Samiul Samin
The Far Cry series has become synonymous with being “over the top” in its grandiose action, open-ended gameplay and memorable characters. The latest in this series, Far Cry 4, shows little intention of changing up this formula, giving players another large-scale environment full of enemies and areas to explore with plenty of ways to do either. Besides some problems with its story and characters, it’s one game that any action fan will want to think about putting on their holiday wish list.
Far Cry 4 has you play as Ajay Ghale, a young man who is traveling to spread his mother’s ashes in her fictional home of Kyrat, located in the Himalayas. But everything quickly goes wrong at a border checkpoint and you’re soon captured by the villainous Pagan Min, a flamboyant dictator that rules Kyrat and also claims to have personal history with Ajay’s mother. You’re soon rescued by the Golden Path, a resistance movement that’s been battling Pagan’s rule for years. They give you a machine pistol and bam! Thus starts the mayhem.
Mayhem is something Far Cry 4 has in large supply. Right from the start, the amount of flexibility you’re given in almost any firefight is almost overwhelming. You can chuck grenades around like a madman, snipe enemies from afar, sneak around and stab guards in the throat, or emulate John Rambo by finding the biggest gun you can and holding down the trigger until the hammer goes “click”. And those are just the more straightforward methods of Far Cry 4’s action, as you can now experiment with throwing bait around to lure predators down on enemies or riding an elephant into battle and smashing cars aside like toys. Aside from a few missions where you’re forced to approach an objective in a certain way, Far Cry 4 does a fantastic job of giving players a large degree of agency in how they’d like to engage with its action sequences.While walking around, you may notice the barks of fully automatic weapons just over the next hill, signaling a possible skirmish between the rebels and Min’s army. You’ll hear villagers yell out in fear if they see an eagle or watch as a leopard stalks and kills a deer in one smooth motion. It can get a little frustrating how you can’t seem to go more than a few meters without stumbling across something going on in the game world, but, if anything, at least it means your travels won’t be boring.