Started by Crytek, continued by Ubisoft, the Far Cry series is known by the broad gaming
public as the series of shooters where you can run over sheep then skin them, where the
fire looks great, and where once giving you malaria was an in-game mechanic as if that
would ever be a good idea.
So I think it's fair to do a history of the series, start to finish, with only a couple
of gaps because I couldn't get things working.
What more could you hope for?
Well, a three-hour analysis like Noah Caldwell-Gervais's, probably, but he's already done that, so
you'll have to do with my quicker look instead.
Before we dive in, I'd just like to point out two things that Youtube has told me to
do at the start of my videos to make them better, or something.
First, I have a Patreon and you can support my efforts to change the face of the videos
I make by supporting me there.
Second, you should subscribe, because that would be great for me, and probably good for
you too who knows.
Anyway, Far Cry. 14 years, a couple of bar-raisers, a lot of hype, and some personal opinions.
It's all here, in a list, which begins right about… now:
Far Cry let you play how you wanted.
That was a huge thing in 2004.
Not a new thing, sure - GTA was riding high, Morrowind existed, other games you'll all
whine that I should have mentioned in the comments happened too - but Far Cry was a
first-person shooter that let you play how you wanted.
It was big.
It was pretty.
It was from a major publisher… and an unknown dev.
You could run, creep, swim, drive, boat - boat is a verb - shoot, slash, shoot more, be spotted,
shoot some more, and die a lot.
It introduced me personally to the joy of using binoculars to spy on naughty people
from afar.
I can't say it was the first to do these things, but it was the most high profile to
bring them all together, the most impressive technically, and the one that had the biggest
impact.
Far Cry also ended up being the only one in the series to be made by its creators at Crytek...
and it shows.
It's undoubtedly gorgeous - alright, not by super-futuristic-god-that-statement-will-age-in-10-years-time
2018 standards, but it was in 2004 and it holds up pretty bloody well.
It was also a fun sandbox to muck about it.
Other than that?
Yeah, not much.
It's the Crytek way - it can look pretty or offer some small fun in its open approached
nature - maybe even both - but it can never do anything else.
Looking back, it's easy to write off Far Cry.
Sort of how I just did a second ago.
It's clunky; it's hugely unfair at times; the story is laughable and doesn't feel
like it's trying to be; stealth is nigh-on impossible.
But nobody in their right mind can actually stick with that write-off, because Far Cry
had a real impact on the world of first-person shooters.
It reset things.
In the same year we got the best narrative FPS ever, Half-Life 2 that's a fact don't
argue with me, we got one of the first truly open, emergent shooters.
Both raised the bar, and really I have to remember I'm here to talk about Far Cry
for now because it's always tempting to chat about Half Life 2 for thirty three hours.
Yeah.
Crytek might not be a personal favourite of mine - I find it bizarre they're rated so
much as a studio even though their output has been little more than glorified tech demos
with no real meaty game bit inside.
But Far Cry was important, it was genuinely impressive - everybody remembers those tropical
islands - and it came at exactly the right time.
Even if it did have those godawful mutants in it.
I'm magically including Far Cry Instincts and Evolution in this by talking about the
360 compilation released in 2006.
Aren't I clever?
You can throw Far Cry Vengeance onto the pile too, as it's only a remake of Evolution…
though admittedly the only reason it isn't getting its own section is because I couldn't
get it working on my console, because life is a constant struggle against failing technology.
So what were the Instincts games?
They were pared back versions of the original, made to suit the Xbox one-one - which couldn't
handle anything like OG Far Cry - and the 360 - which also couldn't…
handle…
Far Cry.
Hmm.
At least not until 2014 when Far Cry Classic came out, though even that was still cut back
from the original, a decade after its original release.
But I digress.
The Instincts, I would say, worked as a prototype for what the series would become.
The real beginning of what Far Cry is today wasn't til later, but this experiment in
making a more focused, but still open, console-based game pushed the series in a very definite
direction.
While not particularly standout and special, the console games were generally a lot of
fun, stalking through the thick foil.. folly... trees, even if stealth is hamstrung by some
classic examples of 'one guy sees you; they all see you'.
It proved both open and rewarding, and let you muck about to a suitable degree.
It also had daft powers that let you become some kind of superpowered animal-man.
Manimal.
And, yes, the mutants returned and were just as irksome as ever.
But it was solid fun, and certainly a more formed experience than the original.
While I'm at it, I might as well mention Paradise Lost - the arcade game based on Far
Cry that I also couldn't get working.
It exists, and it was like Aliens Extermination, and that's about all I can offer you about
it.
This is where it started to get really interesting.
While a bit of fun, the first game was a glorified tech demo, and Instincts took too much from
other console FPSes of the day to be anything really special.
But Far Cry 2?
Yeah, this was Ubisoft taking complete control - in what has become increasingly rare as
the years go by, Far Cry 2 actually saw the publisher taking risks with what it put out
there.
There are times when - and you need to whisper this part - I think of Far Cry 2 as… well…
brave.
It's just not what triple-A games do - they exist to massage the ego of the player; to
work as a cheerleader, keeping you engrossed in an ongoing, lengthy exercise in appeasement.
Far Cry 2 gave you malaria, guns that frequently broke, was set in a dirty, corrupt state in
which you were no hero, and made you actually look at a map while driving in order to navigate.
Call of Duty it was not.
And so much about Far Cry 2 was downright stupid - enemy-riddled checkpoints that respawned
with a full quota of bad buggers the moment you turned your back, hostile jeeps that would
chase you forever, fast travel that avoided population centres, stealth that still didn't
work very well.
And the bugs - at least on release - which definitely stopped me from progressing because
there wasn't a bloke where there was supposed to be a bloke.
And they were all blokes, because this was definitely a game in Ubisoft's era of women
being 'too difficult' to animate.
And yet… the open world was gorgeous - both hostile and inviting at the same time, with
weather systems, a day-night cycle, wild animals pottering about, conjuring the feeling that
you really were there, in an unnamed African nation.
You set a fire, and it caught.
You made a friend, and he operated as a friend.
You got a disease, and it… umm… diseased.
But it wasn't great.
This game breaks my brain, to be honest.
What's such a let down about Far Cry 2 - and paradoxically what makes me like it more as
the years go by - is that it's a game that doesn't care about being fun, particularly.
It's a set of systems in a world, and you just exist in it, getting smacked about consistently
for having the temerity to try and get some enjoyment from it.
What first annoyed me to the point of angry shouting - that being using malaria as a game
mechanic - now amuses me and, frankly, has me thinking it was a pretty good way of flipping
the superpowered main character paradigm on its head.
I could never argue Far Cry 2 was a good game - there are plenty who say it's the best
in the series, even though there's only one position of Contrarian-in-Chief up for
grabs.
But it's full of ideas - good and bad - and it's utterly unapologetic in how it's
presented, how it's approached, and how it treats the player.
Well, less 'treats' the player, more 'actively hates' the player.
I think it's safe to say that, while the series followed an upward trajectory from
a quality and fun standpoint after Far Cry 2, it actually started slowly circling the
drain with regards to originality and creativity.
The second game was far too precious to live in this world - and far too much of a swine
to enjoy a comfortable retirement in our rose-tinted memories.
And then, the double-edged delight that was Far Cry 3 came out, and everything changed.
Well, developed.
Everything developed.
And then after it had developed, it sort of stopped developing.
Like I said, double-edged.
What I mean is, the game was brilliant and perfected what the series had been edging
towards for years by this point.
On the other edge, it edged the series in a direction that removed much of its edgy
nature, and edged it into the realms of me-too samesies territory.
Edge.
Honestly, I always intend to write this script to be witty and concise, but it gets away
from me.
So Far Cry 3.
What a game.
Where the second did nothing but punch the player in the face repeatedly - all while
threatening to kill them with a mosquito-borne disease - the third veered back, with gusto,
to a trope-filled typical hero fantasy.
You are Whitey McBro, who goes on holiday with people you actively want to die during
the first few seconds of the intro, and eventually becomes the hero of a bunch of indigenous
people, because of course that's how it works.
It was, it's safe to say, not a particularly exciting setup, and at no point were you crippled
by the symptomatic flare-up from a parasitic illness.
So… less bold, I guess.
Mechanically, though, Far Cry 3 was revelatory.
From a broad perspective, it was an open-world first-person shooter.
Zoom in on that picture and you see it went so much further than that.
It's hard to think of anything it invented, per se, but the combination of elements formed
a mechanical feedback loop that worked magnificently well.
You did things, you got stuff - for example hunting sharks, which allowed you to make
wallets from their skin in one of the most ostentatious displays of money-holders ever
invented, which then allowed you to carry more money and so buy more expensive items.
Or just by doing missions - in the campaign or on the side - more items would be unlocked,
thus encouraging you to play through everything in order to unlock more… which you could
then purchase with cash from your shark skin wallet.
You would go to a radio tower, figure out the move-y jump-y puzzle to climb to the top
of it, and would be rewarded with more locations of interest in the area.
You would gain XP, which would be put towards upgrades to skills and new abilities, which
you could tailor to your own playstyle thus resulting in more XP earned through playing
how you were comfortable playing.
It all just tied together so perfectly, and made so much sense as a game.
That was such a huge departure from the 'I HATE YOU' mantra of Far Cry 2, and made
Far Cry 3 something you didn't feel uncomfortable playing for extended periods.
I mean, it had useful fast travel, which took you places you actually wanted to go.
Stealth worked really well, and with the ability to tag enemies it actually allowed some semblance
of planning and experimentation in your approach to emptying an outpost of enemies - and those
outposts stayed empty when you cleared them.
It was, it is, superb, and influenced so many other games - everything under the Ubisoft
banner, of course, but even the likes of, I don't know, Metal Gear Solid V owe a debt
of gratitude to what Far Cry 3 introduced us all to.
In isolation, I'd happily put Far Cry 3 up there with the best of all the things - it's
grand and assured, it was genuinely different to other games - even if it was just the next
logical step for the series specifically - and it provided literal hours of fun, dozens of
memorable, intense, joyful gaming moments, and at most three times when I laughed, aloud.
Which I don't do.
Far Cry 3 was special, and nothing can change that fact.
And yet, we go back to the edge.
Because Far Cry 3 was also the point where the series' creativity stagnated - at least
mechanically.
A formula had been perfected, and a new era had begun whether we realised it or not - one
of homogenisation, and one where the excitement began to drain, even if the quality, generally
speaking, maintained.
I guess Blood Dragon should have been the first warning that we'd entered an era of
ditto-'em-ups, but we were all too bewildered by its presentation to notice the core remaining
so very similar.
A spin-off worth playing for the presentation and music alone, Blood Dragon served as an
ode to those 80s and 90s sci-fi films we grew up watching if by 'we' we mean 'me'.
The royal we.
APEX, Abraxas Guardian of the Universe, Scanners, even less-known indie darlings that nobody's
ever heard of like Aliens or the Terminator - they're all there in some way or another,
even if that way is entirely in my head.
It's neon and synth, dark and faux-cool edgy.
It's VCR scan lines and 'the distant future' of 2007.
It's sci-fi weapons and oh-so-slightly, hardly-at-all tweaked mechanics from the core
franchise.
It's also a one-note joke that wears thin after an hour or so, instead leaving you with
what Blood Dragon really is: a small playing area full of outposts to liberate, with a
few cyber-dragons to fight along the way.
Good fun?
Definitely.
Something to ever go back to?
Nope.
A major development for the series?
Definitely not, unless you count the fact it showed Ubisoft it should keep its daft
little spin-offs as DLC, rather than standalone packages.
I don't dislike the fact that Blood Dragon exists, but the world wouldn't have been
a much poorer place had it never come to pass.
But Blood Dragon was a spin-off - a bit of DLC - it was never going to change things
up massively, was it?
No, it was going to be the proper sequel that once again shunted things forward, that took
on amazing new ideas and presented a world that was - once again - unlike anything else
we'd seen outside of the series.
Right?
Ah ha ha no.
Far Cry 4 was a prettier Far Cry 3 with a better story and a different map, pretty much.
The age of stagnation was in full swing.
The fourth game is so similar to the third that it's genuinely difficult to tell them
apart at first glance, especially when you don't mean that literally.
It's an FPS in a colourful foreign land; you can run and drive and ride and swoop through
the world; there are main missions and side quests and loads of things to sink hours of
your insanely valuable - and limited - life into; and there's an eccentric, unstable
bloke monologuing at you for extended periods.
You explore and unlock areas of the map by solving jump-y climb-y puzzles; you earn XP
and upgrade abilities as you see fit; you scope out and plan your assaults on compounds;
you hunt to make better things, like a rhino-skin wallet what is wrong with these people…
it's the same game.
And good fun as it was, it rubbed people - like me - up the wrong way - you know the old saying:
'familiarity breeds Ian's brain not liking a game as much when it's just a repeat of
the last one'.
The old idiom from the sea.
What Far Cry 4 did change up, though, was the setting - not just the environment, which
I guess I've backed myself into a corner about and will have to mention shortly, but
the narrative backing everything up.
Ubisoft showed a genuine shunt in the direction of what we call 'learning', abandoning
poor Johnny Football Hero and his impossibly beautiful and oh-so-white friends on a quest
to liberate some uneducated foreigners, and instead replaced all that with a guy coming
home to liberate his own nation from an invading git in a pink suit.
I doubt that was the summary on the story pitch document, but you get the picture.
It was far less hateful a cast, even if it did revisit the Definition Of Insanity bad
guy, and I was far more a fan of it than in the third game.
And that map, because I promised to mention it, was definitely a thing that existed.
And that's all I have to say about it.
Oh alright, maybe a bit more: it was a big map, it was a seriously pretty part of the
made-up world, and it was an environment that, just like before, screamed out to be explored
and mucked about in.
Thankfully, Far Cry 4 remained just as much fun as before to do that mucking about, even
if it was an almost carbon copy of what came before.
Design by committee does take away from the overall experience, and Far Cry 4 suffered
from that feeling - it was rote; it felt like Far Cry 3, but by this point it also felt
like Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed and the Crew and the Division, eventually.
But - and it's an important but, I cannot lie - Far Cry 4 was still riddled to its core
with emergent elements that brought pure, undiluted chunks of chunky fun - these random
things in an open world are some of the best things in any game, ever, so it's not surprising,
but that doesn't take away from the achievement.
I will never forget seeing three rebels having a pitched gun battle with a lone eagle atop
a ridge, all the people screaming in fear as it swooped down and attacked them one by
one, and the eagle won.
And that's without even going into the joy that was riding an elephant into battle, which
ranks up there as ridiculous in the best kind of way, and something that - despite my instincts
flaring up and telling me to remember Far Cry 4 in a slightly more negative light thanks
to its overfamiliarity - lifts my very soul.
And back to the side projects.
While Blood Dragon was one-note in its presentation, Far Cry Primal took the spin-off thing to
heart and crafted a whole new huge world… well, one plastered on top of the Far Cry
4 map at least - and transported you back thousands of years to a world before decorative
garden rocks, the concept of USB charging, or cling film.
Primal was a proper self-contained expansion, released at a premium price and containing
tons of new stuff to get caught up doing for way longer than you'd ever expect to.
With an imaginative, rarely-seen setting for a game, a huge campaign to play through, and
a genuine feeling that a lot of effort had gone into this one, it was… well, it surprised
me how boring I found Primal.
Yes I'm letting personal opinion infect this again, sue me.
The prehistoric Cry looked great - as you'd expect, sure, but the primitive nature of
things with its lack of grey and innocence of wandering aimlessly through somewhere without
roads made it that bit more alluring.
And the mechanics of building up your tribe - welcoming in new members, improving your
structures, watching people dance, I guess, was definitely a welcome addition.
There was, once again, plenty to sink your life into.
But crikey, the banality.
The same-again-ness.
The formula.
It was such a swerve from Far Cry 2 - a game that looked like it would be the same as everything
else, but ended up being completely different - and brutalising you throughout, did I mention
it gave you malaria?
Anyway, skipping from that to Primal, which looked like nothing else and as though it
would be vastly different, but ended up being just the same as the last few Far Crys, taking
it relatively easy on you and not even giving you the flu, which would probably kill you
in prehistoric times.
It was… weird, to use a disgustingly lazy term.
Don't get me wrong, riding a mammoth into battle somehow manages to be more fun than
riding an elephant into battle, even though it's literally the same thing barring a
size different and some ginger fur.
And when you turn off all the HUD elements and just rely on your instincts - and superpowers,
naturally - it proves both relaxing and exciting an experience in oddly equal measure.
Devoid of context there's a lot to like about Primal, but in context I have sympathy
for those who saw it as a rather banal experience.
Like me.
I saw it like that.
I wrote a review professionally saying as much, and I said it already in this video:
"But crikey, the banality..."
See?
Regardless of how good the formula is - and despite how it's dressed up - it's still
that same formula, and Far Cry Primal stuck very much to that homogenised formula.
Fun, but bland.
Beautiful, but not bold.
Mammoth, but not… errm… elephant?
First, and most importantly, Far Cry 5 rejigged the crafting system so there was no way of
crafting a wallet using still-beating unicorn hearts or whatever it was they were building
to.
While I wholly supported the move away from this barbaric quest for fine walleteering,
at the same time I do feel like the new game was missing something because of its change
to crafting.
I mean, sure, pipe bombs explode all nice and stuff, but it's not the same as harpooning
a tapir so you can make some new shoelaces, is it?
So Far Cry 5, the least political of the Far Cry games what with it centring on a white
supremacist cult in the modern US - definitely nothing inherently political about that setting,
not where I'm sitting, and now I've made myself sad because some of you will actually
think that… anyway, it's the Far Cry set closest to home.
Middle America, the dullest, safest place in the world where nothing could go wrong,
in one of the world's richest countries that isn't a little-travelled island with
20 indigenous inhabitants ripe for a fresh sack of freedom as delivered by a foreigner.
Nope, this one was America.
Land of Libertines.
Home of the few, land of the stave.
And you got a dog.
Little else about Far Cry 5 proved particularly memorable - not least the toothless narrative,
which at times veers close to whataboutery and in the most part just painted the bad
guys as caricatures of what cult leaders are in our minds.
The landscapes were gorgeous, but banal.
The action engaging, but incredibly similar to almost everything that's come before
in this series.
But yeah, you got a dog.
I just… there's nothing to talk about outside of the political debate surrounding
the game, and an ending that's genuinely surprising, at least depending on your choice.
No spoilers, obviously, but it's not enough to make Far Cry 5 anything special.
They removed radio towers as a mechanic and added in fishing, which meant one of my favourite
things about previous games was replaced with another thing I like from games.
Balanced.
And that about sums up the Far Cry series, to me: balanced.
Individual elements can be phenomenally good fun, where others can be terrible, dull, and
boring.
Or malarial.
It's a series of vast promises that often underwhelm, but also a series of understated
brilliance and genre-defying mechanics.
It's a series that tackles heavy subjects in its stories, but never does more than scratch
their surface, or add mutants in to pad it out a bit if you're Crytek.
It's a series with near-universal praise across the board, yet one it's very easy
to find people with legitimate, understandable criticisms of it.
It is, in short, confusing.
And there you go.
So that's most of the Far Crys played by me, your hero, Bransfield.
Except for the Wii one I couldn't get working, and the arcade one because I am not an arcade.
But most of them.
And what have we learned?
Well, that my opinions on the Far Cry series are correct: it changed gaming and had a giant
impact a couple of times, but generally speaking it's all just a bit empty and bland.
I'm sure any negative comments about a beloved series will go down well with folks in the
comments.
Let's see!
Thanks for watching, again if you want to subscribe that'd be a huge help, a share
can change a life, and throwing your support behind me on Patreon - link below - would
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I want to give thanks to these fine few who offer five dollars or more in support each
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I'm not saying it makes them better people, they just are naturally better people:
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After a stressful house move, a bout of zero creativity, a sliced open toe and a pitched
battle against terrible internet in the new place, I'm glad to have got this video done
and out there.
BYE!
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