Me and @TheChicken finished Far Cry 5 and all of its DLC. We enjoyed it, even if it did have some issues, I think Far Cry 5’s difficulty is a bit on the easy side, since you get so much gear unlocked so early, and like Grand Theft Auto, the game really struggles not to become a joke when you have an attack chopper. I think my favourite bit of lunacy is that you can buy an LMG, give it a silencer, the silencer seemingly doesn’t negatively impacts any of the LMG’s stats, and when you burst fire it, it’s astonishingly accurate. I actually used it a few times when taking on outposts in stealth, managed to even snipe a couple of guards with it from 50 meters away.
I beat Far Cry 5 a while ago by myself, but me and Chicken played it together in co-op, this being the first Far Cry game he has really played (besides dipping his toes into 3 and 6 I believe). Far Cry’s gameplay suits co-op pretty well, although at times it can make a game not that challenging even more easy. It does have some snags, the co-op buddy who join’s the host’s game can’t save their progress, which I know is also true in Dying Light and other games that allow co-op. Surprised to be honest it can’t save co-op progress, don’t really understand why not. Guess I’m used to co-op progress being saved from all the Borderlands games I’ve played. There’s also the fact that the co-op partners can’t be too far from each other, not much of a problem except when it comes to airplanes, you pretty much need to always share a plane together. I think we rarely used planes honestly and preffered to takes choppers because they are just far easier to handle and aim weaponary with. And some challenges, especially the Clutch Nixon vehicle stunt challenges, were clearly designed with just one person in mind rather than two, surprised they didn’t just gate it off from the co-op buddy to be honest.
DLC is pretty good, although I can say that since nowadays you can buy the edition of the game with all the DLC included for a little extra on sale. Zombie DLC is probably the weakest. Fun, but pretty short and forgettable, I often found the zombies to be a janky to shoot at, like I felt like a lot of my shots just wern’t registering properly. Vietnam is I think the best one, but it is arguably the least ambitious, it is essentially a small slice of Far Cry, but with '60s weapon and a Vietnam war setting. But honestly, sometimes that’s all you need, I like the Far Cry formula, and I like having a nice little slice of it, something that works well for speedrunning too, or something you can try to do stealth only. The most ambitious is the Mars DLC, it has a big open map, and the alien’s you fight are completely different from the human enemies of the main game, the aliens being more like giant ants or spiders. I actually didn’t like the Mars DLC when I played it the first time, but in co-op, the Mars DLC improves dramatically, mainly because it feels like the aliens were designed to fight co-op partners, since they tend to swarm players and their weak points are often on their backs.
As for the plot of Far Cry 5, well, I have issues. I think it depends on how much you’re willing to just “go along with it”. If you’re the type who likes to scrutinise plot points, you’re not going to have much fun. Most games tend to have a disconnect between what’s going on in the game world and the actual story in cutscenes, but goodness, I really wish our protagonist could speak, just to ask the Seed villians what they hope to accomplish. Like, they’re a doomsday cult, convinced the end of the world is nigh, but once they get set off by the sheriff and co trying to arrest Joseph, the plan seems to be to just start an all out war for Hope County, killing and torturing everyone in their way, and being insanely evil about it. I think my favourite bit of stupidity is finding out they are slaughtering all the livestock on a farm, which you would think would be a very useful resource for an upcoming apocolypse.
I have my theory that Far Cry 5’s original story was water downed by Ubisoft. I remember at the time alot of people were hoping FC5 would be some grand statement on Trump’s America, but it really isn’t, the cult you fight is pretty generic. Their version of Christianity seems to basically revolve little more than quoting the Book of Revelation and that the seven deadly sins exist. The cult is made up of people of all races and has women too, surprisingly inclusive. No anti-LGBT, or anti-abortion, or keeping women in their lane stuff here, wouldn’t want it to mirror any real life politics. You even meet a priest on the good guy side just so you show that the cult aren’t “real” Christians. Honestly if the Seeds were people of colour or migrants, you could easily make this more like a right wing gun nut’s fantasy as the good people of USA use their guns to defend themselves and protect their FREEDOM. My least favourite bit is the fact that one of your allies happily tortures cult members to death for information, I’m sure a bit to add grittiness, but they make the cult so laughably evil as to make sure you don’t feel bad for them. Still feels scummy though.
I’ve always hated the ending of Far Cry 5, something I’ve told Chicken a few times, mainly because I was curious to see how he would react to it. I don’t think Chicken was a fan. It was rather hilarious when during one of the last cutscenes of the game, we have this exchange:
Chicken: “Oh, I get it, this is just another drug hallucination.”
Silvereyes: “No, this is really happening.”
Chicken: “WHAT!?”
Still, I enjoy FC5. It’s too easy but it’s also fun to run around causing chaos in Hope County. But I do think in a way, FC2, 3, and 4 are better constructed games, they are less willing to give the players all the toys right away, forcing you to be a bit more cautious and clever. FC2 especially loves to really kick you in the nuts. It’ll be interesting when moving onto New Dawn and Far Cry 6, when we buy them on sale in the future, I know those games are when RPG style levelling systems are introduced, which I’m curious to see how that works.
(And it doesn’t break up the colours like the brown cape!)
