Far Cry 6 Review: The definition of Insanity

Far Cry 6 is more of the same

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again - expecting things to change, said Vaas, Far Cry 3's enigmatic antagonist. All these years later, it turns out he was right. 

For better or for worse, Far Cry 3 became a template for future Ubisoft games. In the process, the series slowly began to lose its identity over time. With the current crop of Ubisoft "Open-World" Games, there is very little originality left in the game mechanics all of these games use. They all feel like different flavours of the same thing. 

Far Cry 6 doesn't escape this problem, but the flavour of mayhem it presents is still uniquely Far Cry, even if we have seen this done before a million times. 

Presentation and Story

Far Cry 6 comes three years after the last instalment, which had players tackling Joseph Seed's maniacal cult in Hope County. The latest instalment takes you to Yara. A fictional homage to Cuba and places players in the shoes of Dani Rojas, pitting you against the machinations of power-hungry dictator Anton Castillo. 

Giancarlo Esposito plays Anton Castillo and, like the series' most memorable villains, steals the show. Castillo's motivations are not black and white, falling in the moral grey area. His desire for his son to follow in his footsteps feels questionable at first but, as you learn about him, you realise how his childhood shaped the man he would become. 

You also feel sympathy for Diego, who has had to watch his father's unrelenting cruelty from a young age. Tired of being groomed to be the future "El-Presidente," he attempts to run away and kickstarts the game's main narrative. 

On the other end of the spectrum are the rebels, who yearn to break Yara free from Castillo's Iron fist. Clara is the "Guerilla" leader and has her own motivations for a free Yara. 

Dani is introduced as an orphan, having lived a tumultuous life. Players can choose between a male or female Dani. At first, your only motivation is to get to America, as far away from Yara as possible. But as various events unfold, those plans change. 

Raised poor and without the burden of a "high-class" accent like Clara, Dani is the perfect face for the revolution, one that can appeal to the ordinary people of Yara and recruit them for their cause. 

Juan is the Spymaster and supplier for Dani. After a falling out with Clara, he spends his days getting drunk at local bars but quickly becomes a trusted aid when you manage to recruit him back. He supplies Dani with weapons and even introduces your first "Amigo," his pet crocodile, Guapo. 

As you progress through the game, you come into contact with many more revolutionaries and rebels, some more interesting than others. 

Far Cry 6's story riffs off the same "be the revolution" template, that the series has been following since the third instalment but is still cleverly written and had me interested to see how it all ends. 

Inspired by the Cuban islands, Yara shines as the locale. It is a tropical sandbox, similar to three's Rook Islands and is bought to life by the game's dynamic weather system. While there are a variety of jaw-dropping vistas, the graphical quality feels surprisingly similar to Far Cry 5, which is to say it doesn't feel like a big step up, in terms of fidelity. 

I don't have a monster rig, but the Ryzen 7 1700, GeForce RTX 2070 Super, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD equipped PC I used ran it consistently on "High," between 55 and 60 fps with the resolution set at 1080p. Not bad, considering the CPU bottleneck. 

Given the somewhat mid-range PC, I couldn't test out the ray-tracing effects. On the technical side of things, the game's implementation of anti-aliasing is awful. It makes the game look blurry and fuzzy, even at max settings. It is best to turn off, anti-aliasing altogether and upscale the resolution if you have the rig to handle it. The game looked much better with Fidelity CAS on and the resolution scale set to 2.0.

Another weird issue I ran into was with the game's V-Sync, which refused to lock it down to a consistent frame rate. I frequently saw large frame rate drops for no reason until I turned it off in-game and enabled it through Nvidia's control panel. The game ran fine after that. 

Far Cry 6 ships with lots of graphical options on PC to tinker with, and even has a benchmark tool to test out your settings, which is great. 

I ran into some small annoyances like glitching through the map during a stealth kill or interaction prompts not showing up for some items, but these could be because of the early review copy I was using to play the game. 

Despite these issues and the fact that it doesn't feel like a huge, visual jump from Far Cry 5, this is still a beautiful looking game with strong art direction and style. 

The music and sound design in the game is fantastic. Audio director Eduardo Vaisman captures the essence of the Latin-American islands well. And the attention to detail given to little things like Dani humming along to a song on the radio makes the game more immersive. 

Voicework is nice and varied, covering the sound space in rich accents that you expect from the setting. Not all of them are excellent, but they are all done to a really high quality. It gives Far Cry 6 a unique atmosphere, one that is instantly recognisable.  

Gameplay

If you have played a Far Cry game before, you know what to expect here. The series is known for its fun, sandbox gameplay, and six doesn't deviate from the formula too much. Like five, it sandpapers away the excess and dilutes the template down to its essence. 

Gone are the upgrades and skill trees from prior games, and in its place is a gear system that offers perks and stat boosts. Through your adventure in Yara, you will hunt down better pieces of armour and clothing to equip, all of which give you perks and stat boosts. For example - a full set of Parkour gear will significantly improve your movement speed or a full set of Scrounger armour maximises the materials you earn from a source. 

You will also buy or find better weapons, upgrade them and tune them to your liking. This is more important now because the enemies in Far Cry 6 have distinct weaknesses to the type of ammo you use - enemies with armour will be weak to armour-piercing bullets while standard enemies will be weak to soft-target rounds. Vehicles and machines are weak against explosions and so on. 

It isn't complex but it does give you a reason to switch guns in battle and customise according to a situation. You can do this at one of the workstations, scattered throughout Yara and there is usually one near an outpost or blockade, you need to take down. 

Dani is also armed with a Supremo, which is like a back-mounted weapon that can be configured to do anything from launching rockets to disabling security camera's with an EMP charge. They also give you active boosts, like increased movement speed or a double jump. 

As you might have guessed, this makes Dani a bit too overpowered, in my opinion. I never had to rely on the "Amigo" system which pairs Dani with a pet, who come with their own unique stats and upgrades. On the whole, six lacks challenge, and this is typified in the way, the new difficulty modes work - there are none. In its place, you can choose between a story mode or action mode, and if you know what you are doing, action mode isn't really that challenging. 

The enemy AI itself tends to flip-flop between moments of brilliance, followed by moments of sheer stupidity. Enemies won't automatically attack you if you have your gun holstered and aren't trespassing on a restricted area. They will give you a warning before they open fire, giving you time to move back. I was able to cheese this to the point, where I was walking into blockades with my gun holstered and simply executing them while their back was turned. 

On the flip side, during firefights, the AI handles themselves much better. Checking suspicious areas, taking cover, throwing grenades or rushing to nearby tanks or vehicles before the player. 

If you are near fellow Guriellas when an encounter breaks out, they will join you and can even revive you, if you go down. They aren't bug-free however. In several instances, I would see them engaged in firefights with nothing or being dumb enough to not move out of the way of oncoming traffic.  

The rest of the game is fairly routine. Like the games before it, capture outposts, engage in various activities, do little side quests or go on a treasure hunt for new gear. You can also hunt animals or engage in fishing if you want. You also get a customisable ride, which you can bling out and outfit with weapons. Any new vehicle you come across in the world can be taken to a pickup location, and then it will be available to use at any time using the radial menu. 

If you choose, you can also just rush through the story, though you will have to grind a bit when enemies start to out-level you. 

The problem is, there is nothing here that will feel new to the people that have played the series before. Worse, there is nothing here that will feel new, if you have played a Ubisoft game in the last year or so. 

Like every other major Ubisoft franchise, Far Cry has lost its identity a bit after it became a template that the company has started to follow for nearly every major release. 

Conclusion

Far Cry 6 doesn't try to be something it's not. It makes some iterative changes to distinguish itself from other entries but is ultimately a victim to the Ubisoft formula, one that it helped establish. 

On the positive side, it continues the series' strong tradition of good storytelling and memorable antagonists. Yara is also truly stunning. If you keep your expectations in check, there is still a lot of fun to be had here, however fleeting it might be. 

Far Cry 6 is out now for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S priced at Rs 3,999 for the standard edition. On PC, it is available through the Epic Games Store for Rs 2,999 for the standard edition.

Players who buy the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game will be eligible for upgrade to the PS5 and Xbox Series versions at no extra charge.