Far Cry Primal: Review

Hello fellow gamers, today i will be reviewing Ubisoft's Far Cry Primal. One of the great things games can do is give us a glimpse of a different world. It might not be authentic, lifelike, realistic or remotely believable. It might be a fantasy, dream or nightmare. What matters is that it feels – if only for a few hours – convincing, and that it takes you out of your mundane life.

Very much a 'take the previous template and make it feel primal' approach, Ubisoft's latest imagining on the Far Cry franchise is a smart piece of work. The atmosphere and scope in particular are highlights, making you feel as if you have traveled back to the past where tribes, woolly mammoths and Sabre toothed tigers roamed the Earth. There are no guns. There's no radio conversations. There's no pretty much everything you might expect in today's world!

Such a decision has shunted Far Cry into somewhat new territory, too. With an emphasis on what tools were around at the time, crafting and building feels essential from start to finish. Whether that's sculpting a new arrow for your bow, or smashing together a new club to whack someone in the face with, collecting resources is as important as doing missions.

 The same can be said for Primal's settlement system. Serving as the game's point of progression, focusing on these RPG-like trees and increasing the population continually offers more rewards. These could be your standard level-up boosts – more health, better speed etc. – but it also ties into what animals you can tame, what extras are available to you and, quite nicely, how many resources you have flowing in your direction – every time night turns to day you'll be given a 'reward stash'. The bigger your miniature home, the more benefits you'll get.

Such evolution is nothing new to the Far Cry games, mind. It's certainly dressed up in different clothes this time – as well as having an addictive nature – but the familiar tentpoles are all there. Nowhere is this more apparent than Primal's mission structure. All set within a map so big it'll make you sick, the majority of the time you'll be hunting animals, recruiting important members of your tribe, or flat out killing your main rivals, the Udam. Certain missions play with the formula a tad (and as you'd expect it's littered with side quests), but a certain routine does set in relatively early.

There's nothing wrong with 'do mission, return home, level up, do another mission', but if you've sunk a lot of time into past Far Cry titles there's a slight chance it may all start to ring a few bells sooner than you'd like. There's only so long you can go looking for a deer to skin until before getting the itch to do something else. When it's good, however, it is entertaining and presented pretty damn well, the visual side of things being an absolute treat.

Whether or not it's better looking than Far Cry 4 is arguable, but from the off Primal is an example of why the current generation is impressive. Be it the sheer size of the thing or how pleasant it is to find a high spot and just stare off into the distance, Ubisoft's engine remains an absolute monster. It's a huge plus, mostly because it turns simply walking around the environment into a joyful experience. And then there's the bow and arrow.

 While sharing many traits with the one from 4, having to rely on it so much this time (mostly because there's not an MP5 in sight) forces you to get the hang of it. Once you do, it's a delight. Plunging an arrow into someone's skull is easily as satisfying as a sniped head-shot, and stacking these together sees it become better still. The same is true for the spear, making the slight dip when you engage in melee combat a little disappointing. It's certainly not bad, but up close attacks often spiral into button spamming with no real sense that you're trying to smash someone's face in. You're just swinging wildly.

Thankfully there are ways and means to avoid this, namely the ability to tame animals. Far Cry Primal holds nothing back in this regard either: if you want to have a bear as your partner in crime, you can go and get a bear to be your partner in crime. What's more, you can extended your finger, whistle, and the monster will go rip apart your prey. Acting as a party of sorts, it's a constant as you progress, coming into its own when larger beasts become accessible. Much like nearly everything in-game, this can also be ranked up. Before you see the end credits, you'll essentially be a walking disaster.

Far Cry Primal is a very fun video game (which sounds like a sentence a child would write), but it is a video game you've played before. Think how much a new setting means to you – and how much you enjoy Ubisoft's take on the open world genre – and the answer to whether you need this should be very clear. If you're still on the fence, you can ride around on the back of a woolly mammoth should you choose. That's alright...

Rainbow Six Siege: Review

Hello fellow gamers, If you enjoy charging aimlessly around a map, blasting away at anything that looks remotely like an enemy with the security of knowing you'll end up re-spawning about 15 more times, then Rainbow Six Siege may not be the first-person shooter for you.

But if, like myself, you're ready for a change from the usual pray-and-spray methods that feature in the likes of Black Ops 3 and Star Wars Battlefront, Ubisoft's latest offering could be for you.

Requiring patience, coordination and methodical execution, Siege is nothing short of a revelation in today's gun-ho gaming market.

Sure, it might not have a single-player campaign while the graphics aren't as polished as some of its rivals, but Ubisoft have delivered a unique game which continues to surprise and astound despite being released over a month ago.

Multiplayer is the go-to game mode, although the tutorials are very handy for introducing new players to the, ahem, Siege mentality, while Terrorist Hunt provides some fun against AI enemies.

Ten players are split into two separate teams, one attacking the objective and the other defending it.

What that objective is depends on the game mode, but whether it be a bomb or a hostage, a good time is had by all (maybe not the hostage).

First thing to know is that there are no respawns. Zero. So tact and precision is the order of the day, which is a breath of fresh air.

At the start of each round, Defenders must set up barricades, booby traps and reinforcements to make the Attackers' job as difficult as possible.

Indeed, it's a glorious ode to the much-maligned art of camping, which I was partial to on Call of Duty when I had suffered eight deaths on the trot from various overpowered Kill-streaks.

In these same 30 seconds, Attackers are able to control remote ground drones in order to locate the objective, while also having the ability to mark enemy players and reveal which special operators are in play.

Both teams have their pick of fictional characters from special forces across the globe, each one of them bringing unique weapons and special abilities to the table.

For example, Attacker Fuze can fire a barrage of grenades through walls while Defender Castle is able to replace regular wooden panels with a metal bulletproof cover.

But it's when preparations are over that the real fun begins.

Attackers must link up to find the most effective way to the objective, whether it be setting a breach charge on the ceiling of the room or rappelling through a narrow window.

The element of surprise is key to Siege – unless the objective happens to be in a very remote part of the map, there is always a way in.

But due to the time limit in each round, sometimes the best approach is an all-out assault through a main entrance, which is where team-play and communication really becomes a major decider.

A coordinated attack with other gamers can make for a thrilling firefight, but it can take just one Leroy Jenkins-type maverick to bring the operation to a crunching halt.

The action itself is great fun – every bullet counts, and just one well-placed headshot can turn a round on its head.

There is a real sense of realism, not to mention the joy of blasting apart an almost fully-destructible map.

There are 11 different maps on rotation, and the fact that each round spawns the objective in a different area keeps Siege feeling fresh despite the end-game being the same each time.

However, because a round can become a full-blown firefight at the drop of a hat, it usually makes the objective of the game irrelevant – almost every round ends up with one team completely wiped out, meaning it's pretty much just team death-match with a slight distraction. 

And like pretty much every single video game in existence, Siege does have some flaws which could drive a sane man to smash his controller on the ground.

My first thought is that there needs to be a more effective way to kick team-killers out of a match – these sociopaths seem to crop up way too much for my liking, and although a vote to kick can be initiated, the brutal and ever-changing dynamic of the game means that others on the team don't want to pause and take the time to endorse the proposal.

There is also an issue where the game can freeze for no reason at all – loading a match, reading the post-match results or finding a team to join, there appears to be no other way of fixing this other than closing the application and starting again.

I also have a habit of getting stuck on various things during a match, most notably barbed wire (which I've usually deployed) and roof-tops after a cheeky rappel up the walls.

The old Call of Duty trick which involves chucking a grenade at your feet is of no use in a game with zero re-spawns, so the only solution I've found is to go into prone mode and crawl away, which can be particularly unhelpful if you are being bombarded by enemy players. 

It also takes an annoyingly long time to earn renown, which is used to unlock new operators and gun additions as well as leveling up.

In fact, ranked matches – which I now find more infuriating than casual ones because these experienced players know every trick in the book (including firing out of windows before you've even decided how you're getting into the building) – cannot be unlocked until you reach level 20, which took around 12 hours of game-time.

However, the fact remains that the good times on Siege easily outweigh the bad ones. 

The smooth blend of stealth tactics and furious firefights keeps players on their toes, with the various operators offering unique ways to experience each map and game-mode.

Different options for Attackers and Defenders helps keep Siege's play-ability levels high, and I personally can't wait to see what plans Ubisoft has for this game in the future.