over and over and over again. Be prepared to hear every cutscene person sing it and reference it multiple times in the same sentence. Like Revelations, be prepared to have every verse taken out of context in what is probably some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen in a modern video game. Nothing tongue in cheek, nothing witty, nothing enjoyable at all. Every character is the most nauseating and annoying person. Even your AI helpers are annoying beyond belief.
3. The game has a horrible pace and is extremely aimless.
I’ve played every Far Cry game except for Primal, and this has got to be one of the most confusing games I’ve ever played. It's totally aimless, and not in a AC Origins “I want to get lost and just explore” kind of way. The game gives you complete control after a super long boring intro and tutorial and then just expects you to know exactly what to do and where to go. For the first 15-17 hours I basically was fumbling around the bottom right corner of the map and felt totally lost. Not knowing how progression actually worked. How the Buddy System worked. How to use the tons of guns I have been amassing… Just completely aimless and I just got bored of trying to traverse and find the next objective and getting into a huge life-killing, ammo depleting fire-fight every 45 seconds. No joke. Every 45 seconds or so, you’d somehow have 3 to 5 bad guys literally just pop up out of nowhere and instantly spot you. No matter where you are. Forsest at 3am ducking in the brush, an overhead plane instantly sees you and guns you down. Fishing in the middle of the lake with no one insight? Well there are 7 patrol boats that are now instantly circling you. It was way too much too often. The guns sucked and were not fun. Not enough space to really get a good base jump and just ugh…. Everything about the game just sucks.
4. The Ending.
Ok, I just want to stop thinking about this game, so the ending; The ending is one of the worst in the history of gaming. As the big bad keeps reminding you throughout the entire game “you are the one” You keep killing thousands of his men, messing up his plans, kill his “family” off one by one after they “kidnap and release” you probably 2 dozen times (Like GOB in Arrested Development, when he gets thrown in jail in Iraq and the guards just keep leaving the keys lying around or the door to his cell unlocked). So instead of just killing you one of the several times you get captured you get released and sent off on a killing spree to foil the plan again, like some Saturday morning cartoon that will never get canceled. Once you finally reach the endgame, you are given one more chance to walk away. If you don’t, you get a bad boss fight where you shoot your friends since they are loopy on drugs until you revive them like a nice slap to the face and then shoot the big bad. Once that happens he goes off on the same tirade of canned “cult” lingo that has been going on the last 25 hours of gameplay and a nuke blows up. You have to drive away, get into a car accident where he is the only one who is unbreakable and picks you up and takes you to a bunker. Then he sits there telling you that you are his new family since you killed his own, and it cuts to credits. No comeuppance for him. No retribution, no anything. The whole game was pointless. The bad guy who has been telling you from the beginning that the end of the world is coming and Prophesying the entire game is right (although it's entirely through his own hand and wasn’t a prophecy at all) and it just ends. Your entire journey was pointless and he would have set off the nuke anyways, and no one you saved or did jobs for or anything mattered at all as you now are one of the last two remaining people left alive in Montana. Also, you aren’t “the One” as you don’t even have a name, and are just some rookie on the force that got caught up in all of this. You aren’t special, you don’t even have a name!!!! Screw this game. It’s bad, don’t play it. It wasn’t even the one of the best modern Far Cry games either as it did nothing special and was pointless and aimless beginning to boring end.