I played the first Far Cry game way back on the original XBOX, I can’t remember much of it other than the fact that I didn’t get too far into it before giving up. It wasn’t my copy and I think I might have been too young to play it at the time. So I never returned to the series until 5 came out in early 2018. I really enjoyed the game, the gunplay was fantastic and the open world was interesting as well as visually beautiful. But I never completed it, as much as I was enjoying the experience I was kind of getting tired of open world games at the time, so I quit late into the story.
Just one year later we have a new entry, and it is the first to be a direct sequel in the series. Far Cry: New Dawn is set seventeen years after the events of 5, in a post apocalyptic Hope County, Montana. Where a nasty, vigilante group called The Highwaymen, led by twin sisters Micky and Lou, are in control.
Although there are a few tweaks here and there, the general thrust of the game has not changed too much from your usual Far Cry title. You have a reasonably big open world to explore, where you have to liberate outposts, complete missions and hunt animals, all for the purpose of crafting material and finding resources to progress.
For a post apocalyptic setting the open world of Hope County is filled with bright fauna and sunshine. The visual elegance in certain narrative sections of the game, and in one particular part of the map were exceptional to say the least. This is a big contrast with the derelict and torn down buildings that make up most of the locations. Although there's nothing groundbreaking here, It’s refreshing to see a post apocalyptic setting that’s not a dark, barren wasteland.
Where New Dawn does slightly divert from its predecessors is with the introduction of base building. From the beginning you will start the game in Prosperity, a settlement at the bottom of the open world map, that becomes your base of operations. Outside of the story missions, building your base is essential to your progression. None of this is particularly complex, but from here you can unlock new weapons, new cars, improve your health as well as the amount of explosive ammunition that you can carry.
The only way that you can upgrade your base is by getting Ethanol, the bulk of this is collected when you liberate enemy outposts. You can also hijack enemy vehicles that are carrying it, but liberating outposts is where the overwhelming majority of it is found. Which brings me to one of the more drastic changes in the game, and that the outposts now have three tiers of difficulty. For example you can liberate an outpost and then hand it back to the enemy and then liberate it once again on a higher difficulty, which earns you a higher amount of Ethanol in reward.
This feeds in with the light RPG elements that have been introduced. Because It’s not just the outposts and your base of operations that have tier levels, so do the enemies. As expected, the enemies tier levels get higher as you progress through the main campaign.
I loved all of these new features, it streamlined the gameplay loop and gave a little guidance into the open world. Much of the reason why I eventually get bored of open world games is because they rely far too much on the player to find their own fun, which is a huge problem if neither the story or the open world are interesting. Which is not the case in this game.
There are also expeditions that have been added, there are three that you can take part in. These are big levels that aren’t set within the open world of Hope County, but other locations within America. The goal is to find an unmarked package on the map and extract it, to do this you have to go to a specific point on the map where a helicopter lands for you to get inside. As soon as you get to the extraction point a countdown will begin before the helicopter arrives. Once the countdown starts a horde of enemies will ambush you. The expeditions gave me some of the most frantic moments during my playthrough, and I say that as someone who doesn’t like games that force a timer on you, but it’s applied successfully here. The expeditions are ultimately a perfect way to test out your new weapons and gear.
As with other Far Cry games, the gunplay in New Dawn is superb, you really do feel the full weight of the trigger being pulled and the impact of the bullets hitting the target. The variety of weapons is pretty impressive, with a combination of sub machine guns, pistols and assault rifles. The best addition is the saw launcher, which does as the name implies and fires disks with sharp blades around around them. It’s a bit overpowered but fun to use in sticky situations. The weapons you have a choice of buying and equipping runs in line with how you want to approach the game’s combat. You can either go in all guns blazing or as stealthily as you like. I personally went down the latter route, by equipping a bow as a primary weapon and a silent sub machine gun as a secondary weapon. The game is more rewarding playing this way and less chaotic.
To help you along the way you have a perk system that you can upgrade by completing missions and challenges. This is the usual upgrading we’re used to, such as increasing your stamina, ammo capacity, and health. It’s something I don’t usually like in games, I’d rather you were able to carry as much as possible from the beginning, and any new skills you gain ought to be learned. But it does cut out a lot of chores that might have been in the game if the system wasn’t in place. You can also assign various side characters to join you in the open world, all of these have their own strengths. I sparingly used them because I lost count of the amount of times that they would get spotted by the enemy as I tried to infiltrate an outpost.
Despite my enjoyment of the game its lack of ambition and small scope stop it from being anything more than a good Far Cry game. The story is passable at best, the central antagonists, a staple of the series, are nothing special. As much as you can’t wait to get the chance to kill them off, they are kind of just two dimensional bad guys with little fleshed out in the way of personality. Joseph Seed, the antagonist from the previous game does return in a souped up but important cameo role, his significance only matters towards the last third of the game.
As interesting as the open world is, you get the feeling more could have been done to make it really stand out from the crowd. It’s still little more than a playground to mess about in, unlike those in an Assassin's Creed game, or Red Dead 2 for that matter. I think the game would have been better served with a longer production time and with the intent of creating a proper sequel to Far Cry 5 rather than just an expansion of it.
I’d also prefer it if you controlled a character that actually speaks, it’s a problem I had with Far Cry 5. I can see why a silent protagonist helps keep focus on the game’s setting and characters, but it takes away any emotional attachment to who you’re controlling and the events around you.
Although it feels too soon to have another Far Cry game hit the shelves, I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout New Dawn. So I’d recommend this game if you’re really willing to go back to the series. It took me around twenty hours or so to complete it while doing most of the side activity, so it isn’t too lengthy. With a retail price in the £35-40 range, it's a fair price for what you're getting in return.
Verdict: 7.5/10
