Note: Originally posted on The Optional Boss in April, 2015.

One of the big games at the time of next-gen releases was Far Cry 4, the next installment in an open world first person shooter that pits you against man and beast alike. Admittedly, I had never played a Far Cry game before, though I’ve heard the soundtracks. This was my first experience with the franchise, and I’m pretty impressed!

For starters, I never fancied myself a big fan of the open world style of games. I generally prefer having some more direction, and I tend to get bored if I’m not moving the story forward for ten hours of game play time. All that went out the window here. While the game features a surprisingly interesting story – albeit a bit weak and flawed – exploring the fictional India-like nation of Kyrat was extremely fun. Liberating radio towers and outposts, as well as discovering hidden locations and finding collectibles was very entertaining. At times, it turned me into an OCD protagonist, hellbent on collecting every letter, tearing down every propaganda poster, and doing every optional side mission. At about fifteen hours into the game, I realized I had not done a single campaign mission since the opening because I was so engaged in doing everything else.

The game starts off with the player controlling Ajay Ghale in Kyrat to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased mother. Your bus gets hijacked by government troops and you are captured by Pagan Min, the dictator of the country. He tells you a bit about how he knew your mother, then proceeds to torture the man he captured with you – a member of the Golden Path resistance movement. You have the option to break out of the royal palace and escape into the wilderness to join up with the Golden Path. Of course, you also have the option to sit there and do nothing when Min leaves, which then concludes with him coming back and the game ends, but if you do that, you don’t really have a game.

Throughout the game, you can divvy up your time doing campaign missions for Amita or Sabaal, two Golden Path leaders vying for control of the resistance and setting up their future reign over Kyrat. In these missions, you are often forced to make a decision and back one leader over the other. For example, in one mission you are forced to choose between saving an opium field or destroying it. The game is careful to avoid making either Amita or Sabaal seem like clearly the right choice. Neither exhibits a particularly strong moral compass.

In between those, you can do missions for other people in villages. These missions don’t ultimately vary that much. There aren’t that many different kinds of missions, but completing them all can easily become an obsession. Additionally, there are secondary characters who give you missions, like Longinus, the former African war lord whose new religion requires him to use rocket launchers and guns to deliver Jesus’s message. Or you can go on chaotic, drug-fueled trips thanks to Yogi and Reggie.

The campaign isn’t terribly long, but if you’re the “literally gonna catch ’em all” type of OCD gamer like some of us are, you can easily spend up to 50+ hours on the game. With a large world and many missions to complete, it isn’t unusual to become addicted to attempting to complete 100%. Not all of it is necessarily the most fun, but there is something a little bit relaxing about taking a buzzer and flying across the entire country on your way to hunt a rabid elephant with a flamethrower.

With a great environment and solid gameplay, it’s also got one of the more memorable villains in recent gaming. Not quite as amusing as Borderlands’ Handsome Jack, but not terribly far off either. Plus, it might take a while before you realize it’s yet another in an insanely long (and still growing) list of incredible Troy Baker performances. Everyone else’s voice acting is pretty good, but Baker kills it once again.

When you complete the game, you might also find yourself purchasing the soundtrack too. It’s the usual sort of “awesome” that you can expect from a Far Cry game. Overall, there were many things to love about this game. Few things were more enjoyable than rampaging through an enemy base riding an elephant. Epic.

Reductive Rating: It’s fun!

Available On: PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XBox One, Windows

From Ubisoft Montreal