Genre
Action, Adventure, Shooter
Release Date
Unknown
Publisher
Someone
Platforms
Xbox, PS, PC.
Far Cry 6 Review
Far Cry 6 is a game much like its predecessors, in which you play as the main protagonist that gets thrown into an open-world story where they must fight alongside a group that is fighting against a system, which could be a religious cult, a madman or a ruthless dictator. With each iteration of the series taking place against a beautiful backdrop, with amazing environments for you to traverse across.
Genre
First Person Shooter
Release Date
6th October 2021
Publisher
Platforms
Xbox, PS, PC.
Want to see some gameplay first?
In Far Cry 6 the backdrop this time is set in the heart of the Caribbean, a place called Yara, which the inhabitants experience horrendous conditions as they are either treated like slaves and forced to work in the tobacco fields or experience brutal beatings and violence from the military. For the rest, they are almost on the brink of poverty.
The main villain in the game is a vicious dictator named Castillo and his army. Castillo has promised the people of Yara and miracle cure for cancer that he ‘supposedly’ created in a laboratory. It’s this cure that has forced people to work in the tobacco fields, most of them dying in the process and being replaced by more ‘willing’ participants. Castillo’s aim is in make this so-called cure available all over the world. What’s even more terrifying about Castillo is that he is putting his son Diego at the forefront of his campaign, forcing him to behave like his father and punishing those that Diego himself cannot.
Our character is Dani Rojas, and you will have to gather a group of guerrillas together to take down Castillio and put an end to his vision. You start from the bottom when you first come across these guerrillas and must earn their trust to reach your goal. Once you get past the initial phase of meeting the main characters who will aid you in the fight, the story opens up Yara and you are free to move about as you see fit. One of the main characters you will meet is Clara Garcia, she is the leader of these small band of guerrillas that will give you your missions as you set off to disrupt Castillo’s plans. A lot of the characters that you meet all have a past and a score to settle, which comes in handy for when you start to wreak havoc across Yara.
I found that there are quite a few colourful characters that you meet, but none really stood out for me as memorable. Each seemed to have a chequered past and a generic one too that you would come to expect from games set around tyranny, freedom, and rebellion. At times there is a dash of humour thrown in, but it fails to hit the mark more than it is supposed to.
The gameplay in Far Cry 6 is the usual affair that is within the world of Far Cry, with checkpoints scattered about that need to be attacked and a plethora of objectives that you need to complete to increase your rank and unlock more weapons and gear. The objectives that you are given to you by the group where you will need to attack tobacco fields, garrisons, fortified areas like military forts etc.. Some of the missions can be done quietly and in a stealthy fashion, but more often than not, you can run in with all guns blazing. Each of the objectives that are offered will mostly consist of you trying to infiltrate an area, kill anything that moves and grab an item that is needed by one of the team. While doing this you can get the chance to also free a few hostages and these don’t really offer up any incentive to save or leave be. This is even more apparent when you are going after the main targets that are part of Castillo’s main guard.
As you progress through the game there is quite a bit of customable gear and weapons that are on offer. You get the usual pets or Amigos as they are called now that can aid you in missions, yet I found some of these would lead you to getting caught out if you were trying for the stealthy approach. The gear that Dani can wear offers up some nice bonuses like gloves that let you put fires out more quickly if you ever get burned by an enemy with a flamethrower or a vehicle blowing up near you. You can equip leg harnesses, chest armour and head protectors from the poison gasses too that litter most of the tobacco fields. Then you can add skins or paints to your weapons to give them a little added flair as you battle Castillo’s forces and look kind of badass as you take each of them out.
Dani also has a marvellous collection of weapons to use from rifles to shotguns and even the Supremo, which is a homemade rocket launcher than is strapped to your back throughout the game. Everything that you can use as a weapon can be altered and upgraded at your workbench and these are scattered about at safehouses or guerrilla outposts.
It’s here that you can use the resources that you find scattered about Yara to upgrade your gear that will aid you in your objectives. You can add silencers and armour piercing rounds to your rifles and assaults rifles to changing the type of ammo that the Supremo can use a rocket that can heal you. This is done by firing the rocket and it covers you in a mist of much needed first aid, quite handy if you are playing solo.
While playing through the game, the enemies that you come across are a bit dim-witted at times and will often try to stand toe-to-toe with you when you are shooting at them, often resulting in them on the losing end. They never really see you as any real threat until you are right on top of them and most of the time try to hit you with grenades while standing out in the open. It’s quite easy to run at them and go for a melee kill before they can fire off a shot. Even if you missed your kill and are left slicing your machete about trying to kill them, they just seem to be in a dream world before they start shooting at you. Perhaps Castillo is working these guys to hard and they just can’t be bothered to protect him anymore and going through the motions, maybe.
One thing can be certain that when you are playing Far Cry 6, it has some amazing visuals, especially when you stop to view the world around you, from the lush green forests to the sea that surrounds parts of Yara. Vehicles drive along the narrow dirt roads and kick up a cloud of dust as the drive by ad you hear the tyres crush the dirt and gravel underneath them. At times it can be quite breath-taking to witness, though there are a few times where mountains can look off and have a low texture to them when compared to the rest of the environment, which places like the sea and forests seemed to have been more time to get the visual effect right. The character models in the game don’t sit right either, in that their faces are not often expressive as you might expect someone to be when you are dealing with such adversity that the story is portraying.
Like most open-world titles like Far Cry 6, there was a few issues in relation to you having to reload your last save to resolve. Issues like weird car physics that the cars would behave erratically like they were alive at times. Then there were those times where you would try to climb up into a window only to see Dani miss a footing and be stuck until you wiggled the camera around a bit. On one occasion there was something strange happening to the horse in the Du or Die mission where your companion in the mission would walk to the horse and just slow their pace and not bother to get up on the horse to continue the mission. The only way to fix this was to get off the horse and walk backwards a few paces until they decided it was time THEY got on the horse. While these issues were few and far between, they always seem to happen at a vital part in the game or during an objective.
Overall
Far Cry 6 had so much promise when I first saw it and I wanted to fall in love with the game, having loved the previous title before it. What I got was something of a mix bag of feelings and experiences. While the game is beautiful to explore and visit different locations across Yara, it was the missions that dulled my experience more than the core gameplay. Its characters are confused in terms of who they are and often feel flat in terms of their emotional connection to their cause. While the main villain Castillo is an interesting one, I thought that Diego his son would have gotten more time to grow as a character, especially since he was heavily featured in the trailers before launch. I’m left with mixed emotions at this time and hopefully the next game will offer something fresh to keep me coming back for more.
SSG Rating 7/10