Eh, I was expecting a 3 out of 5 here. Jeff articulated himself well, though. He's entitled to his stance and opinion, and I respect that.
It's been interesting to see the responses to this game, especially since I'm far more used to polarized USER reviews than critical reviews. Forbes, US Gamer, Gamespot, and IGN all loved it but Polygon, Giantbomb, Guardian, and Waypoint all either disliked or outright hated it. Austin Walker even went so far as to begin his review by stating: "By the time I hit the 20 hour mark, I was wondering what could be salvaged. Far Cry 5, after all, was not a complete failure." (emphasis mine) *shrug*
I think Forbes said it best, in my humble opinion. Specifically: "Far Cry 5 is a chaos simulator with a preposterous story, tons of quality of life improvements over past games and an enormous amount of content. It's a blast if you let yourself just accept the silly premise and not invest too much in the politics of the game, or lack thereof."
If you can accept the silly premise and tonal whiplashes, this is a great time. It's absurdist, bipolar popcorn brilliance. I personally love it.
But... if someone watched that 2017 reveal and thought this was going to be the first non-farcical Far Cry that was going to tackle what he or she perceived to be the nation's problems... the final product offered here probably isn't going to work for him or her. On a related note, I have some peers that are very polarized and fixed in their political ideologies, and this was going to be their catharsis via shooting and murdering virtual representations of what they perceive their rival faction to be (a skeevy, creepy, dehumanizing thing if you stop to think about it), and they're downright annoyed. I spent the past couple months trying to temper their expectations (you have a diabetic bear sidekick named Cheeseburger, all the past games always had their tongues firmly in their cheeks despite the grim premises, Division had me listening to a crazy cat man ranting about his fur babies while I sidestepped a mass grave / pit of charred civilian corpses, etc.), but oh no! This was going to be different.
And it's not. *shrug* I do wonder how much politics influenced the divergent critical scores, especially considering how much it has influenced user stories I've heard (you'd think we were playing two entirely different games, but you'd also think we were living in two entirely different countries if you heard our modern-day assessments so eh), but it doesn't really matter I suppose. All in good fun.
My only counterpoint to this is that Far Cry 2 exists. The current game is obviously more in the wacky Far Cry 3 lineage, but 2 also managed to be about messing around in this open world sandbox while striking a more grounded tone. I thought its villain, the Jackal, was interesting without being as outlandish as Vaas or Pagan Min. It's got a cool buddy system that 5 obviously takes inspiration from. If you liked 2, I don't think it was unreasonable to expect more of that game in 5, especially given the initial, more serious pitch for it. It's clear in hindsight that's not the game they were making. I still do want to see what the DLC looks like. I suspect the smaller, more self-contained episodes will be better able to nail a consistent tone, similar to Blood Dragon.
Contra: Hard Corps might be a headache to play, but I've never seen a game with better comedic timing. They wait just long enough for the previous boss to blow up. You think you're finally done, only for the next ridiculous opponent to slide onscreen & tell you you are very far from done, & you are totally fucked. I'm in love.
Jan was messing up that large titan fight quite a bit. You attack his limbs whenever he has a green bar, and you attack his neck whenever he doesn't have a green bar.
I'm not going to argue the game is perfect or anything, but that boss fight is something that legitimately takes one minute.
Yeah, super excited for Jan's first quick look; hope he's on a lot more.
but...
The amount of times it told him "blades are dull/too slow/poor angle" gave the impression he was making it way harder on himself than he had to. I'd love to see footage of an expert playing this because I feel like those big fights would go a lot smoother if you were familiar with the systems.
I wonder how often Jeff goes digging into the collection for the genuine article vs just emulating stuff. A private collection the size of his is an amazing resource, but I know I'd emulate damn near everything just to save myself the extra five minutes of sifting through a bin.
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