In 2012, perhaps the best villain has appeared in Far Cry 3. Vaas was simply an excellent character in a nicely done game, which was not only beautiful, but it also had content to boot as well – this looked hard to top. Did Far Cry 4 manage to make something better than 3?

Far Cry 4 is deceptive in the way how it starts: sure, you get caught by the seemingly good guy Pagan Min in the beginning, but when the actual good guys called the Golden Path find you and save you, the tides turn immediately, but boy, in what a way…

Survive

Already in the prologue, the game shows how it slowly turns away from the things you saw in Far Cry 3. You have a simple task: get through the big amount of weapon-wielding enemies, who can kill you quite quickly if you get spotted. But there’s a question: how to do this task?

Stealth? Possible. Throw a rock to make the enemy’s attention to turn away from your spot in order to make your path is clear  – I have to add that the path itself isn’t always quite obvious. How to progress then? Is it worthy of just stealthing through to that tower? Not likely, better loot and kill to level up.

But you can’t always play this game in an offensive manner; Far Cry 4 will usually reward you with a kick in the butt if you play it that way in the first few hours. Discover and improve: check which enemy can be knifed in order to take his weapon and stuff… and then, you can move on to shoot the others.

Despite having a regenerating HP (while having additional medkits, those are limited), you simply have to use Kyrat’s wild animals in your favour… because yes, the animals make a return, and they can be helpful. Skin one, throw the bait down from a vantage point (you’ll find plenty!), and then watch how a huge bear swipes half the squad to death. You can now go on to clear the rest. (Or if you’re unlucky, the just-killed animal will be taken away by another… once I skinned a gazelle only to be attacked by a tiger. Fun times!)

Level up

Oh yeah, the good old fun of leveling up. This can make the gameplay addictive… which can be described by this sentence: with a limited amount of tools, create something in order to make Ajay (who would be the main character) survive everything, whether it be animal or human.

Kyrat’s offering us huge (really: HUGE) lands to discover in a way that you will need… hm, roughly about 300 thousand of that currency to buy a bigger chunk of the maps. Or guns. Or ammo. Or…

Damn, let’s just say that you will have freedom. I have to say that. If you mix that up with the skills you can get by gaining levels (several to choose from!), then I can state that this is pretty much a survivor FPS in a pretty much open world, and it’s a survivor game without zombies. And I didn’t even talk about weapons yet: well, you can improve here too! In the beginning, you simply won’t have decent weaponry in your possession. Either it won’t be precise, or it will lack the power – having a better one could give you the possibility to succeed in this hunt. Because you will die, although not as many times as in the Souls series.

In cooperative

…it’s even better. If you can play this game with someone else, add half a star to the total rating, because the game is much more enjoyable in coop: discovering Kyrat, whether it be killing someone or hunting a rare animal down, or rolling the main story forward – you name it. You won’t lack content, that’s for sure: I think you can easily punch 20 to 25 hours into the game on a low note, if you want to get all those bell towers back for the Golden Path. (Although this will mean there will be teams that want to take it back from you, but it’s not necessary to always get into action on that front.)

Does it have problems?

Well… I think the characters aren’t that charismatic. After Jason, Ajay is not a big change, and after Vaas, Pagan might still be an interesting antagonist, but he can only equal the crazy pirate’s level, but he will never be able to surpass it. Other than that, I could only name one „bad” thing, and that’s not even bad, to be honest: you will need patience to learn the game – it will not reward you instantly. If you accept your mistakes, you can reach the gates of success to improve further.

…and I think Far Cry 4 has done so, which looks great on the PS4 version, and the PS3 port looks quite nice as well. It’s worth getting this game. It’s different from 3 – this is a Far Eastern experience, which could even be the videogames’ Orient Express, but it doesn’t want to be that.

-V-

Kiadó: Ubisoft

Fejlesztő: Ubisoft

Stílus: FPS, action

Megjelenés: 2014 November