Far Cry 2 was more of a prehistoric game than this...It had minimal UI, a map that was drawn on paper, diseases that could kill you, and you couldn't understand a fucking word anyone said without subtitles.
Far Cry 2 is actually a pretty good game. It had a ton of potential but was bogged down by the A.I. and those constant respawning enemy outposts to a name a few of its cons.
Like a good game should be. Games tend to treat you like you have Dow Syndrome: "you go there where that auntie is and you do what she says and go where she points but since you could get lost while crossing this straight corridor i will grab you by your hand and when we finish it i will reward you an ice cream and tell you did a good job"
+VapidMaus I don't think he's jaded with games, he's certainly jaded with same-y corporate games. Check his recent Superhot review to see him giddy as an 8-year-old because he found something that actually surprised him.
+VapidMaus Same here. I've been playing games since 2001 and I'm starting to feel the weariness. FPS was the first genre that I started to feel the fatigue, the RTS lost its luster soon after and now RPGs and Third Person games are starting to showing severe cracks of familiarity. Just yesterday I spent my night alternating between playing several games, making scale models and watching videos with each activity lasting around 20-40 minutes. The Witcher 3 and MGV The Phantom Pain are the only games last year that were able to get me play each of them for over 200 hours straight without getting distracted by other games.
Hey I know this comment is a year old or whatever, but my name is Keenan, and you're the first other person named keenan I've seen on RU-vid. Idk, just thought that was cool I guess.
And after four year I hope they dont. Because I am enjoying their games far more than those scripted shit Rockstar Games are releasing or any other open world video games.
Fallout 3: Oblivion with guns Skyrim: Fallout 3 without guns Far Cry 3: Skyrim with guns Far Cry Primal: Far Cry without guns Far Cry 3=Fallout 3? Skyrim=Far Cry Primal? 0_o
I thought you would mention that this game was actually a different game, not a Far Cry game, and that the creator of the that game was fired from Ubisoft and they took his game and made it a Far Cry game. it's worth mentioning that the creator who got fired is working independently on a game with the same idea, and it's called Wild.
Was interested in the title, but afraid Ubisoft would water it down like they always do these days. The points brought up here don't surprise me in the least but I still feel let down. The worst part is that Ubisoft will look at the mediocre reception the game got and they will not think "I guess our worn out formula can only work this many times. We will actually bring something new next time!" but instead "People don't like the setting, that's why it flopped. Back to the usual stuff then."
Blood Dragon was great. It was also only 15 bucks and 4 hours long. I think it says a lot about a boring, overused formula when the four hour spin-off is the only way to keep it fresh for an entire game.
George made a video about this exact topic. It's called ***How Design Trends Ruin Great Games***. Basically talks about how almost every AAA game today is somewhat action based, with a light progression system and some degree of open world with contextual controls and a weapon wheel. He used The Evil Within as an example of this 'homogenisation' of games.
+Michael Crowe This. Far Cry 3 recieved a full four years development time. FC4 and Primal received less than two years each. This is why FC4 felt like a reskin of FC3, and Primal felt like a reskin of FC4. FC3 compared to its successors had by far the best storytelling, most intelligent missions, most entertaining characters, best voice acting, and basically best everything sans pure graphical prowess. I just wish Ubisoft would give a full four years to the next iteration, or we'll be playing the same reskinned game over and over again for the next decade.
***** Absolutely agreed. Far Cry without the gunplay is just an awful, awful idea in my opinion. It's sad as hell we could have had a Wild West Far Cry or Blood Dragon 2, but instead we got "FC4: Ooga Booga Edition" where they spend thousands of dollars recreating an ancient language just to spoil it by giving the protagonist full GPS, wallhack vision, and the supernatural ability to control animals.
I'd actually enjoy the Space variant if they get the combat right, don't have checklist-objectives, some sort of market/building system to pick a home planet... y'know, not Farcry. (Here's to hoping Star Citizen succeeds.)
+damon22441 collect seven nanograms of antimatter to open the quantum gate climb the quantum gate to unlock the Comcast™ Xfinity™ Speed challenge to unlock a mini-nuke. spend your XP to unlock the Ubisoft Uplay Fun Store, and buy the DLC to use the mininuke.
I can't say I agree with you at all here. Turn off the HUD and turn the difficult up to expert and Primal becomes an entirely different game. The audio and art design do an amazing job of encouraging immersion. I have played all of the previous Far Cry games and I have to say this is my favourite. It may even end up as my game of the year. Far Cry: Primal gives you the freedom to approach the game in the way that you want. My approach was as an immersive survival game and as such I found it highly enjoyable.
I remember seeing the cover art for this game everywhere when it came out and being pretty excited. I'm only just now doing my first play-through though. I started it on Survival mode and it's just the right amount of thrilling, terrifying and exciting kind of a primitive, gritty, gory, explorative survivor I was hoping it would be. This game is honestly fantastic!
AydarBMSTU It had a lot of different elements going against you (weapon degradation, malaria, etc.) Kinda reminded me of Stalker in a lot of ways. It was by no means perfect, but FC3 just felt like it was pandering to you in every way possible.
+DrearierSpider1 Far Cry 2 felt much more mature in some sense The setting was great, the combat was violent and visceral Even the jackal character and his biaised moral was good But all of these ideas were under exploited Instead far Cry 3 went on the road of over the top action, ecological disaster and animal cruelty
+PraiseTheSun20 It's the only one I ever played and I was still bored of the gameplay by the end. Blood Dragon was great but I just do not see what keeps people coming back to this series
+PraiseTheSun20 Yeah maybe my favorite too, mostly just because of its silliness and that it didn't drag on for too long. Or Far Cry 2, because it had some more daring ideas put into it. And no minimap glued to your HUD! How amazing is that!
As someone who didn't play much of Far Cry 3, and didn't play the 4th one at all, I found Primal to be quite fun. Chucking spears at people is fun, and I thought the melee felt meaty enough. A dodge function would have been pretty good though. I think genre fatigue plays a big importance in the enjoyment of any Ubi sandbox these days. It can be fun to pick one up here or there, but if you play every release they put out I can see how it can turn into a real slog. It also didn't hurt that I got it for about 30 bucks.
Weaverdrone yeah mate. Been after it since it came out and just ended up forgetting about it. Really enjoying it tho. Pity for the people that think a game can’t be good just cuz it doesn’t have guns in it.
got the game for about 18 on Amazon new and gotta say I enjoyed it as much as this comment section did besides story for me but gameplay and map is good
MwieZorro Morrowind didn't age well and new players can be easily alienated by the atrocious combat and lifeless Wiki dialogues. Oblivion was kind of ruined by level scaling, which broke immersion (bandits in glass armor) and defeated the point of an RPG.
marlonyo Really? I tried to get into Morrowind a while back, but couldn't get past the combat system. Do you know of any mods for that, mainly something that would remove the chance to miss and improve hit detection?
Ah, AAA game design...taking novel ideas and diluting them with mundane, repetitive mechanics that have been done over and over to the point of making them and the game as a whole absolutely boring. That's a shame, but Ubisoft is easily one of the most egregious devs when it comes to bland game design. Also, one save slot!? Fuck that. I need dozens of save slots for almost every game because of that mantra "Save often and in different slots".
+Cactuar512 Personally I tend to have one save slot for the first playthrough, then one for a "completionist" playthrough. Then several saves for "just for fun" playthroughs. Thanks to Ubisoft and their trend of the one-save-slot, I don't feel like playing the game again after my completionist run, since all of that progress is gone when I want to begin a new game. I don't know why the hell they do that, honestly, why?
+GahMyEyes The first time needs to be the "completionist playthrough". Players can no longer have the possibility of missing content, and you need to fill out every progression path at once to become the Ultimate God King Badass by the end.
+Nison545 Same here. Every complaint listed in this video was a cynical complaint I made when Ubisoft first announced this pathetic little game's existence. For the first time I am sad to have been right.
I predict......Checklists, Outposts, Minimaps cluttered with icons, Radio Towers, a flamboyant and shocking bad guy who ends up feeling phoned in and pointless, Crafting, and finally, Microtransaction Lootboxes. If any one of those elements ISN'T in either game, I will be absolutely flabbergasted.
So, You have done some of the most thoughtful, insightful reviews I have ever had the pleasure to watch. But... well, this review made me think of what frank Sinatra singing a medley of AC DC's greatest hits would be like.
It is not a bad game, it is simply a soulless AAA example of modern game design. Instead of going all the way and actually developing a good melee system (which Condemned and Chronicles of Riddick got right 10 years ago) having some actual tracking and hunting skills for setting up traps and lures for enemies and animals, and doing away with all the modern Ubisoft open world bs (detective vision mini map hud etc) to give you a caveman simulator (like Ark) it is just a barebones effort despite the seemingly creative premise. Most people cite EA as beign evil but to be honest at least they have an agenda other than beign just by the numbers, souless crap like what Ubi does with their franchises
If they make a Far cry primal and Blood Dragon crossover, i'd buy it. Imagine shooting lasers from your eyes while riding a pterodactyl to destroy a terrorist cyber t-rex camp...The t-rexes would obviously have tiny AK-47s that shoot guns-shaped lasers
+Janootz It was going to be, but since Assassin's Creed is no longer a cash cow, Ubisoft needed something to replace the lost income, which is why Primal was beefed up with extra collectables and crap and shipped out as a full priced game, it was going to be a lower cost Blood Dragon before that.
+Janootz Yep, I think it would have been much better as a short experience, not padded out to "full game length". That would have been a good excuse for the lack of survival elements etc. as well. As it stands, it looks like an idea that they couldn't commit to fully.
So now we know what UbiSoft is short for. Ubiquitous Software. Every game they make is the fuckin' same, all the mechanics shared across all of their games, even when it looks different. Lovely.
+Aedan Clarke The map reusing was really the icing on the cake. Ubishidiot, ladies and gentlemen, so concerned about the environment they recycle their games to completion.
The whole HUD and item collection stuff is the opposite thematically to what it should be. If you imagine a game based on being a caveman, what should stick out in your mind immediately? What kind of world do you want to be escaping to? - as little help as possible (no maps, not much inventory, hardly any carry equipment) - minimalistic but good music - much more spiritual than the modern world - based around family and cooperation - constant struggle for survival (high-level enemies, highly smart enemy AI which works together, having to be constantly alert) - food and warmth essential - becoming powerful is based on in-game discoveries of the locations of plants and animals - navigating by landmarks and the spoken word Sounds like this game is the opposite.
+stuckupcurlyguy The game has most of this stuff if you play it (the challenge and need to survive and be stronger, your trive, the music, etc, etc). About the map, you can disable the mini map (witch is anoying) and you find new stuff the more you explore.
It's not my favorite game in the series and i do think Ubi should change and improve more mechanics in the sequel, but the HUD and collectathon doesn't really bother me. I feel like there's enough variety to keep it pretty fresh. If it was this similar to the previous 2 FC's with jungle or forresty terrain taking up a lot of the map, i'd be complaining more, but the stone age time period is one of my favorites in history, and i can't think of another game that's brought it to life this well. Even if it's not entirely accurate with things like sabertooth riding, lol. I'm willing to suspend disbelief because those things make it more fun.
+DeepSpaceBass1 That would mean firing the thousands of people that make up their international team of pipeline, something that leads to lots of stock dropping. I'm seriously waiting for the announcement of layoffs in large amounts because that IS what's going to happen, Divison, Siege and Blacklist along with Far Cry point to them wanting to make another golden little series like Assassin's Creed and not really knowing how to go about that, since for every one good idea they have two overly safe contradicting ideas killing it.
+vman339 No it wouldn't, it would require you to tell your staff to THINK UP AN ORIGINAL GAMEPLAY FORMULA other than clear the camp and do the campaign missions ad nauseum that is in every ubisoft game.
I got excited for Far Cry Primal when it was first announced and then it was released like 2-3 months later and I realized it was money grab and not an attempt at a new instalment.
Ubisoft need to seriously go back to the drawing board, no more stupid towers, collectatons, repeated land masses and recycled gameplay from their earlier games. im so burnt out on ubisoft
+Dave Starr No, It's Skyrim with out magic. And based on an entirely different time period. And no rpg elements, instead a skill mill. So it's demonstrably not like skyrim.
+ot63 Yes. Or simply pre-history. It sounds a bit odd, but it just means "History before we started writing shit down". Historic eras are often riddled with written accounts of the world, and its events. Making it way easier for us today to decipher. While records of pre-historic eras will have to stand on archaelogical evidence alone. There is a difference between the word historic, and history. As soon as writing was invented, we enter the historic era.
+DarkStarAngelo The biggest problem is that the vocal minority(?) that voices this sentiment has already voted with their wallet. From a financial standpoint it's not a good idea to cater to this audience - the risk to reward ratio is vague. Whereas everyone else is more or less content. Ubiquitous sells, it's less risky, it's a good financial stance. At some point we kinda lose grounds to discuss what and what not to do.
***** I think the Ubisoft formula is still going strong simply because people seem to care more and more about a game's length and open world developers are banking on that as much as possible. It seems gamers these days are more than happy having games with samey, repetitive and dull as dishwater content that drags on and on rather than shorter, sweeter and much more refined and interesting content. Of course I'm not judging people who likes this kind of stuff but I do feel that games are steadily devolving into this kind of boring slogfest and I really don't like that one bit. Content in open world games should be all about exploring and to let the player play the game how they want to play, they shouldn't be made to fulfill checklist after boring checklist just to get vaguely decent stuff out of it after hours of the same, repetitive content over and over. Funny enough, I felt that Far Cry 2 did things pretty well despite its issues. A simple formula with simple goals but I felt it was an elegant solution compared to the checklist design that came after it. As you can see, I like to rant.
+DarkStarAngelo I completely agree with everything you just said. But why would triple AAA companies like Ubisoft, EA, and Activision change anything about their current business model? That's what gaming has become. A BUSINESS. No more games from the soul, no more life changing experiences, no more sinking hours of my life into a game that I love. They've found the simplest and easiest way to literally print money and as long as long as people keep buying these types of games, there won't be any improvement. People like us are a very small and not so vocal minority. Even if we all just stopped buying games, these companies will still make billions within the 1st week of release. The "boring slog fest" that modern games are devolving into is only going to get worse.
Freddie_Shadow Oh gaming has always been a business but you're right, there are so few games from the soul in the big AAA scene. Usually it's the mid-range publishers and indies that put out the weird, wonderful and risky games nowadays which is why I tend to stick to playing their games because I often get a cool new experience. I love developers and publishers that take note of what gamers are upset with when it comes to current trends and what they want and these people appeal to a niche audience like Wild Hog Games did when people asked for a revival of old school FPS with Hard Reset and Shadow Warrior 2013 which are excellent games in my opinion even if they're more transitionary (Is this even a word? It is now.) pieces between the new and old. I believe the biggest problems here are hype, pre-order culture and gamer's obsession of length and just outright apathy towards the current state of the industry. It gives these developers and publishers an excuse to fart out a lazy game in a boring open world with "hundreds of hours of content" when that content is the most boring stuff I've ever seen in a videogame. Theoretically these current trends should be fun, exciting and awesome and there are some games that have those qualities but sadly this is the videogame industry. Personally, I would love to see shorter, linear and highly replayable games become a thing to outweigh the boring slogfests of today. I want to see more Metal Gear Risings and Devil May Crys, short games that are incredibly sweet. This is more of me just ranting at this point but I feel people should voice their concerns and hopefully we'll see change or at least other studios listen and bank on what people really want to see in the industry.
This is spot on. Many are deluded by the setting but the setting offers nothing but a beautiful imagination that is only in our mind and not played out on the screen.
+GreenOnionBrother Same here. Enjoyed them both (Blood Dragon more than 3). And I had fun playing through 4. It sounds like Primal is a "wait until it's 20 bucks or less" deal. Which is fine, but it sounds like I'd be a bit miffed if I plunked down $60 for it on day 1.
+81GhostSlayer I still play it, its graphics are still very beautiful, the best fire propagation and shooting mechanics, and a very cool realistic story without magical crap. Only issue, respawning guardposts, but even that is easily fixed with mods.
You had me chuckling with the C-130 audio behind the owl. But I've been playing this game on hard with the map, prompts and reticle turned off and it sounds like it's much more fun when the map isn't streamlining you everywhere. It makes you listen for footsteps and actually scan the trees for enemies.
My perspective on this game is really different, but that might be where I'm coming from. I love this game to pieces, and I think it's because I avoided playing Far Cry 4, feeling it was just too similar to Far Cry 3 without enough fixes to the formula. Primal, in comparison, was enough of a gap from 3 for me to really enjoy it. It certainly helped that I chose to play in Survivor mode, which basically takes out most of the negative traits it shares with the other games (like the minimap being taken out or flashing indicators being removed in favor of using Hunter Vision) as well as giving meaning to hunting by making meat more than just a healing item. Also, it removes some of the more overpowered abilities, like the owl bombing runs. The removal of guns actually makes for an interesting challenge that makes stealth fun, allowing me to make the most out of my whole toolset. Overall, I'd say Primal was my favorite game, but again, I never played 4, so I don't have that fatigue.
I feel my relationship with shooters is now: Ooh its fun to hit that guy, ooh I shot him, the reaction animations feel great, oh boy this combat is amazing Oh shit I have to craft Oh shit I have to stealth Oh shit I have to manage a town UGH...shooters are usually only good at combat and story and if the crafting really only serves itself and not the combat/story than its essentially darn cookie clicker. Ugh I guess that was a jumbled weird rant whatever...
this game could be saved by mods if they have an api. Cause the content is there, but the implementation and design is bad; and thats what mods usually excel at. All that to say: modders are better designers than ubisoft's proffessional designers
I play this game with no minimap and the objective markers set to "smart", which hides them until you're a few dozen meters away. I'm also playing on Expert. With those settings, this game is a masterpiece, and my favorite Far Cry game by miles.
