The good and the bad of Massively multiplayer online role playing games

Until recently I have only ever really dabbled in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, and I’ve watched others play them with a careful eye. But I’ve never stuck to any of them for more than the introductory first few hours. Those I tried are Elders Scroll online, Star Trek online and DC online, and I have watched at first hand people play Warcraft and City of Heroes.

I have always wanted to get into Warcraft but I’ve never had a PC that could run it, and last summer I had the sudden urge to play an MMORPG. For some reason I wanted a game that could give me a richer experience than those I was playing at the time, which is where I discovered Final Fantasy 14. I had heard of it before, but for whatever reason I took little notice of it, probably because no one I knew was playing it.

But from what I'd read and seen, it looked like a good alternative to Warcraft, and I was able to play it on my PlayStation 4. So I bought the base game and expansions all on one disk. After a solid month of playing, where at one point I kind of became addicted, I stopped playing because although the experience was enjoyable for the most part, it eventually became unfulfilling for several reasons.

I’ve been wanting to write this blog for a while, and I only just recently returned to the game for a fleeting moment, hoping that perhaps I might find something that wasn’t there before. But I’m still getting the same feeling I was when I first played it, and I can’t see myself holding out for long, but we’ll see.

So in this blog I write down some of the good and bad points that playing an MMORPG gave me. Although this is drawing a lot from my experience of playing FInal Fantasy 14, I think it can also be applied to others as well.

The good

• Plenty of content:

Role playing games are generally quite meaty in terms of length, it’s one of their appeals, and that is no exception for massively multiplayer ones. With the online functions included, the amount of questing and side activities is breathtaking. The questing is linked with not just the story, it’s also linked with levelling up, grinding, hunting, as well as crafting.

The social aspects enhance the content as well, there’s one thing playing with strangers, but playing with friends can add a lot of laughter as well as tension. It also helps that you can coordinate your way through dungeons much easier.

• Social

MMORPGs can be a great way to meet new people, the chances are you’ll be on a big server with thousands of active players. There are great ways to meet new people running dungeons or raids. But the best way to meet new people is by joining or setting up a guild or free company (which is the case in Final Fantasy 14).

These are places where a set of players can be part of the same community, in a free company you can share the same house. In the house you could have your own room and decorate it how you want, as well as sharing and storing items with your fellow players.

It allows the player have a sense of belonging in the world instead of it just being a passive background to the game’s narrative.

• Progression that’s organic and diverse

You can create your own character from the beginning, and you'll also be able to pick a character class you wish to play as. For example you might have the choice of playing as a healer, a tank or a damage per second role. This is just an example from my experience, different games will have different roles that you can choose from, but there should be a choice of picking a role that you’ll enjoy best. In Final Fantasy 14 I played as an Archer, a ranged DPS.

As you progress you’ll be able to customize your character in even further ways, this can be both in the way that you fight in combat and the way that your character looks. From experience, Final Fantasy 14 is fantastic at doing this.

• A place of being

As I said previously, a good MMORPG will suck you into its world and make you feel like you’re living in another alternative reality. There are downsides to this which I’ll get to later, but the possibility of striking up virtual friends with other people, and creating your own little virtual home can be really addictive and fun at the same time.

The world can be a very grim and depressive place, and all forms of entertainment are an escape from it. An MMORPG has so much to escape into and become an actively involved participant, rather than just being passively involved for short term gratification.

The bad:

• Tedious questing and grinding

On face value, having loads of content is a good thing, as long as the content is of good quality and the grind is worth the reward. From my experience, MMORPGs are a mixed bag. Nearly everyone one I have played has moments of inconsistent quality in terms of questing. Be prepared to have to do plenty of fetch quests of going here, delivering this, go here and talk to this particular person. A lot of it can get very tedious and feel insubstantial in terms of game-play agency.

Some people will like this, but I’d often come away from a session of playing Final Fantasy 14 and wonder whether I actually did anything that I really enjoyed. You’ll find that a lot with the genre, they are addictive but not particularly fun for long sections of your play time.

• Time suckage

To get the best out of an MMORPG will require a lot of dedication, especially if you’re playing catch up having come into the game late, as I did. This can be a problem because you might find yourself exploring locations with very few other players, and having to wait a long time for other players to join you when you want to go through an early dungeon.

Because the games in the genre are designed to be addictive, they have a way of hooking you in, no matter how much little or to no enjoyment you're actually are having. There’s always a relentless amount of content to drill through, of course you have the choice not to pursue all these endeavours, but if you don’t the games can make you feel like you’re not getting the best experience.

• Toxic communities

As with any online game you'll get people who are absolutely toxic, and by that I mean people who will needlessly either gloat or abuse a particular mechanic in the game. Gloating in certain games is okay, some even encourage it, such as For Honor. In MMORPGs, the toxicity comes when you’re a running a dungeon. Because each player will have a class that has a particular role to fulfil, other players might criticise you if you’re not playing to their standards.

On some occasions they will try and help you, which is always nice, but more often than not they will flatout abuse you, and I’m talking swear word abuse. For new players this might stop them from playing the game, it certainly had that effect on me for a short time.

There are also players who aren't social when it would be best if they were, for example when you join a guild or a free company (which are more or less meant for the purpose of creating a community), there will be players who will not take part in any of the social activities, or simply refuse to communicate with anyone else. This issue is a minor gripe that I have because I’ve not always wanted to be chummy with other people.

So should you play an MMORPG?

If you like doing tedious quests but want to feel like you belong in another world for a potentially rich experience, MMORPGs could be just for you. It comes with its caveats as I have outlined in this blog. If you have never touched one but you've always been curious, my advice would be to try one when you have nothing to play and little in the horizon that you’re interested in. The same way that I first started playing Final Fantasy 14.

The gaming scene at present is quite dry until September, so it’s the perfect moment to get stuck into Final Fantasy 14 for a month or so. If you play for just an hour or two each day, it should be enough time to let you know if you want to stick with it.

  

Streets of Rage 2 memories

A few weeks back I bought the Mega Drive collection for the Playstation 4, although I am an avid fan of the console I was originally intending to wait until it was a bit cheaper. I had already played most of the noteworthy titles that were included in the package, so I thought I could wait. But I caved in to the temptation and bought it, and it was for one reason only, to play Streets of Rage 2.

Before I get into why Streets of Rage 2 is so good, I'd like to first talk a little bit about classic games and why I think nostalgia blinds us to how good they actually were. The collection has some great games that stand the test of time, such as Sonic 1 and 2, the Streets of Rage series, Golden Axe 2, and the action packed Gunstar Heroes. Unfortunately I'll only play most of the other games just the once or twice with no intention of going back, due to sheer frustration or the lack of fun that they give me.

When you go back to old games you forget just how unreasonable they were, this is expected due to the technical limitations of the time. But time is still the best way to judge how good something holds up, and Streets of Rage 2 is one such game that holds up very well.

I first played Streets of Rage 2 around the age of eight or nine, it was somewhere in the mid 90s. It was not something that was bought for me, and in all honestly I don't think it's a game I actually owned a personal copy of (unless I never returned it to the rental store I got it from). And it was a rental store close to where I lived in Wood Green that I first got the game from. I remember the moment I walked through the front door, partly because there was a big cardboard cut out of the forgotten Bill Murray movie 'Larger than Life', it's the one with the elephant on the poster.

Ever since that day I have gone back to Streets of Rage 2 at various points in the last two decades, and it's always just as much fun each time I play it.

To those who don't know, the game is a 2D side scrolling beat em up game. It isn't a one v one with the computer, instead you go through levels like a normal platform game of its time, as you go from point A to point B, fighting your way through hordes of enemies until you reach the end level boss. It wasn't an entirely original game, there were plenty similar to it at the time, from the top of my head I can think of Double Dragon, Final Fight, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games on the SNES, as well as others.

The beauty of the game is its simplicity, the range of attacks is fun to pull off but fairly limited, even for the time. But it's just so extremely satisfying to go from level to level beating up different enemy types as the music fizzles in the background. The grapple and throw function is one of the best additions to the game that wasn't in the first one. To pull it off all you had to do was walk into an enemy and you'd instantly grab hold of them, you didn't have to press another button to lock onto them, it was all seamless.

The presentation of the game is top notch, it still holds up to this day, the levels are crisp and varied. The settings are all pretty much in realist environments, as you go from your average city streets to motorways, to a theme park, and a boat, amongst others.

And let's not forget the co-op play that adds so much to the game, especially if you crank up the difficulty, it really is tons of fun, and it still is as I play it now with my brother who is nearly two decades younger than me.

Along with the original Sonic releases, Streets of Rage 2 is one of the few Mega Drive games that really stands the test of time, and encapsulates the best of what video games can do, and that's pure, entertaining escapism.

        

Detroit: Become Human review

I loved Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain when it was relesed in 2010, at the time I hadn't played a game quite like it before. It had a lot going for it, the multiple choice scenarios, an intriguing mystery, an interconnecting cast of central characters, and its presentation and atmosphere was dark but splendid. It wasn't flawless, the story was inconsistent and the final resolution was surprising but lacking in any logic. Quantic Dream's next game was Beyond: Two souls, which I didn't particularly like much, it rectified some of the problems from Heavy Rain, but created whole new ones and never addressed so many of the flaws it already had. I personally didn't like it for gameplay reasons, too often it felt like a spot the dot, point and click adventure with little player agency.

With five years passed, Quantic Dream's latest title focuses on a near future (2039) where androids are a major part of life. They have taken the everyday manual jobs and roles that would have once been done by humans, which causes fantastic economic growth but dire consequences for much of the working populous, with unemployment rates at thirty seven per cent. Beyond the great facade there are many problems that bubble under in this interpretation of the future, some of these themes are explored directly, while others are only scarcely in the background.

There are three protagonists that you control throughout the game, all of whom are androids built for different roles within society. Kara is a housekeeper who finds herself brought into a broken family with an abusive father. Markus is a carer for a rich artist, and finally we have Connor, an investigative android who chases down deviants. Deviants are androids that have deviated from their programmed behaviour.

From a pure gameplay perspective, Detroit doesn't diverge too much from Quantic Dream's previous games. The plot unfolds by controlling your character through a particular scenario within a contained environment that you have to observe in great detail. The narrative moves forward with the dialogue choices you pick, and the consequences overlap with the other stories in the game. I can't think of a better word to describe it, but it's like taking part in an interactive movie. Of all the three characters, Connor has the most agency in terms of gameplay, because there are numerous scenarios where you'll have to reconstruct crime scenes.

The amount of consequential choices in this game is breathtaking to say the least, far greater than any of Quantic Dream's previous games. On your subsequent playthroughs you'll likely come across entirely new scenarios in locations you hadn't explored before. To best illustrate this, a flowchart comes up every time you complete a scenario, this chart will show you the amount of diverting choices you could have made as well as those that you chose. It also shows you the percentage of people that made the same choice as you. It's really intuitive, and it adds so much to the replay value of the game, however, I would try to avoid it as best you can on your first playthrough. It doesn't give too much away but it will make your return through the game feel more immersive if you don't scrutinise it in too much detail.

The presentation is sublime, the art style and graphics have a level of detail I have only seen in a handful of titles before. The settings aren't just backdrops but characters in themselves. You'll feel the urge to search every nook and cranny, which I'd advise you to do anyway. Because this is a narrative game, the environments do have invisible walls, which does restrict the feel of being in total control of the experience, but it's not a big deal when you consider the type of game this is.

There is a problem with the gameplay though, and it's the controls, they have not changed since Heavy Rain, and the controls were a problem when that was released over eight years ago. They feel clunky, and the characters feel too weighty to move, but the bigger problem is when you move around the environments, which are dotted with things to pick up or interactive with. Too often I'd waste time having to line up precisely with what I wanted to observe, it's not a game breaking issue, but it's a minor frustration that you'll have to endure.

The ideas and tropes that Detroit delves into are in no way new to any form of media, let alone videogames, but the game succeeds and fails on its own premise in equal measure. Let's start with the good shall we. I was thoroughly invested in all three of the main characters and the roles they play in this alternative future, as well as the plot which tries to present us with the social issues of inequality that advanced androids could potentially unleash onto society if we're not careful. Such as the rise of homelessness if manual workers were replaced by androids. The game is also full of small but inventive nuances that had little to do with the gameplay, but are delightful to spot.

Now to the bad. While Detroit tries to deal with complex issues, it does so in a scanty and rather surface level way. Nothing becomes larger than the sum of its parts, it's sad to see big ideas transpire into nothing more than cliched tropes. You could argue that the story is character driven more than it is plot driven, but the writing could have still been a bit more ambitious and wider in scope.

It doesn't help that there is surprisingly few human characters that we really get to know, there is Connor's investigative partner, Hank, but most of the other moments of interactions with humans are too fleeting, and too many fall into the old cliched person who hates androids trope. The game might have benefited from a playable human character, so there was another perspective that could have been woven into the narrative.

Some of the metaphors can also be a bit too on the nose and misguided, while it's easy to see a future where androids are treated as nothing more than servants. I'm not sure if it was a wise idea to include similarities with civil rights protests, and androids having to sit at the back of public transport. Much like the human populous of the game, the androids struggle isn't explored in great detail, it's just given a point of view.

Despite its issues, I loved Detroit, and I'd say with confidence that it is now my favourite Quantic Dream game. It's so refreshing to play something that isn't really like anything else on the market, and for that I applaud David Cage. For all his flaws, his games have an underlining ambition to make the gamer think, rather than just be a passive participant.

I'd recommend this for anyone who is looking for a heavily narrative focused game, but If you have never liked a Quantic Dream game before, stay well clear.

Verdict: 8/10 

Solo Movie review

Director: Ron Howard
Running time: 135 minutes

I don't have to tell you that no one really asked for this movie, to make yet another prequel to the mainline Star Wars saga is not a bad idea within itself, just as long as it can tell a worthwhile story within the universe. To which Rogue One achieved for the most part, it has its problems with character development, but I have come to enjoy it more with every subsequent watch since its release.

What makes a Han solo prequel so unnecessary at face value is that the character had an amazing arc in the original trilogy, he went from being a selfish rogue to a responsible man. He basically grows up within an ensemble of other good characters, so Solo has a lot to live up to, and it's actually a decent popcorn flick, without being much else.

The story begins with Han escaping his homeworld, Corelia, and enlisting as a pilot in the Imperial army to escape the clutches of an underground gang. Three years later he leaves the army, befriends Chewbacca and joins a band of pirates led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), on a heist. When the job goes wrong, the group is given one last chance by a crime lord, Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) to redeem themselves. Coming along for the ride is an old love interest, Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), and later in their journey they run into Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), as well as the Millennium Falcon.

Unlike The last Jedi, Solo feels like an old fashioned adventure story, in that there's plenty of planet hopping and action set-pieces. The action is fun but a bit too long, the two major set-pieces simply go on for far too long. It doesn't help that there's no real stakes involved, because we know the two main characters inevitably survive, taking away any form of tension.

However, I was pleased that the movie didn't do what most blockbuster movies do these days, and that's have a string of small action scenes that eventually build up to one big massive final battle before the credits roll. The final act in Solo is relatively small and it served the purpose of the story and characters, which made me feel invested the entire time rather than it feeling like an overblown distraction.

While the movie's tone is more light hearted compared with the rest of the Disney produced Star Wars movies, it's still very dark and moody in the visual department. While the story takes you on a journey from one locale to the next, nothing is particularly memorable, especially when you consider some of the spectacular and diverse worlds we've previously seen in the Star Wars universe. Much like the movie itself, it doesn't really go beyond being more than adequate.

I actually quite liked the characters in the story, and found them interesting, each of them had their own understandable goals. The cast are all good in their roles without really elevating the script, and that includes Alden Ehrenreich, who I actually rather enjoyed as Han Solo. If you just look at it as a different interpretation of the character (which it is), I think there's enough here for you to go along for the ride. And you know what, I wouldn't mind seeing him play the role once again. Donald Glover is charismatic as Lando, but the script doesn't really explore the friendship he has with Han in any great way, and it was good to see that Emilia Clarke's character wasn't just a love interest.

Chewbacca is better than ever, he plays a pivotal role in a movie for the first time since the original trilogy, and his chemistry with Han is just as adorable as we remember. Be warned that there is an annoying droid called L3-37, if her role was any bigger it would have been on the level of Jar Jar Binks annoyance.

Solo is fine, it's probably better that it really ought to be, which is a low bar to set, but it's decent, and I would have enjoyed it a little more if there wasn't an action scene in the middle of the movie that slogs on for far too long, with no real tension. I'd recommend this for any Star Wars fan, and a family who have time to kill over the half term, but it's no more than a decent action/heist flick. It does just enough to justify its existence and little else.

3/5

God of War review

This review should have been up quite a while ago, but after completing God of War I needed time to process the experience that the game gave me. I had only previously played one other game in the series and that was the remastered version of the third game for the PS4. It was good overall, but I actually never completed it because it eventually ran out of steam and I got bored. With its platform sections and combat, the core gameplay was pretty decent, but its shallow protagonist and story couldn't make up for its repetitiveness.

So I was never particularly hyped for this game even if I was planning to purchase it, so it was good to see it get near perfect reviews from most mainstream critics. So the question is, does it live up to the hype? The short answer is yes and no. It is without question an excellent game, is it a masterpiece? I don't think so.

The story sees Kratos and his son Atreus living in the norse world of Midgard with the intention of spreading the ashes of his second wife and Atreus's mother at the highest point of the nine realms. It's from here that they journey through six of the nine realms, fighting all kinds of gods and creatures along the way. The story at face value is nothing much to write about, but the lore behind it is extremely fascinating and it fits wonderfully into the world the developers have created. And the story is far more character driven than it is plot driven, some of the emotional moments feel forced but there is genuine character development and growth that's a bit of an exception in videogames.

The game is semi-open world, Midgard is not exactly massive but it branches into different sections that you can reach when you have certain abilities to progress. If I were to compare it to any other game it would be the Tomb Raider reboot games, where the open world consists of several hub spots that you return to to either pick up collectables or to complete side-quests for supporting characters. If you decide to do a lot of the side content none of it feels like a compulsory check list, it's there to enrich the experience. I personally did some of the side stuff but not a whole lot, I completed the game in the region of around 20-23 hours, but I've read that if you do most of the extra content, you can get through your first playthrough in the 35 hour mark.  

But let's be honest, much like its predecessors, God of War is still an action game at its core, gone is the high camera, fast paced hack and slash combat, and in comes an over the shoulder camera, a more refined but slower paced combat and very little in the way of platforming. The combat is fluid and feels weighty, you start off with an axe that you can throw and then recall back, think of it in the same way that Thor throws his hammer and it returns back to his hand after hitting something. It never gets old and it always feels good. Thankfully, Atreus is not a nuisance, he is equipped with a bow so you can command him to help in combat in a limited but effective manner.

While the combat is satisfying it never really excels beyond being adequately good, there's no imaginative way to kill off a large numbers of enemies, and a lack of a jump button makes it even more noticeable. While there is an upgrade system that gives the combat a bit of progression and variety, it's the only aspect of the game that I outright didn't like.

For me a good upgrade system is one that gives the player agency over the way they like to play the game, it's not just there to make you feel a bit more powerful to overcome enemies that gradually get a bit more difficult. Which is sadly not the case with God of War, not only is it overwhelming at first but there's too many little mechanisms within the different upgrade components, think of Destiny but without the polish and execution. It's not particularly bad it just feels like its been included for the purpose of padding the gameplay loop.

In-between the combat and walking sections are environmental puzzles that are not too dissimilar to those in the third game. They are not particularly complex and rather easy to overcome, they seem to have been included to add an extra layer and obstacle to the gameplay structure, and they work for the most part. However, there was a glitch in one of the puzzles at the end of the game that made me have to restart from an earlier checkpoint, I only lost about twenty minutes of game time but it's a minor nuisance in a game with such a high budget.

As I wrote earlier, the original God of War games had a decent amount of platforming, this has been removed entirely. There's a few moments in the game where you do some climbing and jumping to traverse from one place to another, but it's hardly intuitive, merely requiring you to push the analogue stick and pressing the circle button when it shows up. Some of this has been done to focus on the characters dialogue with one another.

After a while you begin to notice that the game follows a specific pattern, as you walk from a narrow corridor and into a large open area to fight a group of enemies, once they're cleared you have to deal with an environmental puzzle. Once that's done you are then treated to a dramatic cutscene or a slow walking or climbing section. Nothing wrong with this, I just wished that the traversal was as exciting and as central to the game as it is in other titles like Tomb Raider and Uncharted. 

If there is one part of God of War that is unquestionably masterful, it is the production design that lays the foundations to the good but not great gameplay mechanics. At various points the visuals left me awestruck, while the game's world has a reasonably dark palette, the combat visuals, the enemies, and certain aspects of the art design are utterly breathtaking. Unlike most game locales, the world of Midgard has an abundance of character and the level of detail is to be applauded.

As well as the overall production, the script, the voice acting and the cutscenes are amazing, allowing for an immersive experience. This is one of the few games I've played that felt cinematic in a good way, with the narrative arc of what you'd read in mythical srory. The supporting cast of characters such as Freya the witch and Brok the Dwarf, add a little levity to what can be a very stoic and contained experience.

Until God of War came along it had been awhile since I'd lost myself in a truly worthwhile gaming experience, partly because it's a rare that a game tries and succeeds in reaching beyond the sum of its parts. Now that I have completed it I plan on returning and giving it a go on a harder difficulty, but it's not perfect, the core gameplay is good but nothing special, and held up by some of the best production design and world building I have come across. The ending of the game is intriguing and thought provoking, but I couldn't help but feel that it's nothing more than a setup for future instalments.

At the end of the day this game is a must have purchase for anyone, it's not only one of the best PS4 games but one of the most delightful of this generation.

Verdict: 8/10 

    

   

Avengers: Infinity War review

Director: Anthony and Joe Russo
Running time: 149 minutes


(minor spoilers in the review!!)

Ten years after Iron Man was released to begin the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and having been teased since the first Avengers movie six years ago, Thanos, the ultimate Marvel villain is finally coming for the rest of the Infinity stones.

And this was to my surprise, a Thanos movie, despite The Avengers having their names in the title, and being the main draw for the audience. Thanos is the star of the show. Although he is full on computer animated, his presence is menacing and he is the most foreboding of the MCU villains that we've seen up to this point.

The movie begins where Thor Ragnarok ended, with Thor and the Asgardians having escaped the destruction of Asgard, are now seeking refuge in space. It is here that Thanos and his henchman 'The Black Order' begin their pursuit of each of the infinity stones, with the aim of wiping out half of the population of the universe.

Everything strings together with one set-piece after another, with so many characters no one really gets much of any development. With the story more or less a culmination of other stories winding together, anyone not familiar with the previous movies in the MCU will probably be a little lost.

But it's still a joy to see the characters interact with one another, whether it's Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), or Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Rocket Raccoon. For me, Thor was the best of the superheroes, which surprised me considering that he was in my opinion one of the weakest characters before the events of Ragnarok.

With such a high budget, the visuals are stunning but much like the movie itself, it feels like it has taken all of the best elements of the previous movies and cobbled them together. So the production design doesn't really standout. But it's all pretty looking nevertheless.

If there are any other minor negatives with the movie, it's that the action scenes vary in quality. It works best when it's minimal and contained, but towards the end we are treated to a superfluous battle scene that takes place on Wakanda, it involves the usual cannon fodder for the heroes to kill. As entertaining as it is, it just feels weightless and tension free. The comedy is a mixed bag, none of it is particularly funny or even particularly offensive, it just feels shoehorned in on a number of occasions.

With a satisfying cliffhanger of an ending, and the next Avengers movie coming next year, Infinity War is very much a first part to this phase of this cinematic universe. Anyone who has watched these movies from the beginning should certainly buy a ticket, anyone else might not entirely go along with the flow of events happening onscreen, so it would be best to catch up if you haven't already. Overall I had a good time, despite being a bit long I never once looked at my watch, and it was entertaining for the majority of its run time. But on the whole it's slightly above the middle pack in the MCU movie list.

Verdict: 3.75/5 

Far Cry 5: the good and the bad

I have not played a Far Cry game since the first one, and I really don’t remember much about it, I think I might have been too young to really understand it so I can’t have got too far before giving up. My experience with the first one probably explains why I never touched the second one, but I skipped 3 and 4 because I had kind of checked out of the last half of the PS3 generation of consoles, while I was at university.

So I bought Far Cry 5 because the reviews were pretty decent and I generally like Ubisoft games. So after completing just over two thirds of the game, and playing in the region of 25-30 hours of it, I gave up and sold it. I just got bored of it, I’ll go into more details in my review and conclusion, but the game is good and that just about sums it up.

The good:

Plenty of content

In typical Ubisoft fashion, Far cry 5s open world is souped up with a ton of content, ranging from story missions, side missions and mini game challenges that usually involve different kinds of vehicles. The map consists of three regions, all with their own boss to defeat, and you have the freedom to do this in any way you wish right from the get go. The good thing about this is that the map feels like a big open world playground you can mess around with, without being too overwhelming at the same time. Which in my opinion can't be said for a lot of Ubisoft's titles, I’m looking at you Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

At its best, it’s a whole heap of fun

The general gameplay loop is fun and the first person gunplay is really intuitive. The shooting is basic but not too casual, and the sound effects of the bullets you fire are weighty and feel realistic. With the variety of weapons on offer and the skills tree you have, you can either play as an assassin or balls to the wall action hero, you really can tailor your character in the style that you really want to play the game. I personally played the game with the intent of going all guns blazing, I really struggle with stealth gameplay from a first person perspective, and I just felt the tools you gain during the game were best utilized in this way.

Driving vehicles is also near perfect once you get the hang of them, the car chases can be frantic but in a good way, which is not what you can say about a lot of open world games.

VIsually immersive

The game’s setting is beautiful, the scope of the landscape is breathtaking, the textures aren’t always great on closer inspection. But the overall look of the Montanna locale is impressive, from the architecture to the topography of the landscape, it’s something we’ve not seen too much of in a videogame before.

Supporting cast are great, and create an interesting premise

The premise of taking down a religious cult is a good idea to take on in itself, you can create a clear antagonists, and you can then create a setting around that foundation. Far Cry 5 achieves this in most aspects, as someone who has travelled across what you might call ‘Fly over country’, Hope County feels like a real place, but one that is kind of cut off from the outside world.

The supporting characters, whether they are good or bad, add to the setting. The villains are intriguing and their motives are understandable, Joseph Seed is brilliantly set up from the opening sequence, and he lurks in the background narrative even if he disappears for large chunks of the game.

The bad:

Good premise, but the story narrative is almost non existent

The story massively lets down the premise and the setting, if you take out the boss battles at the end of each region, there is no narrative that threads everything together. This is best illustrated with the fact that there isn’t really a protagonist, from the moment you start you get to choose the gender of your main character and customise the way they look, but they are speechless throughout the whole game, and often you are just referred to as the ‘rook’.

This is a problem because it takes away any emotional attachment to the events unfolding around you, which in turn makes the story feel a little less immersive. This does in a way make the setting and the supporting characters feel a bit more meaningful, but it comes at the expense of any connection to the story.

The formula is repetitive and we’ve seen it all before

If you have played any Ubisoft game of the last five or so years, then nothing in Far Cry 5 will surprise you. It has every ounce of your typical open world game formula, wide ranging side missions, story missions, dotted pieces of monuments or buildings on the map to destroy, etc etc. Despite the game’s freedom to choose your own path from the beginning, it is still checkpoint gaming.

Glitches

This is a minor gripe but one that was frustrating at certain points, I suffered a few animation locks during the game, but the biggest issue I had was with the menu map. There were times when for a brief moment none of the markers on the map would appear for no apparent reason. There other instances of glitches that I won’t mention, but as I said this was not game breaking, it’s just an annoyance that I wished I hadn’t come across.

Verdict:

Far Cry 5 is decent, if you liked the other games in the series I think you’ll enjoy this one, otherwise I really can’t recommend the game to be honest. The fun but tedious gameplay just can’t compensate for a lack of story, however I did get a solid 25-30 hours game time so my time wasn’t wasted. If you are going into this game cold I’d suggest you wait for a sale before purchasing.

6/10