Far Cry: New Dawn Review (PS4)

It's a cliché, but Far Cry: New Dawn is the equivalent of popcorn in the video game. Some pieces have good taste, but most of them are just there to be consumed without waiting. You shovel it in your mouth and, of course, it can be difficult to stop you as long as the bag is not empty, but you will hardly remember having eaten it once you get it. sit down and have dinner.

New Dawn is fun for long periods of open play. Sometimes this frieze really fun, but he never reaches the heights he likes to tease. Some story missions are thrilling adventures, but in practice they simply consist of what you've been doing for hours on the game map. You shoot people, you blow up objects and you enjoy the animations of an extremely rewarding knife killing.

Visually, it's a much more interesting title than Far Cry 5, and the post-apocalyptic nature of the map lends itself better to exploration. In the previous game, you rarely get out of your vehicle and walk – the map was little more than a number of places connected by great open roads – but here there are ruins of the old world conducive to looting. Cleaning plays an important role in New Dawn by accumulating DIY equipment. Even if it is only a matter of assembling springs, gears and other easily identifiable objects without thinking, it is an impulse difficult to ignore.

And you will need better weapons? New Dawn's enemies, be they colorful animals or hooligans of the tyrannical Highwayman faction, adapt quickly in terms of difficulty. This release introduces a number of basic role-playing mechanisms, but the most notable is the new "ranking" system. Almost everything is articulated around four levels of color: common (gray), rare (blue), legendary (purple) and elite (yellow). The enemies have them, the weapons have them, and the difficulty of the mission is indicated by them.

This means that to efficiently send a legendary or elite enemy, that is to say, kill him without resorting to cheap and abusive AI tactics, you will need to "kill" him. legendary or elite weapons. Damage caused by anything less will not reduce it to the point that you will probably run out of ammo before your enemy actually hits the ground.

Progress is easy, accessible and streamlined, but once you are at the top and the promised quest for power is over, New Dawn has a hollow experience. You find yourself in front of the refueling trucks that you would have hijacked a few hours ago. You no longer need the equipment. In fact, you do not need anything anymore. At this point, you are probably drowning in unused resources, which makes it even more questionable the inclusion of microtransactions that make your eyes spin. If you are putting real money back in order to speed up the already simple process of upgrading your arsenal, there is no point in actually playing it.

There is a reason why we have not yet mentioned the story of New Dawn, and that is because it is largely banal. It is a story of revenge and religious connotations in hard fist. As in Far Cry 5, his attempts to tell a serious and mature story are counterbalanced by a difficult dialogue and by characters who often make absurd decisions that lead to absurd results. Almost all of New Dawn's narrative beats seem to be at odds with the way the game is played.

He desperately tries to be human, to make you love the people of Hope County, but apart from a few comical moments, he falls completely flat. It's hard to take things seriously when, just a few minutes ago, you saw how you could launch a boar by stepping on your explosive from a distance. Heck, forget the pigs that explode, it's hard to take no matter what seriously after watching the final fight against the New Dawn boss.