MadCap's Game Reviews - "Far Cry 4"

Remember when I reviewed Far Cry 3? Yeah, it was a hoot! A lot of the press releases at the time called it "Skyrim with Guns", which I found absolutely hilarious when I actually got my hands on it. Sure it had the open world experience and graphics that were all kinds of damn pretty, but it didn't really have the political situation or the same feeling of adventure.  Skyrim was another in Bethesda's wonderful sandbox adventure games.  Far Cry 3 on the other hand, is a very tight, interesting plot dealing with themes of insanity and free will versus destiny, among others that happens to have a sandbox added on.

And for that, I dare say that Far Cry 3 was actually far deeper than Skyrim.

Yes, you read it here (so stop staring at the screen like that), I'm actually choosing another game over a Bethesda game.  Clearly I'm going batty. However, back to my original statement, Far Cry 3 was an excellent first person shooter with a surprisingly deep storyline that made you feel for not only the main character, but bothered to make the villain somewhat sympathetic.  But it is not, however, "Skyrim with Guns".

...Far Cry 4 is Skyrim with Guns.

Elephants are awesome!

I'm not kidding.  There's a civil war brewing between the established social order and a ragtag band of native rebels, and a hero comes into the picture at an opportune time to have to pick a side and forever change the destiny of the nation they have been placed into.  Oh, and he has the power to command and ride a mythical creature into battle.  To anyone who disbelieves that statement, get the skill that lets you mount and ride elephants.  You will believe that elephants are magic.

But more to the point, Far Cry 4 forgoes the theme of insanity for much different one this time around - taking apart the Messiah cliche. However, this game goes for the Dune approach and pretty much - spoiler alert! - has no real right answer, it's all based down to personal preference.  Do you go with Guerrilla Leader #1 who wants to help the people but will create a Knight Templar-run religious state in the style of the "old ways", or do you want to go with Guerrilla Leader #2 who is the more pragmatic, wanting to use the nation's only natural resource - opium - to keep the country afloat while bringing it into a more progressive world-stance? Or do you just throw them both under the bus and take over the whole thing yourself? It's all up to what you want to do.  Anyway it goes, somebody's gonna get screwed over and the status quo will never be the same.

Min 2016!

That, of course, brings me to the main villain of the piece - Pagan Min.  Or, at least, that's what you're supposed to think.  In reality, outside of the homicidal killings out of nowhere, the dude is actually really, really awesome.  When the main character, Ajay Ghale (who I'll get to in a minute) comes to Kyrat, Pagan outright murders one of his men when he thinks he might have killed him.

 When he finds out he's not, he's immensely glad and apparently cleared his calendar just for him so they could party! Even when Ajay starts killing off his soldiers and traipsing through the jungle causing chaos, he's all too happy to call him up to chat about his future and about the Twitter of Kanye West (which is apparently hilarious).

The guy kinda sounds awesome, really.

Okay, so major spoilers follow from here, so I'm going to actually put up a warning before I continue. Past this point, if you haven't played this and don't want spoilers...turn back now.  Go watch Keyboard Cat and then go finish the game.

...okay, done? Good. Welcome back. Now we can move on.

Pagan Min was apparently giving it to Ajay's mother back in the day, when she was an agent of the Kyrat resistance movement known as the Golden Path.  However, she was also slinging leg for Ajay's father, who was the leader of said resistance.  However, if Ajay can learn that his father was not exactly the archetypal hero that the Golden Path makes him out to be, and murdered your half-sister, a child of Pagan and Ajay's mother.

As it turns out, and is evidenced very much by his behavior and actions towards Ajay, Pagan loved Ajay's mother deeply (they even had a daughter together, Ajay's half-sister) and sees his return to Kyrat with her ashes as the one chance to reconnect with his lost love and the only family he sees himself as having.  To Ajay, he's not a cruel overlord who wants to crush his spirit and command him entirely - he just wants to be an awesome stepdad who takes you out shooting guns and just having a grand old time.

After all, he's a violent murdering psychopath, but he treats his loved ones well.

"I can see my house from here! No, REALLY!"

You can even pick an alternate ending where Ming takes Ajay to where his half-sister (the "Lakshmana" she requested to have her ashes spread with) has been laid in state, then Min says they can now go "shoot some goddamn guns". There's no post-campaign gameplay after this, but here's hoping that Ubisoft will make some DLC based off this ending. I'd personally love to play the side of the Empire for once and crush some rebel scum (word of mouth is that they are).

Unfortunately, I can't really give the same praise to any other character outside of Longinus (the weapons dealer for the Golden Path, really awesome dude) and Rabi Ray Rana (the voice of Radio Free Kyrat). Both the leaders of the Golden Path (again, seeing a lot of Dune parallels) are rather dull, Sabal and Amita both being two sides of a coin as a mentioned before - one going towards the old ways and another towards progress.

Most damningly, Ajay, who says surprisingly very little throughout the game and is bizarrely easy going about joining up with a resistance movement and screwing up the power structure in the country ruled by a guy who has really been nothing but nice to him. Compared to Jason Brody, whose character and development was not only well done, but integral to the plot of Far Cry 3. It's just rather disappointing to see them dropping back into a character who is almost a blank slate and doesn't seem to operate by any sort of logic.

We know some things about Ajay, but we get very little in terms of who he is and what his motivations are beyond wanting to bring his mother's ashes back to her native country. Why exactly is happy to just drop everything to join a resistance movement against his psycho stepfather really doesn't make that much sense (yes, I know how that sounds, but it's really not that simple).  And unlike the rather colorful cast of Far Cry 3 (Vaas, Hoyt, Citra, Buck, etc...), few individuals stood out to me.

Oh, and Willis came back. And I still wanna shank him in the groin.

As for the gameplay itself, it's not that different from Far Cry 3.  Ajay traverses Kyrat with a single weapon at first, but can later craft holsters to allow himself more weapons in the style of the walking death tornado that was Jason Brody.   Crafting comes back, both with animal skins to create various holsters and packs, as well as syringes that Ajay uses so he doesn't have to heal himself after being gored by a leopard by tugging on his thumb.

Seriously, I'm pretty sure decapitation in the Far Cry universe can be cured by lightly tugging one's thumb.

Working for Pagan Min can give you such a crick in the neck...

Regardless, Far Cry 4 adds some new features that 3 had no, including player housing as mentioning in the inset picture right above.  Ajay gets the Ghale (pronounced "Gah-Lay" by the natives) Homestead and - along with bizarre trips into the mystical land of Shangri-La thanks to a magic (maybe it's magic, maybe it's weed) - it can be upgraded and added to using Kyrat's native currency as you go along through the game.  If you didn't have to climb a mountain to get to it, I'd call it prime real estate, though it does help to explain why it isn't a smoking crater in the ground.

The level up system is back in full force, experience points granting skill ranks that can be put into either the "Elephant" or the "Tiger" skill trees, which pretty much cover all the skills the Tatau gave back in Far Cry 3 plus a few tasty extras.  Like the ability to ride an elephant which is, to reinforce an earlier point, awesome!

My few complaints about it can be dismissed, alas, because this game really is awesome. Like it's immediate predecessor, it's clear that Ubisoft put a lot of work and care into it. Also, any game that lets me fire off an automatic machine gun from the back of an elephant that I'm using to charge into an enemy compound is absolutely going to get a gold star from me, no questions asked.

Mind you, I would still like them to go the extra mile and get us a jetpack in these games, but I'll take the wingsuit and now riding on elephants any day.

Seriously, I rarely outright give recommendations here, but if you happen to have not played this game yet, go play it.

Far Cry 4 is now available from Ubisoft and Ubisoft Montreal for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.

...Many touchstones try the stranger...