Far Cry 4 was released early November with every fan girl within a mile’s radius fawning over the main villain on the game’s cover.
Essentially, Far Cry 4 has been labeled as “a glorified Far Cry 3”. The graphics got a bit better, the villain changed, and the main character’s name is different. Some new mechanics have been added, such as the extremely useful auto-pilot option. If you’re driving to a certain location, just hop in a car, waypoint to it, and hit auto-drive. This makes shooting any following enemies a lot easier.
One of the more heavily advertised features is the ability to ride elephants, a part of the Skill Tree. It has high attack power while maintaining a fast speed, but is very weak to explosives. Players have been using this to their advantage, planting C4s on the elephants, releasing them on their enemies, and detonating the C4 once they’re close enough.
Once you reach a certain part of the game, you are thrown into a flashback where you control a White Tiger in order to defeat spiritual enemies. The White Tiger does have a health bar, and when it is defeated, it respawns after a certain amount of time. This has caused a bit of an uproar for animal lovers, claiming both the elephant and White Tiger features are animal abuse. This isn’t the first time this has happened, as some players were enraged with Far Cry 3 and the hunting features.
The open world-esque game play and beautiful graphics is mainly what left everyone speechless. Although we’ve seen similar things in Far Cry 3, a lot of things were improved graphic wise. The split plot to which you are faced with choosing to side with either Sabal or Amita, two commanders of The Golden Path, was a really interesting addition. The Golden Path is a rebel group against the main villain, Pagan Min, and his rule over their home country of Kyrat. Overall, the plot was good.
All around this game has been given 4 stars out of 5, to which I can’t disagree. Plot was good, graphics were improved, and the new features are helpful and interesting. The only downfall is that it doesn’t stray too much from how Far Cry 3 played out.
8/10
Hannah Makholm/Graphics Dept.
