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The Far Cry game may make you re-evaluate what you choose to do for fun in your free time as you stare into the eyes of a psychopath while he whispers: ‘‘God won’t let you take me.” You may find yourself re-evaluating your morality too.
Once again Ubisoft have crafted a beautiful world filled with deplorable things, this time in a small town in the American South, a place called Hope County, Montana. You play the first customisable character in Far Cry history — you can, if you so choose, be a mixed-race female deputy who finds yourself in the middle of a religious doomsday cult’s holy war.
The only thing that stands between “Father” John Seed, the self proclaimed prophet of Eden Gate, and his slaughter of what remains of the county’s population is you, a lot of guns and a shovel with a face painted on it. You can hire help in the form of friends, guns and “fangs” (in other words Boomer the dog and Cheeseburger the bear). You can also port your real-life friends into the mix to play the game.
So what’s the point of the game? Mostly to slaughter countless “Peggies” — the nickname of the cultists, and to occasionally go fishing. It’s terrific fun for the most part but as with Far Cry’s previous iterations, the relentless and almost mindless massacre can leave a bittersweet taste in your mouth.
Sure, the sadistic, torturous creatures deserve what’s coming to them but the irony is that after you’ve murdered them you can “liberate” the area and raise the American flag — the symbol of a nation that has historically disregarded and disenfranchised people of colour and women, and which has, in some areas, harboured the rebirth of Nazi-fascism under a leader as good at twisting the truth as John Seed himself.
Your character’s lack of back story lets the game down, as does the cult’s curious “end game” goal and the glitches — that have the annoying outcome of not registering your actions or making your companions tweak out and not help you. I’m getting tired of games like this landing on shelves with bugs or story holes, especially when there is so much potential to create something even better.
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