Live Magazine : June/July issue

fresh coat of paint. Even your antagonist,
the eccentric yet charming
Pagan Min, was designed to
recapture the enjoyment people
had for FC3’s pirate Vaas.
Ubisoft has never been a company
afraid to iterate. Assassin’s
Creed, Just Dance, Tom Clancy’s
Man-with-Gun: all operate on a
simple equation. Make a great
game, tweak a few things on
the next instalment, and port the
rest over wholesale. The Far Cry
games – all under the umbrella of
shooters in exotic, lawless places
– have seen this become particularly
egregious ever since the third
instalment. In Far Cry 3, you were
Jason Brody, an entitled rich kid
Written by Aaron Milligan
slowly turned savage through enduring
the horrors of the lawless
Rook Island. In Far Cry 4, you play
as Ajay Ghale, a man who manages
to make overthrowing a dictator
in mountainous Kyrat seem
as exciting as buying toilet paper.
There are new things, and they’re
great – most notably the Shangri-
La sections and the inclusion of
a grappling hook – but the rest is
near identical. Animations, skills,
outposts, crafting and weapons,
all ported wholesale and given a
It isn’t the worst thing, of course.
Unloading a machine gun from
atop an elephant or destroying a
convoy of trucks from a gyrocopter
remain fantastic, fun moments
in a gorgeous game. Outposts
especially create wonderful storytelling
moments, totally naturally.
But when you’re climbing a tower
to unlock a portion of the map for
the twentieth time, you can’t help
but notice how exactly the same it
all feels to before.
But you can ride an elephant. So,
really, it all evens out.