A trip too far

Far Cry 4’s mind-altering missions were a high point

FORMAT PS4 / PUB UBISOFT / DEV UBISOFT / RELEASED 2014 / SCORE OPM #105, 9/10

Far Cry is no stranger to controversy. The series has flirted with the ideas of unreliable narrators, multiple endings, and silent protagonists – all tropes that are loved and hated in equal measure by gamers everywhere. But Far Cry 4 introduced four missions that proved to be more divisive than usual: the trippy, LSD-inspired Yogi and Reggie missions.

Yogi (AKA Donald) and Reggie are the worst kind of trust-fund kids: the sort of goons who spout hippie woo without any of the self-awareness that’s supposed to accompany it. The duo find a spiritual home of sorts in Far Cry 4’s Kyrat where, thanks to their disorganisation and ‘knack’ for improvising, they run into you, Ajay Ghale. It rapidly becomes clear that these two psychonauts have been peddling ’erbal wares to other Westerners desperate to find themselves in the region.

Everysingletime you meet these two, they end up tricking you into ‘testing’ their merchandise and despite their… questionable… moral choices, the missions you’re tricked into undergoing are phenomenally fun.

Which brings us to the final mission: Fly Or Die Trying. It gives Ubisoft Montreal a chance to show you what the Dunia engine can do: warping the visuals in psychedelic spirals and pumping sitar music directly into your earholes. It even gives you mission prompts like “Missing things are missing. Find them” – a glib continuation of that knowing Far Cry humour – as you’re plummeting face-first back down to Kyrat in a wingsuit.

Aside from playing Tetris Effect with jet lag, this is the closest to a psychedelic experience you’re going to get on PS4.