This installment of the Far Cry series takes you to fictional Kyrat, located in the Himalayan mountain region. You play as Ajay Ghale (pronounced ahr-jay or eh-jay depending on who is speaking) who grew up in the United States but is returning to his birth place to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased mother. As you can probably guess this does not go as planned. A few cut scenes later you are stuck in a war between the old Kyrat and the new and everyone involved is looking to you for answers on what to do next.
Choices, choices. How you choose to proceed through the game will affect the characters you interact with in Far Cry 4. For example: if you choose to burn down and destroy a opium processing plant (because drugs are bad,ok?) some characters will praise you while others will be angry because you destroyed $685,000.00 the people of Kyrat desperately needed. Dealing with the consequences of your actions while toeing the line between what’s right and wrong is the central theme in the Far Cry 4 campaign. These decisions will create branching paths in the campaigns story finally coming together at the end to give you one of four possible endings depending on what you choose to do.
Far Cry 4 plays a lot like Far Cry 3. Climbing bell/radio towers to unlock more of your map. Liberate enemy outposts like a stealthy assassin or with brute force. Doing so will unlock a fast travel location along with half a dozen side missions. Completing these side missions are key to gaining experience points that unlock more abilities (run faster, hit harder, swim longer etc) along with unlocking weapons as well. Far Cry 4 has over 60 weapons to choose from ranging anywhere from a flare gun, RPG launchers, hunting bows (FC4 adopts the same hunting system as FC3) and of course as many automatic weapons you can shake a stick at. A nice new feature in 4 is you can now fire your weapon while driving a vehicle which makes for even more hilarious chaos. Vehicle choices are pretty shallow, a couple dozen cars, trucks, SUVs and watercraft to choose from, none of which stand out in any particular way except one. Elephants. Yeah, elephants. Charging head first into a enemy occupied camp on the back of a pissed off pachyderm like some kind of cracked out version of Master Blaster is one of the most rewarding experiences in the game. No words on this page will do it justice, you will have to witness firsthand the awesomeness of the elephant in Far Cry 4.
I’ve heard a lot of people complain about Far Cry 4 being just like Far Cry 3. I can’t say that I disagree but I also don’t find this to be something negative. Ubisoft didn’t break any new ground with 4 but with around 150 campaign/side missions, over 300 items to collect and hundreds of areas to discover and explore, they have gave you hours and hours of FPS fun in a gorgeous sandbox environment. If Far Cry 4 is just the same as Far Cry 3 and you loved 3, how is that a bad thing?
