Like a McDonald’s burger, Far Cry 6 is pure comfort food. If you’ve played the older games, you know exactly what to expect, but it totally hits the spot when you’re craving indulgence in the form of a chaotic open-world shooter.
Far Cry 6 transports players to the fictional island of Yara, where a hard-as-nails dictator by the name of Anton Castillo is making life hell for the local population. You are Dani Rojas, a freedom fighter who will do whatever it takes to liberate Yara from Anton’s tyranny. Far Cry 6’s plot isn’t ground-breaking, but it’s interesting enough, and its villain – played by Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito – is an absolute treat whenever he’s on screen. The other characters sadly seem targeted at the Fortnite audience and end up sounding like entitled Zoomer stereotypes. How can I take this revolution seriously if most of the guerrilla sound like Instagram influencers? It’s surreal.
Far Cry 6 takes inspiration from Ghost Recon Wildlands, where you’ll be tasked with eliminating both Castillo and his lieutenants, but you’ll have full freedom to do so as you please. The areas in which the lieutenants reside are denoted by levels, but there’s nothing stopping you from going after a higher level target; it’ll just be a tougher job. To topple each target, you’ll have to undertake missions from the freedom fighters in that area, which range from disrupting propaganda to eliminating HVTs to infiltrating heavily guarded areas for more information. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Far Cry game without outposts to liberate.
Like all the previous games in the series, Far Cry 6 offers players a diverse arsenal of weapons to choose from. If you prefer a stealthy infiltration, you can add silencers to most weapons, so you can move in and out of missions without being detected. That said, some missions require you to fight your way out of trouble, and the game offers up more than enough big hitters like RPGs, grenade launchers and flame throwers to get the job done. You’ll also have to keep an eye on the type of enemies you’re facing, and choose your ammunition accordingly – choosing armour-piercing ammo to kill heavily armed guards, and so on. You can also have some fun with the ammo variants in this game, since some now have perks, like the ability to burn targets or turn them against each another. New to this series is the concept of a ‘Super’, thanks to the Supremo weapon mounted on your back like a backpack. Think of it as your ultimate ability, which gets charged the more you kill enemies. Once again, depending on your play style, you could choose one that unleashes a barrage of rockets, or you could deploy gas that turns enemies against one another.
Apart from shooting things, you’ll spend a lot of time in Far Cry 6 engaging in a wide variety of side activities. You can take a break from all the revolting by fishing, indulging in some cock fights (not that kind), or hunting down hidden treasure. There’s also a new base-building mini-game, where you can build bases to boost certain stats like health and stamina as well as achieve in-game bonuses. You’ll need materials for everything in Far Cry 6, including base-building, so make sure you’re always stocked up. Far Cry 6 also introduces a fun mini-game that you access from bulletin boards in various settlements. From there, you can send a squad on various missions and the outcome is tied to pen-and-paper-RPG-esque questions. Choose wisely and your squad makes it back alive with some sweet loot.
Far Cry 6 is a good looking game and makes use of its tropical island setting extremely well. Since Yara is such a massive and dense place, you’ll move from lush beaches to picturesque mountains to densely packed urban locales. It’s like a greatest hits package of previous Far Cry games that all used these settings – the tropics from Far Cry 3, mountains from Far Cry 4, and the vast countryside from Far Cry 5. The game world is absolutely massive and it is a treat to explore. And I have to give massive props to Ubisoft for making this PC port absolutely stellar. Off late, PC ports of AAA games have been rough, or downright bad, but Far Cry 6 runs like a dream.
At this point, many gamers may have been burnt out by the Far Cry formula, and I can see that since the past few games have had near identical mission structure. Far Cry 6 doesn’t attempt to change that a lot. Sure, it’s removed its traditional skill tree and added some gameplay elements, but deep down, it’s very much a Far Cry game. That being said, I was still surprised by how much I ended up enjoying it, because very few games do emergent gameplay as well as the Far Cry series.
- Gameplay and gunplay loop is solid as ever
- Yara is a visual treat
- Crazy amount of content to experience
- Doesn't stray from the formula
- Most characters can't be taken seriously
