Far Cry 4

I had been wanting to play some sort of action game and Far Cry 4 happened to be on sale. It was less than 5€ when combined with the 100 Uplay points discount (gotta spend those on something since they now expire after 2 years) but I still feel like I should have saved the money instead. My graphics card also got bricked while playing the game but I doubt it was specifically Far Cry 4's fault.

Rehashed Far Cry 3

Far Cry 4 is very (too) much like its predecessor Far Cry 3. Setting and story are different but about everything else is nigh identical. There are some quality of life improvements like gathering/looting animations having an option to be disabled. But you still have to hold down the interact button when touching anything. So much time spent on doing that over the 40 hours it took for me to 100% the game. If you interact with, let's say, 1000 different things over the course of the game, that means you will spend at least 33 minutes holding down the button in total when it could have been instantaneous instead.

The game doesn't have the more interesting content Far Cry 5 has. Locations are boring and side missions are the exact same ones copypasted over the map. Radio towers are of course still a thing as well in this older Ubisoft open world game. I capped my experience 3/4 through the game and the additional karma progression midway already. Far Cry 5's perk magazines and challenges are so much better of a progression mechanic.

The things that bothered me with combat still in Far Cry 5 are of course in Far Cry 4 too. Armor pickups are so rare that they might as well not be a thing at all. Healing syringe animation isn't too bad but if you run out of the syringes, you get all kinds of different uninterruptible, forever-lasting first aid animations. It feels so incredible annoying and useless. I also hate how you get knocked down when approaching an enemy that is not distracted (like reloading his gun) in hopes of getting a takedown or just few melee hits in. The enemy never finishes you off on the ground but waits for you to get back up again before proceeding to shoot.

Your reloading and weapon switching tend to get interrupted by all kinds of things. So much of the game is spent waiting to be able to do what you want. I also tried to use the game's performance-increasing drugs a lot more this time but I feel the only one that made any difference was the hunting syringe that highlights enemies.

Far Cry 4's combat is a lot smoother when you're not engaging enemies face to face, not being aggressive. Sitting in a corner and waiting for everyone to come to you, only to get headshot, is an effective tactic. Sniping from a distance with a silenced rifle works as well. From close-up, chaining takedowns feels wonderfully responsive and rewarding. On normal difficulty (at least), enemies are not bullet sponges although later on there are some elite dudes that can take a few hits thanks to their armor. There are of course the heavies too. But using better weapons is the key to defeating them as easily as the standard enemies.

Good guns

Like in the sequels, the high rate-of-fire Vector SMG (and its Shredder signature version) turned out to be nice against unarmored targets. As a sidearm I mostly used the M79 grenade launcher: it's handy when accurate aiming is difficult like in a moving vehicle. SA-50 is not the most powerful sniper rifle in the game but it can be silenced and it still oneshots even heavies on a headshot. The gun also penetrates obstacles (to a degree), making it ridiculously powerful when paired with the hunting syringe.

I grinded the game's arena till rank 10 to get the Bushman signature assault rifle but then ended up not using it at all as the Buzzsaw machine gun turned out to be so much better, chewing through armored targets and vehicles alike. Shotguns I didn't use beyond trying each of them once -- who has the time it takes to reload them?

Ubisoft tried so hard to create Far Cry 3's Vaas in Far Cry 4 with Pagan Min (Troy Baker). An antagonist supposedly appearing threatening via random acts of violence is such a tired cliche by now however. The funny thing is though, that Pagan never acts hostile towards you. You as Ajay Ghale are more like his dear nephew. There is a secret ending at the start of the game if you don't do anything (like in FC5 -- Ubisoft really likes repeating themselves) and just wait for Pagan to come back. Similarly, at the actual end you can shoot Pagan (he says it's boring -- and it is: the credits just start rolling) or you can leave him alive (which I did) and do what you actually came to do in the game's fictional Kyrat: "spread" your mother's ashes. (Ajay just leaves the urn on a memorial altar.) You can also still kill Pagan as he leaves at the end, provided you have a gun to take down a helicopter.

Even if the story wasn't good, at least it was't as annoying as in Far Cry 5.