Where will your Karma take you?

For the first time in a long time, a game has been made that Indian gamers (or gamers of Indian origin) would relate so much to. You’re away from the Western badlands of Rook Island, and dropped right into The Himalayas. You see Buddhist monks and Sherpas, Himalayan flora and fauna, and pay for your deeds in Karma (that’s the XP counter!).

Undoubtedly, the Far Cry series has always offered stunning visuals, without any major glitches. The developers and designers pay attention to details and follow the laws of physics. The games are always as real as reality gets, in all its goriness and inglorious acts such as looting a corpse. But the fact remains that Far Cry 3 was simply splendid. Does Far Cry 4 do anything to better the best game of the series? We at Technophile find out.

Far Cry 4 takes a departure from its usual vocal, blatant, in-your-face protagonists, and introduces a more subtle Ajay Ghale. There are reasons for his mannerisms too – he’s an expatriate, but Ajay has come to Kyrat, his homeland in the Himalayas, to spread his mother’s ashes. Sure, a sombre but simple task, but this is the world of Far Cry, and you need reasons to shoot at people and blow up things.

The reason appears in the form of Pagan Min, the ruling warlord, and also someone who’s had bitter history with Ajay’s father. Min knows about Ajay’s arrival, and our protagonist gets into the action from the moment he walks up those hills.

But as we’ve seen recently in most games, it’s the villain who steals the show, and Pagan Min is no exception. Only, he manages to simply blow your mind with his dark mannerisms, his sarcasm riddled commentary, and most importantly, his immaculate outfit. If you’ve ever loved Joker for who he was, you’re bound to fall in love with Pagan Min. It’s an absolute delight to hunt this villain and his mercenary crew down, both equally eccentric.

Far Cry 4 is a fairly exhaustive game, spun over 32 campaign missions. 32 extremely challenging missions! Kyrat is no small world, and there’s a lot to do around the in-game environment. You’ve got 24 outposts to conquer and around a 100 extra quests on the way. Of course, when you go looking for the over 200 collectibles and start scaling the radio towers, it’s very easy to get sidetracked. And we did get distracted – a lot!

You can choose from two main characters to play as. Of course, the story and the narrative differ with each of them, and each character has a set of unique missions too. But co-op play is one of the best that we’ve seen in ages. It has its limitations – you can’t go more than 150 metres away from your partner. Also, the co-op mode isn’t available in all the missions. However, the co-op activities such as taking down propaganda centres or hunting animals or scrounging for herbs can be very interesting.

But that’s not to say that one-man missions are any less exciting – the game excels in its gun and weapon handling mechanics. The weapon recoils, loading time, and everything that can be counted in the human-gun relationship, is just spot on. There’s even a new driving mechanic, whether you’re in a jeep or on top of an elephant. If you engage the “auto-drive” feature, you can focus on shooting while the vehicle (or the beast of burden) steers itself.

Far Cry 4 excels as a game because of the mayhem that is set to break loose at every turn. As a game, it is extremely engaging. It’s a new environment, new characters, but the flavour of chaos and the promise of an intimidating villain have been retained. Yes, this is better than Far Cry 3. And we recommend this game for the holidays.

₹2,999

Love – Weapon dynamics;

Charismatic villain

Hate – Absolutely nothing