Far Cry 5 – Nothing new in the West and that's a good thing

The biggest gain is definitely (k)a loss. After the unspeakable radio tower climbing at Far Cry 4 was still unnecessarily on the transmitter, this time you can collect stress-free cards in previously liberated bases or explore the terrain yourself. If you are not curiously nibbled by the felt myriad wolves, bears and skunks, eaten or at least badly perfumed. But you can also stink in this way, although not as often as in the predecessors.

And otherwise? One is, as always, the good, this time in God's own country, the ball-horned Trumpification in personal union of clerics and laugh at so many dialogues of the weapons fanatical back-rowers almost chequely, if one does not, contrary to expectations, belongs to those who have undivided sympathy for the targets of the rather cheeky admissions. That, too, is supposed to exist. But they play something different anyway.

Synapse-softening drugs are also available again, and with the good portion of Bliss, life is finally washed up this time, instead of the clap-poppy-red brain slingtrauma from Far Cry 4, finally grandiose persil-compliant whitewashed.

In addition to the usual portion of DRM and the obligatory launcher, Ubisoft unfortunately also relies on EAC (Easy Anti-Cheat). This hybrid, server- and client-side anti-cheat service has actually been developed primarily to protect multiplayer games and one may end up wondering what this fun and performance brake is in a career game designed to be single-player track. Cannons, sparrows and so on…

Especially since after only four days the first trainers and cheat programs were able to overcome EAC without exchanging the original files with their own launcher and to enable manipulation of the scores and values (stealth, infinite stamina/health, no reloading, unlimited ammunition and money, etc.). The usual hare-hedgehog principle.

Speaking of fun brake. Only the strunz- and prunzdumme AI does not really do justice to the overall concept of pop graphics, peppy dialogues and cardboard music. The difference between heavy and light is usually only defined in the number of erroneous brain amputants, which are rather uncoordinated here and there mutavolously and idiosyncratic and whose only goal seems to be to senseless ammunition into the landscape and sometimes run over each other. In this context, it is quite surprising when you stand on a freely visible surface, no one is behind you within a radius of 100 meters and you get a blow with a spade on the back of the head after only 5 seconds. This is not only doping for the hair, but simply impossible.

These militant oil gods of the mentally simpler kind can at least be snipered away quite elegantly and so the investment in a proper telescope and the right weapon is always worthwhile to end the mental imbalance immediately. In general, the division into story and side missions, as well as various quests, has been quite successful. Only the fact that you have only one memory point and, while the mission is ongoing, the checkpoints are in places very far apart, will annoy the Duelists a little. Because even cancelling a once running mission is not possible and you always fall back to the last memory point completely.

The weapons are versatile for this. As always, we have invested our skill points in a larger holster, which allows you to take a rocket launcher lying around somewhere with you. from one of the countless dealers. Then you also have the right tool for the elimination of the rattling air pollution, which was really fun for us.

The basic performance can already be described as grandiose after the launch. So the game with a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti can still be played in Ultra-HD with almost all controllers at maximum and also the CPU is not so much the brake block of the nation now. Even with weaker and / or older graphics cards, you can push the pixels quite splashy, so as not to end up as a hoppeliger mouse cinema. The graphics quality with the re-drilled Dunia engine is really impressive and you can immediately notice the optimizations that have been made. The fact that this AMD title then also goes well on older AMD pixel snippets is of course also a matter of honor.

Slight errors can also be found here, e.g. Animals do not cast proper shadows or even seem to float freely even in higher settings. We have also admired several times various smaller clipping bugs and supposedly apple-engraved AI nightshade plants, which rotate around themselves for minutes or drive into each other by car. But these are forgivable exceptions, because the overall impression is really surprisingly positive.

You can also like to shoot into the setting sun and do various slides, the game mechanics have remained largely the same. So you don't have to rethink, you have to feel comfortable and at home again. If this time also the unspeakable radio towers are missing, one has not taken it to the point of including these climbing elements in the story. Just not so heaped. For example, if you have the Father Monument, in which even Stalin would have hyperventilated with joy, e.g. the rocket launcher, you can go up again. Not the only time, by the way. But it's not quite as boring and endless loop compatible anymore.

The intermediate scenes are quite nicely made and can usually be skipped. But some things don't and then the clock ticks even more slowly than you lose patience. But as a gift, this is also rather the exception.

The times of the day change at a quite pleasant pace, so you could choose the strategy quite well. Unfortunately, the AI detects you just as quickly or slowly, whether there are stockdusternight or glittering midday sun as an ambient big event on the screen. A system behind it could not be detected and an approximation always ended exactly in the same place. But this can also be tolerated with generous nonchalance, because as a sniper-like way-pustefix you have the best cards anyway. And if you can't or don't want to, the spade with the feisty smiley face does his job truly magnificently and takes every opponent gallantly on the skids.

The free world is quite big, the story is extensive enough (though not Oscar-suspiciously constructed), and you get a lot of flora and fauna pressed on the mind. For the ear, one has sometimes quite double-minded dialogues, which hardly lose any splashiness even in the translation. Coupled with a pretty brisk first performance for the launch and a chic map editor, the game is not a groundbreaking innovation, but it's a really successful sequel that you're welcome to buy.

For this Far Cry 5 even gets a verbal recommendation of the actually rather masculine author, because one could have gotten it much worse, but actually hardly much better. From this point of view, it is in the fifth generation, and this is not an April Fool's joke, finally again a Far Cry, which really comes in. Despite launcher and EAC.

Update from 04/01/2018 19:10

After some reports of failed savegames, we too were sometimes affected by such a kind of mishandling at the store. It is currently only advisable not to manually store near rocky outcrops, cliffs or the like. The positioning during reloading is sporadically incorrect, so that you are already in free fall after the charging process. Probably the one who can use a parachute or wingsuit. The impact thus at least does not become life-threatening.