From the outset when Ubisoft announced the game you could tell that this wasn’t going to be your conventional Far Cry game. After all there are no guns or explosives in the game, instead your back in 10,000bc with a Bow which was made from twigs held together by animal skin as well as spears which were basically a big stick with a pointy piece of rock attached to it!
The first thing you will notice when you start playing the game, is just how beautiful the world is, and I mean that this is absolutely stunning. I know I’ve said about a few games lately how good they look, but I think this just shows how good developers are getting at getting consoles to reach their potential, and if we aren’t at potential yet, then I can’t wait to see what games will look like over the next 2 years.
The lighting and the textures that have been used within the game are spot on, the colours are vibrant,the lighting for me has been used to perfection. Especially when you're walking/running through dense woodland and you can see the light breaking through the trees and the branches, creating shapes and beams of light which gives the world you're in so much atmosphere and life to it. I would love to say that the next game that I get which is similar to this in terms of genre and gameplay will be even more beautiful, but I think this is going to be a very hard task to complete.
The main aim and story of the game is that you are Jakkar, apart of a tribe of people called Wenja’s, and you have to re build your tribe and find other Wenjas across the land and bring them to your village to help you with fighting and combat, cooking/eating/hunting as well as upgrading weapons and making new ones.
As you are roaming the land you will come across other people called Udam, a vicious cannibalistic race which you have to take one in both missions and free roaming. The story starts off quite strong and tell’s of the struggle between the groups, but then it kind of fades a bit and doesn’t keep that ferocity up that it had in early segments of the game.
As in the other Far Cry games the world is vast, and sometimes can feel like a chore getting from place to place or mission to mission. This is where the rideable animals come into play, and they make a big difference to the time it takes you to get to missions and other quests that are available. However, having to roam around the world didn’t really bother me that much as it is that beautiful as well as interactive and full of life, it’s such a joy to behold.
There are plenty of missions and quests for you to complete, from taking on rival tribes to helping build up your village by finding various materials to help this along. There is plenty of variety to this and the open world element of the game allows you to do things in whatever order you prefer and also at your own pace, and this is why I love open world non linear games, as you have that freedom to play the game at your own pace, meaning that for those who like to power through, you can play through all the missions, as quick as you like, or if you are like me, then you can explore the vast open world and see what it fully has to offer in all nooks and crannies.
There are various skills to upgrade, a lot of which are pretty standard with health etc, the game also allows you to upgrade your tamed animals as well as the next point im going onto which is the owl! Love this guy!
Another element that I love is the owl, being able to call in the owl to survey the area and see what threats are lurking ahead. In games designed for now or the future, this would have simply been a drone that flies around, but I love how they’ve managed to do this and it’s a brilliant little feature. While you are using the Owl you can also send in your tamed animal as well to cause havoc allowing you to sneak in and take control.
This takes me onto my next point about taming animals. Quite early on in the game, you get the ability of being able to tame animals and having them as what is essentially a guard animal for Takkar.
The first animal that you tame is a White Wolf, and I have to admit that I’ve gotten quite attached to this little guy, he’s got me out of quite a few tight spots and saved me from Bears, Sabretooths and a lot more. To be honest though, i’ve saved him plenty as well, so I feel we make a good team!
A word of advice that I would give to anyone going to be playing this game if you’re not already, would be to pause the game if you need to stop for any reason, or never stay out in the middle of nowhere for too long, as something will find you and attack, animals just wander the area and if they stumble across you they will attack and if you have ran off to make a cup of tea or something, then you are going to be easy prey and will probably find yourself at the nearest spawn point.
I’ve seen a lot of people asking the question as to whether or not this is how a survival game should be done? Well, for me, maybe yes, there are a lot of survival elements within this game that other developers should be looking at and taking notes for their own games.
Having to collect items throughout the world to survive and build a range of different things with, from weapons to clothing and shelter, it provides the basis of what a survival game should be. But there are also elements in which the game can improve on as well, such as creating and looking after the village, more control over that in terms of what you do and who you make what would be better.
Not having fixed people to positions and making someone a doctor, an engineer etc based on stats could have been a bit better, but I guess if you look at the time the game is designed in, people got where they we’re on stature and from what i’ve seen in the game, craziness!
This is a fantastic game, and it’s a very different kind of change to the series, which for me has brought the freshness that was needed. If they kept the series this fresh, I would love to see more and more of the franchise being brought out, but only if it was going to be kept fresh and not hashed all the time as a cash cow.
If I’m honest though, there are a lot of games out there that do need a shake up and to go with something different, something that is going to keep gamers on the edge of their seats, and also something that’s going to get gamers excited for the next iteration.
Amazing game, beautifully done, nice and fresh ideas, I’m going to give Far Cry Primal a 9.
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