So a few days ago I ‘finished’ Farcry 4. I say finished in ‘finished’ because I didn’t complete all of the side quests before finishing the main storyline mission, and there is certainly plenty of other stuff for me to do. I might still do some of it, as overall I really enjoyed the game. To cut to the very end, it’s certainly a game I would highly recommend to anyone, FPS fan or not.

I’ve already posted about how alive the world in Farcry feels, but I also want to add that the level of detail is mostly interconnected, and if you take the time to put the pieces together, you get more out of the world and the events in it than if you just blast through everything.

I feel that’s a somewhat rare thing in gaming today. For comparison, remember how odd some things felt in Skyrim? You had a civil war going and dragons flying around, yet most people you met didn’t seem aware of this and were still really focused on you just collecting X for them or completing a few tasks so you can become a member of their guild. How much cooler would Skyrim have been if the overall world was aware of the actions happening; be it the civil war being decided or the dragons being defeated? In Farcry, while it’s not 100% perfect, the world certainly feels far more aligned with what you are doing and the impact you are making.

I also appreciate the game knowing what it is and what it’s not. The shooting mechanics feel really solid, the weapon selection is excellent, and the stealth gameplay feels incredibly natural and is a ton of fun. Perhaps even more importantly, the game understands it’s not a platformer, so while it does have minor jumping puzzles and such, the controls don’t force you into a pixel-thin margin of error. Walking across a smaller-looking plank for instance isn’t something you are going to fall off of because you didn’t line up perfectly, just like jumping to a ledge has a large margin of error. I appreciate that because it reduces frustration, and I’m not playing a game like Farcry to get platformer-level of difficulty from timing jumps or scaling cliffs.

So yes, excellent game all around, and a really fun break from what I usually play. It’s also the type of game I’d be more than willing to buy DLC for, like for instance a chance to play on the side of the main enemy.