Farcry 5 - Game Review

With Farcry 5's anniversary edition recently released, I figured it would be interesting to have a look back at this classic game and give you my take on it. In my opinion, this has got to be one of my favorite games on console, but mainly for it's impressive map editor (Arcade Mode), for the story and single player itself was fairly mediocre in all honesty.

The main reason I constantly return to Farcry 5 in particular, is because of how in-depth the map editor mode has become. Almost anything imaginable, you can make a first person shooter of it, or even a first person racing game! I've recreated scenes from Bioshock, The Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Halo and so many other games and TV shows, including movie scenes or sometimes just completely made up shooting arenas or even race tracks. Thanks to the game's realistic graphics (that still hold up quite well), you can essentially design your own dream level with a huge amount of enemies and resources to choose from. Fans of Farcry itself may be baffled as to why I'm focusing so much on it's multiplayer mode, but taking your levels online and seeing what the community has also created, it's honestly just a wonderland of imagination, that never fails to amaze me. Even five years later, the game still has an active community and it is never difficult to find a full lobby of skilled players.

Farcry 5's multiplayer goes far beyond sharing maps with players, there is a wide selection of modes. You can co-op with friends within the main game itself, or within a online level made either by the community or Ubisoft themselves. You also have team and regular death match modes, co-op or single player online missions can be chosen between survival, extraction and bounty hunt, giving us a lot of options to play around with. Extraction can become a race, or a chase sequence, you can also add a timer to this mode, meaning you could create a daring escape style level and even script events. Bounty hunt let's you complete the level after you've taken out a specific individual or group of animals or enemies, allowing you to craft hunting or assassination missions. Survival is a simple mode where you must kill every enemy to win, but even this could be a zombie survival or thrilling shootout. Being able to complete the entire story mode with your best friend is really awesome too and there is also a lot of character customization to unlock, meaning you can make yourself stand out from the crowd when playing online. There is just so much to see and do online in Farcry 5, it's my go to game whenever I buy Play Station Plus!

Now that I've gotten multiplayer out of the way, I think it's time to discuss the single player, which isn't the best out of the series in my opinion. To be honest, ever since Farcry 3, Ubisoft have barely updated the gameplay in any meaningful way. Sure you can customize cars and your character now, but this feature does very little from keeping the familiar gameplay loop feeling stale. There are a lot of really awesome additions though, like the attack helicopters and airplanes that can fire rockets and bullets! Some of the vehicles have guns attached to the front of the bumpers, as well as the classic turret on the back of said vehicle. Yet I really do struggle thinking of anything else that stands out from the previous games, perhaps some of the new guns are interesting, but they aren't particularly mind blowing either, the buddy system felt kinda broken too. It just feels exactly like 4, which felt exactly like 3, etc. The story is pretty underwhelming also, as it has this weird structure where after accomplishing multiple side quests, a member of Joseph's cult hunts you down, then you play a main mission in-between optional ones. I never liked having my free roam interrupted the moment I accidentally triggered any one of these many, many events, essentially forcing me to play a story mission when I didn't really want to. It was extremely awkward when it happened to me and my friend during an online session, where all we wanted to do was fool around and not engage in the story whatsoever. The story does have two very different endings though (including an alternative 3rd ending if you leave Joseph, before the main game can even start), however these endings aren't as complex or interesting as the multiple endings in Farcry 4, which also carried after game events (making the fourth game feel like an RPG at times). The ways Farcry 5 ends, there's no in-game aftermath for your decisions.

Gameplay is still very responsive and fluid however, Farcry as a whole is a very fun game to play at least. Although the improvements are minor, it still technically plays better than previous entries, with a couple of new toys to play with also. Although the story may be dull, you'll never be bored of the over the top action, the countless explosions and epic gun play. Farcry 5 still gives you a huge beautiful world, that you can race around in and wreck havoc, destroying a ton of really unique enemies from drugged up lunatics to multiple attack helicopters, the game is full of fun targets to shoot and it is also very challenging.

In conclusion; Farcry 5 may have a poor story, but it more than makes up for that with it's incredible action, creativity and fun online modes. The open world is huge and varied, it's a game I still love and play to this very day. I want to give this game a 5 star rating, but unfortunately the story is just too bad to ignore and is a main factor of this game. So I feel like a 4 out of 5 star rating is more appropriate.