So just as I predicted Far Cry 6 has already become available for free to anyone who is a PS Plus Extra member. I decided not to purchase this game even though it has been reduced to 30 or 40 dollars a few months back because Ubisoft at least appears to have some sort of deal with Sony where their games spend about 6 months on the market and then become part of the PS Plus catalog shortly after a DLC or two is released.
I really enjoyed Far Cry 5, it is one of my favorite games in that genre that I have ever played and after I completed it I didn't feel like 100% ing the game so I just moved on. I initially started with FC 4 but didn't like the mechanics or the story and especially the fact that you were constantly being mauled by wildlife. I ended up putting that one down less than I would say 15% of the way into the game. I've been through quite a few other games since then that are similar and also didn't like them including a Tom Clancy game which is the first game from that franchise that I had ever tried. Some of these games ALMOST get what makes a FPS/Open-world RPG amazing to me, but not quite.
I am hopeful that Far Cry 6 will be able to recapture the magic of 5, but thus far, I have to say that I am not really all that impressed.
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FC6 takes on a familiar tone that is basically essential to any Far Cry game: You find yourself in some small location on earth that an overlord of some sort has taken some sort of a tyrannical position of power in and you and your group of helpers are the only ones that can save it by eliminating the new leadership. I admit that this being the same story every time does get a little bit old, but honestly, how else are they going to do it?
In this story we are in a small Caribbean island nation that doesn't really exist, yet Ubisoft goes out of their way to put a disclaimer that they are not depicting any nation or group of people in particular. I am certain that there were still some people out there that were upset that Spanish-speaking people were presented as lawless because that is the sort of times that we live in now - someone is going to complain no matter what you do. We have to make bad guys out of someone!
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Every FC game that I have played before has been open-world but restricted your movement into more difficult areas by one method or another - the exception being FC 5 where you could basically go anywhere you wanted once you broke out of the training island.
I suppose the starter island in FC 6 can be seen in the same light because you cannot leave the place until you finish the final mission of destroying the navy blockade in the bay there at the top. I kind of like this approach because it's not really very fun to wander into an area accidentally where you get one-shotted and can't even figure out why. I also like that this game you much more freedom than FC4 because the starter island is actually pretty large and you can test your legs a bit by the harder areas in the West. None of these areas are particularly difficult and it does a good job of teaching you the game's controls without doing too much hand-holding.
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Once you get past all of that we are back to our usual Far Cry system of having major objectives sprinkled in with a bunch of minor ones including areas that you don't actually have to liberate at all if you don't feel like it. So far I have just been running around on my horse and doing the main missions and will wander to rescue a hostage on the side of the road, hopefully not killing them in the firefight as well in the process. I haven't done much of the side mission stuff yet because I don't see the point just yet. Once the main missions start to present some sort of difficulty I will probably venture into the side quests in order to level up a bit before I move on.
Now one thing that I will point out that really pissed me off about FC6 is that you are still attacked by wildlife. Thankfully, this doesn't happen ALL THE TIME like it did in FC4 and for the most part your "amigos" can take out the critters in the filed anyway. Speaking of your amigos, they went a different way with this one than they did with FC5 or 4.
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The first amigo you get is "Guapo" and he is a trained alligator that doesn't do much damage but he certainly draws a lot of attention to himself thereby allowing you to pop off shots from afar. He dies a lot but is able to self revive after a time. I look forward to getting more animal amigos but I do kind of miss having 2 helpers with me at all times the way that FC5 had.
One thing that the introduced into the game that I so far do not much care for is that in order to "mark" enemies (at least in the point of the game I have reached) you have to find a vantage point and do recon. If you do not do this the enemies remain hidden until they are on you or you will find yourself getting shot by something that you cannot see. In FC5 I kind of got accustomed to having these enemies auto-marked by a companion and while this is a little gripe, it's one of the main ones I have with the game thus far. I don't actually want to ALWAYS have to find a vantage point and scope a place out before I head in. This seems far too Rainbow 6 to me and it was one of the main reasons why I left that game long before finishing it. Stealth and planning can be fun sometimes, but if you have to do it 600 times in a row throughout the course of playing a game it gets really old, really fast.
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find a vantage point, mark the guards, attack using the weaknesses, lather, rinse, repeat.
So far, I think the story is fine but not as compelling as FC5 or even 4 for that matter. The terrain is fantastic and the missions make sense. Gameplay is basically the same as it was in past games so I have no complaints there as well. The only problem that I could say that I have with it so far is that it kind of seems to lack that edge that 5 had because we are just back to an overlord dictator rather than a cult of some sort. I think the cultish nature of it gets introduced later, or so it would appear from where I am standing now.
I'm only a few hours in and I have to say, unless something starts becoming a lot more fun about the game in some fashion, that I can't really see myself staying dedicated to this game for the duration. The next few days will be very telling about all of this but this might be the reason why it made it to the PS-Plus Extra free section so quickly.