Far Cry 6 review: A familiar return to open-world stupidity

Less than five minutes later Far cry 6, I was skeptical about it.

It opens with dictatorial President Antón Castillo delivering a televised speech in Yara, a fake Cuban paradise struggling with a history of political dissent. Castillo has reinstated a citizen project for the ongoing cultivation of Viviro, a local wonder drug that cures cancer. Made by fertilizing Yara’s tobacco crops with a chemical gas, this magical drug is the key, says the president, to hoisting his dilapidated island to the upper echelons of the global economic scene.

But it’s Far cry, well-worn in his love of open-world war games, destabilized nation-states and crazed despots. And Castillo, played with exaggerated enthusiasm at the heel by Giancarlo Esposito (breaking Bad), is certainly a tyrant. The truth shown to us in his speech – of citizens sent to the fields as forced slaves or slaughtered for resisting – is a non-disclosure given the touchstones in the series.

It was when the president’s forces then entered Yara’s capital, Esperanza, and began indiscriminately slaughtering everyone on the “draft” list that I first raised an eyebrow. While this series has made its cartoonishly distorted sociopaths the stars of their respective games for a while, the absurdity of the game of turning your fascist regime into an inhuman death squad before it has had the chance. time to carry out your antagonist’s despicable plan only finished explaining is more than ridiculous. It also looks like a pic Far cry– and maybe says a lot about where these games are now.

Two sides of the same coin

You can’t really say Far cry is not aware of his own idiocy; from 2012 Far cry 3, the agenda was light, silly, free-form fun. The franchise has instigated riots in typically exotic locations, luring you in with trucks full of guns and fancy death toys to inflict maximum chaos. That is, if you’re not already distracted by setting things on fire, hunting wildlife (or otherwise unleashing it on unlucky henchmen), capturing strongholds and busy points of interest, roaming the air, sea and sky in all manner of vehicles with and without weaponry mounted, nor any of the myriad other activities that have become staples of the series.

And so goes with Far cry 6. Playing as former soldier Yaran Dani Rojas, after escaping Castillo’s draft in Esperanza, you become a member of Libertad, a revolutionary group that plans to overthrow their regime and free Yara. To do this, this group of guerrilla fighters needs the support of a number of allies spread across the western, central and eastern parts of the vast country.

In practice, earning their promises comes down to familiar ground for longtime gamers. You have the flexibility to take on larger, coin-style missions at your leisure, or just have fun with side distractions like chasing a beacon pelican across the sky to hidden caches of “treasure” ( loot and equipment) and the pursuit of a geriatric guerrilla through a carnival of explosive traps to deliver a love letter.

To its credit, Ubisoft has gradually made each entry in this series more and more fluid. Moving around and terrorizing Castillo’s troops in any way you’d like is straightforward from the start – even momentum-destroying enemy checkpoints, a sticking point to varying degrees in previous entries – don’t pose not much obstacle this time.

In my opinion: At first I was able to easily access an enemy base with a few tanks parked and only a handful of guards on duty. A few messy stealth machete killings later, I stole a tank and wreaked explosive havoc for nearly an hour, turning hostile jeeps into twisted pieces of metal, sending soldiers comically ragdol, and moving on. bulldozer through anything in my way.

I have to admit there is some brainless fun to be had here.