REVIEW – In a way, I consider this DLC as a missed opportunity. Ubisoft’s Shanghai arm could have built a mystical, action-packed story upon the base game with a nice amount of challenge. As Far Cry always had mystical touches to it, it should sound a bomb DLC on paper. But actually, it never really came together…

So the base story is that Ajay Ghale, the main game’s „hero” (this is questionable whether he was a hero or not, but that is not related to the DLC now) ends up suffering a helicopter accident over the high mountains of the Himalayas. Then he gets to a relay station, ends up taking it over, then he has to defend it from the yetis while a mysterious cult also appears, all wanting Ajay to die.

Y

This sounds great on paper! In a twisted understanding, Valley of the Yetis ends up a bit of a tower defense game, when we have to defend the station at night from those yetis and the occult guys. This is definitely a positive part of the DLC. And yeah, the yetis themselves: these guys are ridiculously tall (about the size of one and a half basketball players) AND unbelievably fast! Despite their huge size, storming speed and big defense are present. You can’t kill these bastards with arrows – thick skin helps after all…

 E

My question is that is this DLC’s story part of the main story or not… is it just an imaginary sequel? I also ask this, because the DLC can be launched from the main menu, which really makes me wonder about being canon or not. But what if it IS? I do not want to spoil the ending of Valley of the Yetis, but it was pretty shocking, to say the least! Not only that, but the ending was no longer than twenty (you read that right, 20!) seconds and then bam, staff roll. All the work for practically nothing – this should be thought by Ubisoft the same way as how they managed to screw up the vanilla version of Assassin’s Creed Unity. Unbelievable…

T

But you have to get there first. On a bright Sunday morning – now that there’s a Hungarian law about supermarkets being closed this day -, you can do so. Yeah, I related with this to the length of the DLC. For me, it took roughly four hours blind, and I wasn’t really rushing. This is not much. This isn’t worth the money. If you have the Season Pass, then I say okay, but I believe that the previous DLC would thrash this one back and front. And sadly, I still haven’t mentioned every single negative that I can bring up about Valley of the Yetis. So I mentioned this cult – although they aren’t that happy-go-lucky, but in my opinion, they should have been developed a bit further. Sure, there’s sometime%,the chit-chat with their leader on the radio, but I was disappointed the way the plot mostly kept them away from us – Ubisoft Shanghai missed this train as well. The lack of replayability just tops this cake off. There are no extra outposts here. Only a few hidden chests, but honestly, I couldn’t be bothered to go back and find them.

I

But there was definitely potential to be built upon the technology. Far Cry 4 is still an amazing looking game! This snowy, icy field to me feels like the 2006 game Lost Planet on the Xbox 360. Nice visuals – the PlayStation 4 definitely works hard for that. And about the audio-music segment, I still have no trouble with that. So basically, there’s the base of success, but Ubisoft didn’t really put much onto it. I would have made this DLC like this: take over the relay station, slowly work our way to the base of the cult for a final showdown with their leader, then escape back to the station while calling for our escape helicopter. But no.

No

You read that right. I don’t recommend this DLC. The only reason why I give it a low 7 is because it’s rare to see yetis in video games, the last memory of mine with them was somewhere in the Spyro franchise back on the PS1. Defending the station feels awesome, but then almost everything else pushes the DLC back. If you have the base game, spend your hours into that, because Valley of the Yetis is a one-run DLC. Expensive, boring story, short and the ending is just what the f…? After this, BadSector will chuck Milestone’s RIDE at me to review that… there’s only one way from here hopefully. Up. But… I’m not sure, the last time I thourougly enjoyed a Milestone game was WRC 3…

-V-

Editor: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft

Genres: Adventure, action, FPS

Publication: 2015 March