REVIEW – Ubisoft managed to make me spend time with grinding, hiding the fact how this Far Cry-spinoff, which is the sequel to Far Cry 5, is short. The pink post-apocalyptic hell wasn’t highly successful (or highly regarded for that matter…).

Don’t let its price fool you: this Far Cry is indeed not a full-fledged title. It’s your run-of-the-mill standalone DLC that Volition (Saints Row IV: Gat out of Hell) and Naughty Dog (Uncharted: The Lost Legacy) did before. Still, you can spend time with the new Far Cry, if you don’t get bored with it.

Hope

We’re still in Hope County in Montana, where Far Cry 5’s story was set, too. Since then, over one and a half decades have gone by, a nuclear catastrophe happened, and no, we don’t get another Fallout 76. Instead, we get a colourful environment. There’s a twist, though: the twin sisters of Mickey and Lou, who serve as the main antagonists that could be put into a Mad Max movie, might be defeated by the same group/sect that we fought against in the base game. As the Alien vs. Predator movie has said all the way in 2004, „the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and that thought applies perfectly to the plot of Far Cry: New Dawn as well…

Our goal will be to restore peace between the survivors. You’ll have multiple tasks to do, but I’ll mention its problem later. During the story, you’ll have a bit of RPG-lite gameplay (but not too much!), as ooooh, you get to do some extra activities as well. There are eight side missions, thirty outposts (all with three levels), ten treasure hunts, twenty-one expeditions (necessary to get the best guns; these are also set outside Hope, just like in Far Cry 5), five specialists, eight guns or fangs for hire (my personal favourite was The Judge, who seems to have an interesting backstory, given you pay attention to it…), thirty perks (I recommend saving some for later in the game, as they will get a twist as well), a hundred and five challenges, nine photographs, ten music players, and I think a hundred and one locations.

You’ll get to do a lot, and your goal will be to improve your base (although it needs ethanol, which in turn requires you to take or retake outposts…), which is also necessary to upgrade your weapons to not see them be powerless against bosses. It’s also funny that you have some MMO-shooter-like endgame, although it’s not Destiny, and definitely not Hahahahanthem, I mean Anthem.

The expeditions will offer multiple difficulty levels (find the obviously pink smoked packages, followed by a horde-like wave-based survival for about two and a half minutes), as well as the outposts for better loot. Oh, I’m about to reach the end of the page, so now I’ll go into why I find this Far Cry the weakest of the bunch so far. (Why couldn’t Ubisoft make a Blood Dragon sequel?)

No Hope

Well ladies and gents, this game is grindy. Grindy in all caps. The French company tries to hide how short this game is by making you grind, but even with that, you can beat it in twelve to thirteen hours. In that time, I found half of most things (some of them I found 100%). Meanwhile, I muted the music because I frankly did not like that. 😀 The whole game is a grind festival, and I didn’t even touch upon how the driving physics seem to be even worse than what we saw in the first Watch Dogs game.

Oh, did I mention that Ubisoft offers microtransactions for basically everything? I see where this game is going with that approach. They just want to earn money out of it. I don’t like this whatsoever, and I also don’t appreciate how we still cannot move away from Far Cry 3. That game is over six years old by now (and oooh, it got a re-release of course), but Far Cry: New Dawn is still the same title with a different coat of pink paint. Let’s put the graphics and the usual factors aside and just state it: Ubisoft is unable to renew one of its cash cows. (Oh, and there’s also no arcade mode this time because Ubisoft was focusing on the „narrative.” Yeah, sure.)

No Buy

Far Cry: New Dawn, which seems to copy RAGE 2… is not worth more than a 6.5 out of 10. I wouldn’t buy this for forty dollars. As I said, it took me thirteen hours to beat it, and sure, if I 100%-d it, it could take twice as more, but this constant grinding cannot make me hooked to the game on a long term, and if you skipped Far Cry 5, you might miss some elements of the story in New Dawn altogether. So it’s a good idea to ditch the pair of women after a ride, and am I the only one who seems to notice this recent trend of strong female character subjects in recent AAA games…?

-V-

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft

Genre: FPS

Release date: February 15, 2019