Far Cry: New Dawn

Seemingly ever since Vaas became a popular character Ubisoft executives have demanded each Far Cry game have some kind of show-stopping, charismatic, psycho villain. This could be a cool gimmick, I guess, but I refuse to believe there's enough turn-around time on these things to consistently produce a good one (or ones in this case).

This came out less than a year after the previous game in the series and though it does feature a shorter narrative and largely re-use the map from the last game, with how well-known the overworking of developers is in this industry I think its almost dishonest to not assume that the short-turnaround was also facilitated in some way by the exploitation of employees. Assassins Creed Origins and Valhalla came out in the same four-year window and those were Ubisoft Montreal productions too. It looks like Too Much Stuff, if you ask me.

All of that results in a game that just feels undercooked. Again, the villains are lame. The voice actors do a good job with a pretty bad script. It feels like even the game realised about two thirds of the way through that they actually had nothing going for them and threw in a cutscene to give them some kind of sympathetic backstory. The way the game did occasional characterising cutscenes that it called 'intermissions' was a cool concept, actually. They all came after (what was probably intended to be) really intense and important missions so they could be a breather, but sadly I just didn't care about the characters they were characterising so they end up just being pointless.

I never felt motivated to use the buddy system because it set a pretty awful first impression. Essentially the first mission in the game is your introduction to it and in two separate lives the NPC alerted the enemies to our presence while I was being stealthy. It got downed super easily as well meaning I needed to revive it. I think the idea of NPC buddies who are important characters in the game and who you have to look after in fights while they look after you is a cool concept and would work if the aforementioned flaws weren't a thing, but they're big flaws and for the remainder of the game I unassigned new people as soon as I unlocked them. Plus, I just wasn't that endeared to Carmina as a character. I think you're really supposed to want to assign Carmina though, like, for story reasons, so why give me the option? The game sets up up at the start that she'll kind of be your main companions and the end of the game suggests that she was but I hardly saw her. Its weird, imagine if in Half Life 2 you could just unassign Alyx.

The most basic combat loop was pretty fun though. I really enjoyed being stealthy and I like that resources are fairly hard to get so you really need to commit to the few weapons you do craft. The ways that NPCs operate in bases is really good I think. They're far more perceptive than NPCs in other open-world games I've played and that gave a pretty satisfying challenge. Navigating the open world is so boring though. In open-world games I like I don't use fast-travel because I like to be immersed, I did this in Witcher 3, Spider-Man, Mad Max, Arkham Knight. Here though vehicles feel so slow. Its been a while since I've played Far Cry 3 but I remember the vehicles being fun to use in that. I don't know what happened.

I don't feel like I can criticise the core narrative too much because I haven't played the previous game, but I didn't like the characterisation I was given and the world itself didn't feel particularly immersive. This supposed post-apocalypse just feels a lot like the world in Far Cry 3. The mystical stuff was weird too. Like in 3 (and in a lot of this one) its implied to mostly be hallucinatory but in one cutscene you get, like, super-strength and through a person across a room and then the final boss is... a long-haired shadow fire demon? And it feels like the game is implying that this isn't a hallucination? So where did that come from?

None of this would matter as much if the core gameplay mechanics were more fun. I need to give another Far Cry a go because I swear in 3 they feel responsive and satisfying than this. Oh well.

It’s far cry but worse.

Don’t bother.

Irwin's missions were all super fun and easily the highlights of the game, alongside fighting your bear-soul on Very Hard mode. The double-jump is one of those cursed sorts of features where it takes the enjoyability to a whole new level but future entries are almost certain not to make use of it, as evidenced by 6. So now we have to live with Far Cry games that don't have a double-jump after being given a scrumptious taste of it.

Otherwise I guess I don't have a lot of prominent thoughts on this game. I didn't hate it but it was definitely one where a lot of side content felt utterly pointless once you've beaten the story and gotten good guns, whereas 4 and 6 both had decent reason to continue screwing around.

Hey you, did you like Far Cry 5? Imagine that but grindy, also with a god awful story. Also with way worse gameplay cuz it's all level based so y'know...get ready to use 500 bullets to kill one dude that's a higher level. WOOO.

New Dawn is def the worst FC game, the game is only fun when you're doing outposts and you got the best guns, which will prb happen about 7 hours into the game. And even then there's only like 10 outposts that you gotta do 3 times each because ofc.

I played it coop and it was pretty boring, HOW DO YOU MAKE FAR CRY COOP BORING? HOW?!

Well by making the game feel really soulless and rushed.

The game is really buggy, which would be a negative in a better game but here the bugs were the funniest parts of the game so oh well. One time my character started the swimming animation mid air for some reason and I was stuck in the air and it looked like I was swimming, it was weird but me and my friend couldn't stop laughing about it. Another time a wolf just started running in a circle around me which was hilarious.

FC New Dawn feels really pointless as a game, after the ending of FC5, making another game where it's revealed that practically most if not all of the characters somehow survived and are ok feels...unnecessary and makes the ending less effective.

There's plenty of times where you could have killed the main villains (which for far cry standards are abysmal btw) and yet you didn't cuz...reasons?

Fr there's a part where they ask you to put your guns in a stash and come in and handcuff yourself or they'll kill some dude (spoiler alert, they still shoot the guy so whatever) and...ok what possible consequence would it have if the character went mhm...nah fuck that and went in and started shooting both of them. It's so fucking stupid.

The way you just kinda stand and stare at characters as they die at the end is really fucking awkward too...

Idk what else to say, if you liked 5 or 4 or 3 or primal or 2 or 1...you prb won't like this one lol. And if you didn't like those either than you still won't like this one lol.

Every 2 years we get a new Far Cry game and every 2 years the games feel like near identical clones of each other, they are open World exploration games in the wilderness where you sneak around camps and bases and take out enemies and fight generic bad guys who are psychopaths and that's pretty much every Far Cry game since 2. New Dawn is a direct sequel to 5, which was an alright game, but also pretty bland and nothing near as good as 3. New Dawn pretty much is like 5, but if you took away the interesting villains and squad members. New Dawn really feels like the same old as 5 and is just as tedious at times. The worst part is you have to upgrade your base at points to progress which requires you taking over enemy camps, which ends up getting boring. The worst part about New Dawn isn't even the gameplay or setting, but the bland story and characters. Sure we get back characters from Far Cry 5 like Hurk and Nick but pretty much all the new characters added to this were so boring and bland that I could care less for any of them. The main villains of this game were two psychotic female twins, but they are just so generic and have almost no development. I didn't care too much for the Seed family in 5, but at least they appeared enough where you cared and had somewhat interesting back stories. These twins were almost non existent for most of the game and really felt like they were just added into the game at the last minute.

I mean even if you ignore the boring and generic story, the game itself still isn't that good. The missions in this game get repetitive and I feel the game cranked the difficulty up too much. Far Cry 5 was way too easy, but this game goes the opposite and makes enemies way too powerful and I often felt like I was doing no damage, its like the game wants you to grind camps so you can get high rank guns, which you then have to grind materials to craft the guns once you unlock the ability to craft them. I felt like the companions in this game weren't really helpful either, they just died way too fast and did nothing, compared to 5 where they were almost too overpowered. The missions just got repetitive and were mostly go to this area, clear this camp out and repeat. The side missions were very unmemorable as well.

New Dawn is just a generic expansion to 5 and adds nothing to the story and just feels like an excuse for Ubisoft to pump out another Far Cry game. Hell 2 years from now we'll get Far Cry 6 and it'll be the same generic open World boredom we've gotten the past few years. I feel like Far Cry is turning into the new Assassin's Creed for Ubisoft and the quality of these games is suffering due to how quick they are being pumped out. Far Cry was never a great concept to milk like this, at least Assassin's Creed had the whole history and time travel gimmick so you could have possibilities for sequels in different time periods in different countries in history drawing from countless historical figures. Far Cry is always the same bullshit every 2 years and even when they try to do something different like Primal it still feels generic and like the same thing. I just think Ubisoft need to give Far Cry a long break and wait until people have forgotten about the franchise to surprise us with a new game, but knowing Ubisoft they'll pump out a new one 2 years down the road and it'll be the same game. New Dawn is just an acceptable and bare minimum game that isn't bad but also is hardly memorable and is a one and done deal.

Well, it shouldn't even really take you playing this game to know how you feel about it. Ubisoft has settled into a formula for each flagship series of theirs. I don't think there's inherently a problem with this -- the games are usually polished enough and have an engaging core gameplay loop -- but it means that you're probably not going to have any fresh experiences where you found yourself surprised by the amount of fun you're having. We're at the same point in the Far Cry cycle with this game that we were at with the release of Blood Dragon after FC3, or Primal after FC4 (although Ubi didn't admit that the Primal map was a reskin until well after its release). It's the wackier revision of Far Cry 5 in a half-different setting with some half-different weapons.

In truth, the game's defining characteristic is what I hinted at above. You'll note that I chose "engaging"' core gameplay loop instead of "fun'. There's certainly plenty to do in the game -- Ubi managed to add a crafting system that is initially a little jarring, but gives your character some purpose instead of killing entirely for sport. I never really felt bored while playing the game, but the only time I can say I was actually having fun was when a friend joined in co-op and we spent more time trying to break the game than actually playing it.

It's a strange thing to say about a game I felt generally fond of while playing, but I only find it disappointing when I sit down to actually think about it. It prevented me from being bored, but never hooked me enough that I could say "I want to play New Dawn" with any enthusiasm. Time wasters are fine at lower price points, but I often found myself frustrated when the game used the trappings of a full game to try and convince me it was worth the price. Gameplay feels artificially extended with every living thing in the game assigned a tier, I-IV, where you seem to do negligible damage to things in a tier higher than your weapon's. In a game that is at best a mildly-amusing waste of time, I don't want to be given the run-around when I spot something fun. When I want to kill a deer, I don't want to grind side missions until I can upgrade to a Tier 2 gun so I can shoot the deer. It's not that complicated an activity. I just want to shoot the deer.

That leads me to my conclusion about Far Cry: New Dawn -- it's a game that doesn't stray far from the existing FC formula, but where it does it ends up being frustrating. Gameplay mechanics that could add interesting variety to the game stop just short of being fleshed-out additions. The end result is feeling as if the game is creating a more interesting progression system in order to extend the time they can drip-feed content to players instead of doing it because it creates a rewarding experience.

The gunplay is good, the game looks great, and there's plenty of potential in messing around with a friend. The game would be better if it didn't tease you by suggesting it could be something more ambitious. The game is a simple time-waster, an inoffensive nutrient paste with no flavor. It would be a lot better if they weren't trying to convince me that it tastes like steak.