Far Cry 5

I was late to Ubisoft's Uplay+ service launch. Playing their games for free in September would've been nicer than paying for a month later on but I thought it would still be worth it since Ubisoft doesn't really make games that I'd see myself replaying after finishing them once. Thus Uplay+ was a good way to knock three Ubisoft titles off my wishlist even though 15€/month is a pretty hefty amount compared to something like the Xbox game pass for PC beta with its 1€ price tag. You do get an access to the complete editions of the games however -- all released DLC is included.

Ubisoft titles have become so similar to each other that I feel the subscription will quickly drop in value if you choose to continue it. You'd be playing almost the same game month after month. There are slightly different genres but you're still doing the exact same activities in Tom Clancy's The Division, Tom Clancy's Watch Dogs, Tom Clancy's Far Cry, Tom Clancy's Assassin's Creed... -- an open world filled enemy strongholds and collectibles. Anyway, onto the first game I played.

Even worse than your usual Far Cry plot

Far Cry 5's story is shit. Not the setting or the premise, mind you -- a religious cult taking over Hope County of Montana, US sounds like a good start -- but how the story is told is terrible. It lacks player agency, the silent protagonist has no character, and it's even repetitive due to the game repeating its narrative structure in each of the three regions Hope County is divided into.

As you progress on liberating a region by doing the usual Far Cry stuff, the region's lieutenant will at certain points send a hunting party after you. You can fight some of them off but ultimately resistance is futile. They won't stop coming and the story won't progress until you've been caught. Ubisoft wanted to make main story come to you instead of it waiting forever for you to come to it. A good idea in theory but at least in this game I didn't like the execution. I started literally groaning whenever it was time to progress the story. I was quite enjoying all the open world activities and the main story bits felt detached from it, like a different game similarly to my experience in Dying Light.

Once you've been captured, the current antagonist in question gives you one of their boring speeches and then you usually proceed into a drug-induced gameplay section, as is tradition in Far Cry, before finally returning to the open world. In the end, each of the lieutenants ends up dying by your hand even though they had full control over you multiple times. There being some intended purpose in that by the main villain is nonsense.

The game has a secret ending (in style of Far Cry 4, I think) which you get by doing nothing in the intro. It is also happens to be the best ending -- none of the dumb stuff happens to you! You get another chance to take no action at the actual end of the game but that doesn't lead to any better than what the supposedly canon ending is. Nothing you did mattered, the villain was right, and all you get is shit.

Gameplay about as smooth as it gets

I was surprised how good the game's controls and interface felt. I was expecting the excessive hold-down-a-button-to-do-stuff etc. too many big modern titles do but there wasn't any. There are a couple of things that could be improved though.

Plane controls should probably default to the keyboard + mouse option. Only-keyboard controls might work if you're flying casually but the first time I tried a plane in the game was when I found my first Clutch Nixon stunt race. After a dozen attempts I deemed it impossible. Some comment on the internet suggested the alternative setting. It makes the plane turn wherever you're pointing at (after you've also turned off inverted up/down) and flying becomes so much easier. I nailed the race on my first attempt after that.

PC controls also fail at fishing due to Ubisoft's oversight and the only solution is picking up a controller (though some people claim they were able to catch even the toughest fish using a mouse). The problem with it is that when you stop moving the mouse, that new position becomes its zero position and your fishing rod resets to the center of the screen. With a controller the rod stays down as long as the analogue stick is pushed towards you. To emulate that on a mouse you'd need to keep moving it towards yourself and that's a not a thing on a regular mouse. Thus tiring fish using a mouse is harder or even impossible unlike on a controller.

Mechanics improved

Far Cry 5 jokes about the infamous Ubisoft radio towers while making you climb one! But since it actually is the only radio tower, I guess the joke gets a pass. (Although then in one of the DLC the towers are unabashedly back again. But more about the DLC later.) Instead of activating radio towers, locations are revealed more organically by interacting with NPCs and finding local maps. HUD space taking minimap was also replaced by a Bethesda-style compass. It would've been nice to have nearby locations on it too though.

After DOOM (2016), scarce body armor pickups and forever taking bandaging animation feel ancient and clumsy healing mechanics. Ubisoft should work to replace them with something more elegant. I suppose some fault is on me too for not using the speed boosting and damage reducing drugs enough. They probably would've reduced the need for bandaging.

On the normal difficulty I played, enemies could take a few bodyshots but a headshot was always lethal -- no bullet sponge humans. Some animals however take almost a full assault rifle magazine to put down, which is rather silly in my opinion. But in general shooting felt really nice.

Having learned my lesson in Far Cry 3, I didn't try to clear outposts unseen anymore. No use since you will max out your perks anyway, right? However, Ubisoft had changed something. There was no experience anymore. Instead perk points come from collecting perk magazines and completing challenges (such as 'x kills with a pistol'). A stealth clear of an outpost merely rewards more money.

Money has its uses but I still didn't stress on maximizing its gain. Staying unseen while clearing an outpost was easy if I ever wanted to do so though. Enemy awareness mechanics are the same as in Far Cry 3. As long as no enemy gets a clear visual of you, none of them will try to sound the alarm for reinforcements even if they've seen dead bodies and are in search mode. Slap a silencer on the fancy-glowy Blood Dragon sniper rifle (you get from owning Far Cry Blood Dragon, I think) and you're good to go.

Perk points not being gained from experience points was an ingenious change. It made exploring feel truly rewarding while also ensuring no activity becomes obsolete before the game is over. The challenges weren't tedious to complete either. Most of the perk magazines are located inside Preppers' Stashes which I consider to be the best content Far Cry 5 has. They are like mini tombs from the new Tomb Raider games.

I do wonder though if there are enough challenges and perk magazines to max every perk as I was 10 perk points or so short at the end (after including perk points from the co-op challenges I didn't complete). I suppose it is possible I missed that many separate magazines as they're not marked on the map. But maybe you do need to play the game's arcade mode or join someone's co-op game for clearing of a Prepper's Stash they yet haven't. I didn't bother because the locked perks I had were just ones that reduce cooldowns for NPC companion revival and I mostly didn't use the companion system.

The companions can be useful, you can even have two with you at the same time with a perk, but I thought it was more peaceful to have no one commenting on stuff all the time. Or making animal noises. The idea of the cougar companion got me excited for a while -- how many games give you a combatant cat companion? But Peaches, as she's called, didn't turn out to be the optimal helper. Peaches is stealth class but has a mind of her own, like a cat, and goes after enemies even without you having told her so. It becomes a problem particularly when she attacks an armored enemy, who she apparently is unable to kill. After having witnessed that I continued without companions outside their recruitment missions.

The Clutch Nixon stunts were also fun, mostly because of the music track that had been chosen for them -- the races themselves weren't special. Crossing a final checkpoint felt amazing with how the song also jumps to its end. "Legend in heaven, legend in hell!" The Road Vikings evidently altered the song's lyrics to fit the game but the final part in game uses the original line.

Worthless season pass

Since I had the gold edition of the game at my disposal, I decided to play through its DLC as well. After doing so, I imagine it would be very hard to not feel scammed for having paid 30€ for the season pass. The additional content felt such a cashgrab to me.

Hours of Darkness takes you to the Vietnam War as one of Hope County's residents. Your mission is to make it to extraction point which is on the far side of the map from your starting position. Somehow they managed to make the DLC feel really repetitive with its open world tasks. Take out this many anti-air guns, kill this many generals, gather this many dogtags etc. Taking out AA guns allows you to call in airstrikes. However, outside the extraction zone, enemies were rarely so concentrated that airstrike seemed worth it.

The only character perks available in the DLC are found in a four level survival instincts system. With every stealth kill it goes up by one. Being spotted makes you lose everything and you'll have to build it back up. Stealth is by far the preferred playstyle as at 4/4 perks all enemies in your vicinity are tagged automatically. That makes thing really easy.

Lost on Mars is a more humorous piece of DLC -- or at least an attempt of one. I did find its writing genuinely funny at times but overall the experience was another repetitive open world adventure, with climbable radio towers no less.

The biggest problem with the DLC is how its combat is a chore. You get a score of futuristic weapons that barely feel different from each other and alien arachnid enemies that have spongy health pools due to their weak points being so hard to hit on their backs. You can double jump into hovering to help with the latter but that makes you an easier target as well.

In Dead Living Zombies, B-movie director Guy Marvel (whom you may have met in the main game) is pitching his scripts to different people and you kind of play through the pitches while they're happening. There is an attempt at humor in this DLC as well but it failed completely.

Score attack modes for each of the seven maps unlock after you've beaten them once but one run was more than enough for me. Maybe they should stop doing story DLC for the Far Cry games if this is their level of quality.