Small town America is the setting for the latest Farcry game set in Hope County Montana, as the newly appointed deputy you must work with local authorities and locals to help liberate this community from the clutches of Joseph Seed’s family and their cult followers. Farcry 5 is a combination of shooter and RPG elements all wrapped up in an intense story of violence, religion and survival.
The game looks nice with forests, lakes and mountainous areas for you to explore with great contrast between night and day lighting, even when the game opens up the environments just look stunning with ranches and open fields full of crops to winding rivers. This can also be said about the visual effects with the vehicles from outside to inside, even the visual effects when vehicles take damage and then explode it sets alight the ground and causes fire to spread but also the detail that has gone into the surrounding buildings, vehicles and wildlife makes Farcry 5 come alive.
As with any Farcry game you have to deal with local wildlife, which will either run away from you or attack you if threatened, these creatures can be hunted for ingame credits but be careful as some of these creatures may not play ball, no more than the wolverine, i thought the honey badgers where viscous in Farcry 3 but the wolverine attacks without mercy and can do some serious damage.
The cult members you will encounter called peggies, their AI is intelligent as their field of vision will spot you from a distance, plus they become spooked and will be more alert to your presence if you take a more aggressive approach when attacking them whereas a stealth approach can prevent any reinforcements being deployed and make it easier for you to conquer outposts and rescue hostages. The peggies vary in difficulty with standard gunmen being easy to take out all depending on how many there are but as the game progresses you'll come across more heavily armoured foes which take a lot more bullets to take down.
As this is an open world game you don't just want to feel it but you want to hear it as well and Farcry delivers from animal noises, gunfire and passing vehicles all sound authentic. Even the voice overs are done brilliantly with the NPCs around Hope County but also the characters in the main story create believable and emotional responses, these characters each have their own personalities from paranoid behaviour of Tweak who creates your enhancements for increased speed etc to Adelaide Drubman a helicopter pilot that uses sexual innuendo a lot with her one liners that will make any male nervous.
As the game progresses you can hire people to fight alongside you on missions, this combines 3 slots for you to allocate to run of the mill resistance fighters but you can select specialists which are unlocked as you progress. With 9 in total to unlock each one has their own abilities from stealthiness of Jess Black to let's just blow the crap out of things and see what happens using Hurk Drubman jr., but its not limited to just people you can choose animals as your specialist which can be Peaches a cougar that you can command to attach highlighted enemies without setting of alarms or Cheeseburger a grizzly bear who will tear through any cult outpost without you having to fire a bullet.
The one new feature for me and helped me navigate was the world map, this 3D replica of the County helps you see the scale of the game and helps you navigate with ease with the ability to set waypoints and fast travel.
Farcry 5 has a similar game-play style to its predecessors, and even though the game is non linear allowing you to either focus on the main Story or side missions and activities, you can build up your character by liberating cult outposts or destroying shrines or silos, there is also Stashes of cash, supply convoys to destroy or prisoner transports to free local resistance members which all contribute to weaken Edins Gate’s cult control on the area and helps build up your assets in each of the three territories controlled by one member of the Seed family.
The story is well played out as mentioned above the three territories are each controlled by a member of the Seed family which acts as a boss fight for each zone but each zone has its own characters and missions to complete. The missions are fairly easy to get through but as there is plenty of missions to get through the story will leave you satisfied. Plus the ability to do it in coop makes it more interesting as you can coordinate your attacks far more efficiently.
These missions help you build up money to buy ammo, new weapons and outfits to wear which defeats the purpose as you are always in a first person perspective so you really aren't going to see what you are wearing. Also, you can purchase many vehicles from muscle cars, armoured pickups to boats and helicopters allowing you to traverse any part of the world. As for control of these vehicles it can be a bit uncontrollable at first as steering feels loose but the more you play it does become a bit easier to control, even with the quad bikes.
You also gain perk points throughout the game when you complete a challenge or a mission, these perk points introduce the RPG element into the game which opens up more abilities for your character and these perks can be unlocked from 5 classes which help you vastly with 10 unlockable perks in each class. Some perks have to be unlocked prior to unlocking more.
Survivalist - the perks consist of health boost which basically gives you more health or human fish which helps you slim faster and breath longer underwater.
Renegade - some perks give you equipment including a parachute or wingsuit or in this class allows your bullets to do more damage to vehicles with the vehicle buster perk.
Assassin - these perks allow you to get close to enemies and take them down without raising any alarms, these perks consist of sneaky sprint which means you can move faster to get in behind an enemy and take them down silently, also you can acquire perks in close combat mastery and takedown mastery.
Prepper - this class helps you increase the amount of ammo or weapons you can carry. The Holster perk allows for an additional weapon slot but the perks cover various weapons for example the tactical ammo bag will only let you carry SMG and shotgun ammo whereas the heavy ammo bag perk allows you to carry more ammo for the LMG, flamethrower, rocket or grenade launcher.
Leader - this category gives perks to your specialist companions but also can allow you to recruit 2 specialists at once with the leadership perk.
There is no limit to the perks unlocked as you can use every perk once it is unlocked, these perks will help you overcome what is thrown at you.
If you think it's just play the game that's it job done, move onto the next game that comes along i would have to stop you there as Farcry 5’s level editor provides limitless possibilities to create and publish your own maps to play in arcade mode. The level editor has so many options to customise terrain, structures, backdrops and even water levels, this mode requires significant time and patience to get the most out of it as this is what is used to create some online arcade levels. As with previous level editors there are similarities in terrain management and structure choices to build but Farcry 5’s level editor has more in the way of designing your own maps from choice of roads, structure choices and elements like animal movement make this the best Farcry level editor to date.
As mentioned above if you spend enough time creating a masterpiece on the editor this can be published allowing other players to play you levels within arcade mode, but arcade has a lot more to offer in the pipeline as upcoming DLC will expand on the available content and open up new worlds from zombies to Aliens to even a recreation of the Vietnam war all adds up to a very rich game.
SUMMARY
I have to admit with the similar game style to Farcry 3 and 4 this was still an enjoyable game to play. With so much to do and discover it kept me entertained throughout the game.
As ever the story kept you hooked and the side activities gave you a break from ploughing through the game quickly, but it was the inclusion of arcade and the map editor made this game have limitless possibilities.
What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!