REVIEW

Far Cry Primal PC Review

by Ford James, March 11th, 2016

Ubisoftification. A term to describe the recurring negative aspects of Ubisoft’s recent games; excessive pointless collectibles, conquerable landmarks that reveal more of the map, repetitive loot with little purpose, you get the gist. Despite the change in setting from the Himalayas to Oros, a fictional valley in Central Europe, and the leap back in time to the Mesolithic era, Far Cry Primal suffers from these same problems.

Let’s get the technical stuff out of the way. My PC has an i5 4690k, 8GB RAM and an AMD R9 390 GPU. I played Far Cry Primal at Ultra settings and noticed very little in the way of performance issues. It dropped below 60 a few times but only when a considerably large amount of stuff was happening on screen and even then it stayed above 50. Some people are reporting problems however, so I’d recommend looking into it further if your system is in the low-mid range performance wise.

You play as Takkar, an abrasive hunter-gatherer in the Wenja tribe, one of three factions within Oros. Your tribespeople have been scattered, lost their way in the valleys and it’s your job to find them, recruit them and develop your village to help make Wenja the dominant tribe. An interesting concept that could and arguably should lead to a revolutionised Far Cry experience, but whether it does or not is arguable.

Far Cry has never been a series famed for its deep and engaging storylines, but it’s remarkable just how little the dialogue and cutscenes in Primal make me care about what’s actually going on. Both Pagan and Vaas from previous instalments have been witty, smart and menacing, yet Ull and Batari, the de facto leaders of the Udam and Izila tribes respectively, only retain the latter of the three qualities. Every piece of dialogue is in Ubisoft’s interpretation of a proto Indo-European language to retain immersion and while it succeeds in doing that, subtitles are the only way of understanding the characters which, to me at least, made me switch off during cutscenes. Combined with the

and voila, the transformation is complete. It’s the first time Far Cry has had . If I had the option to place huts and shacks the way I wanted, to craft some interior decorations and decide what went where, I’d be a hell of a lot more inclined to divert my attention from taming beasts and repeatedly petting them because they’re so damn cute.

Taming is one of the only mechanics done exceptionally well. The first beast you can tame is a white wolf, though unfortunately you can’t name him Geralt of Rivia. Eventually you make your way up to stronger and scarier companions such as brown bears and sabretooth tigers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Brown bears are incredibly strong and can provide a great distraction, but if you want one to be stealthy while you infiltrate an outpost, you’d be much better off with a jaguar or sabretooth tiger. Or a badger, if you want to be extra stealthy – they’re surprisingly vicious.

One of the main issues with Far Cry Primal is the melee combat. It’s clunky and quite frankly, boring due to the lack of innovation. There’s no blocking function, no way of countering your opponent, your only options are a quick or heavy attack. There’s no elegance and the fact your character is physically no bigger than any of the Udam or Izila tribespeople makes fighting nothing more than button mashing, even when you’re outnumbered and on a harder difficulty. While the club is bad, the spear is even worse. The animation for the melee attack with the spear is more of a light poke than a lethal stab and whilst spears are much more effective when thrown, they’re one of the more expensive weapons to craft so you often don’t want to risk losing your last one. For a high budget franchise like this, animations lacking any form of detail or polish is the last thing you’d expect.

Big explosions and fast paced action is what Far Cry is associated with after the last few instalments. Disappointingly, you won’t find your fix of rocket launchers and helicopters spiralling out of control here. Despite not having survival elements like requiring food and sleep, it’s much more of a survival experience than previous Far Crys, due to your dangerous surroundings and basic weapons. You start off with a club, bow and spear and although you can upgrade your weapons, you never progress onto anything much better. I half expected to unlock a prehistoric version of a sniper, just because it’s so

Where Far Cry has always failed to excite and surprise with its scripted gameplay, there is plenty of opportunities for thrilling moments when you are exploring the plains of Oros by yourself. Distant yells of ‘WENJA!’ can often be heard as opposing tribespeople stumble across your allies, and the bleating of passing goats or growl of advancing wolves are sounds you’ll quickly become accustomed to. If you have a cave lion as your companion, it’ll growl when any enemies are nearby; a fantastic and immersive use of sound design, although it’s easy to mistake it for a wild beast out of sight.

Exploration can often be slow going due to the vertical landscape, but the grappling hook does make the scaling of rockfaces less of an irritant. If you ignore the fact it’s entirely unrealistic for prehistoric tribespeople to have such an item, the ability to scale most cliffsides and ledges is a lifesaver when it comes to saving time and sneaking up or under unsuspecting enemies. My only gripe is the inability to utilise it as a stealth weapon to pull foes toward you and impale them with your pokey spear.

The second you emerge from the cave after the tutorial, you’ll notice one thing: Oros looks gorgeous. Snow topped mountains in the distance, vast green plains with deer and goats mulling around in front of you, it’s by far the most beautiful setting Ubisoft have created, which lends itself to the fantastically emergent gameplay. I was helping some fellow Wenja tribespeople defend themselves from an onslaught of Izila next to a lake, when a crocodile leapt out of the water and snapped a charging spearman straight in half. Another time, I’d just finished navigating one of Oros’ many caves and as I made my way outside, a crash of wooly were laying in ambush, albeit fairly obviously as the nature of rhinos doesn’t lend itself to stealth. I swiftly made a U-turn back inside the cave to hide in a small crevice they couldn’t get to, where I could cowardly shoot arrows and throw spears. It’s moments like these, the times where you wish someone else witnessed what you just saw, that make Far Cry Primal an enjoyable experience if you immerse yourself and let the other drawbacks fall into the back of your mind.

Crafting is integral to the story this time around as you gather materials and skin animals to upgrade your village to unlock more story missions. Gathering blue leaves and slate becomes repetitive after a while which brings me back to my aforementioned point; give us something else to work toward like artificial decorations for Takkar’s cave and the village, rather than ending up with a stockpile of resources you have no engaging use for.

In usual Ubisoft tradition, there’s outposts you have to clear and tall structures to conquer in order to unlock fast travel waypoints and discover more of the map. What a surprise, right? Rather than scalable radio towers, as I don’t think the Izila have quite discovered telecommunications just yet, you capture large bonfires. Defeat all the enemies and alight the bonfire; your Wenja comrades will move in and the land of Oros becomes slightly safer. It’s a system Ubisoft use across every single one of their titles, including The Crew – a driving game. Please, Ubisoft, think of a new system. It got stale long before now.

But, and that’s an important but, it’s still a Far Cry game. It may not be revolutionary or innovative gameplay, but they’ve tried something new with the setting and environment and in an era of developers afraid to deviate from the pack, it’s refreshing. Sure, it should’ve been a standalone expansion like Blood Dragon so I’d recommend waiting until it’s cheaper, but it’s still a solid single player experience and if you’ve enjoyed previous Far Cry games, you can’t go wrong. . I’ve had fun with it and whilst I can’t see it making any Game of the Year lists, the time I’ve invested has been worthwhile. Far Cry Primal isn’t enough to rejuvenate the series, but perhaps just enough to maintain it for another year.

Shooting flaming arrows whilst riding a sabretooth tiger into an outpost of cavemen is fun, I can’t deny.