Far Cry 5

[jztemple2]

I think the word you are looking for is "arrow."

[jztemple2]

Swale.

Thank you, that was going to drive me nuts. I'm a horrible speller and of course it naturally follows that I'm married to a brilliant speller who just can't imaging why I'd have such a hard time with words like "swale". Yeah, but in my defense, the word "swale" wasn't recognized by my Firefox dictionary

[Skinypupy]

I've never been big on the FC games, but was considering picking this up so I could put my new gaming PC through it's paces (supposed to arrive tomorrow). After reading reviews, though, I think I'm going to pass. It sounds like there is a fun sandbox to play around in, but that the actual story is mediocre to just plain bad. If a game doesn't have a good narrative, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly, so this one will have to wait until it hits bargain bin status.

[jztemple2]

I've never been big on the FC games, but was considering picking this up so I could put my new gaming PC through it's paces (supposed to arrive tomorrow). After reading reviews, though, I think I'm going to pass. It sounds like there is a fun sandbox to play around in, but that the actual story is mediocre to just plain bad. If a game doesn't have a good narrative, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly, so this one will have to wait until it hits bargain bin status.

The story isn't really very important to me except that it sets up the framework for the game. And yes, it is a big old sandbox with lots to do. And that's why I like it

I'm a bit irritated about the perks system, or at least I was at first. Instead of the previous FC system of gaming XP which unlocked skill points which you used to buy perks, in FC5 you accomplish challenges. For instance, your first caught bass, or your first skinned deer, killing ten people (or animals?) with a handgun, etc. This gives you either one, two or three perk points which are used to unlock perks, the old skills. However, you only get credit for, say, that first skinned deer, any afterward don't get more perk points. I was disliking this till I saw that I was accumulating points pretty regularly, so right now I'm back to on the fence about it.

By the way, I'm playing on Easy. I'm not a big fan of playing missions over and over and I'm old and whatnot. And even playing on Easy I've already died a couple of times.

The game continues to be fun.

[jztemple2]

I'm a bit irritated about the perks system, or at least I was at first. Instead of the previous FC system of gaming XP which unlocked skill points which you used to buy perks, in FC5 you accomplish challenges. For instance, your first caught bass, or your first skinned deer, killing ten people (or animals?) with a handgun, etc. This gives you either one, two or three perk points which are used to unlock perks, the old skills. However, you only get credit for, say, that first skinned deer, any afterward don't get more perk points. I was disliking this till I saw that I was accumulating points pretty regularly, so right now I'm back to on the fence about it.

I'm now OK with the perks system. Turns out that besides doing the challenges there are Prepper Magazines around that you come across that give you a perk point each. I'm now doing much better with perk points, although I'm hoarding them till I'm really, really sure I need to unlock a perk (skill).

[tjg_marantz]

Swale.

He wouldn't have knee problems of he was swole.

[Apollo]

... If a game doesn't have a good narrative, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly, so this one will have to wait until it hits bargain bin status.

I'm exactly the opposite. I love open world games, but too much emphasis on story is a huge turn-off for me. For one, 99% of PC game storylines do not interest me at all and tend to make me think that the game is going to put too many barriers in the way of me having a good time. Sure, some story is good, but I prefer games like Subnautica where the story is just a series of guidelines about where to go next rather than compelling me to go do x and meet y so we can Z.

For example, the Witcher 3 is an awesome game but I spend more time watching cutscenes than actually playing the game and the storyline has so many threads and characters that I can't keep up with who is what or where, so give me open world and light story every time!

[jztemple2]

... If a game doesn't have a good narrative, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly, so this one will have to wait until it hits bargain bin status.

Sure, some story is good, but I prefer games like Subnautica where the story is just a series of guidelines about where to go next rather than compelling me to go do x and meet y so we can Z.

This is pretty much Far Cry 5. There's the whole overarcing story of Eden's Gate, but pretty much just a lot of main missions, side missions, side activities (fishing!) and just going around hunting bad guys while trying not to be eaten by bears without being too concerned about the big picture. For those who have played Homefront: The Revolution, the system of doing enough chaos, rescuing people and completing activities in order to overthrow the enemy control in a section is somewhat represented in this game and it's pretty decent.

A few points that have arisen:

• Darkness is scary. With no mini-map, traipsing through the woods is tension filled. Yet oddly, I'm really enjoying going on foot so as not to miss anything. The map is large, but there aren't any really large distances between at least something and the next something.
• It is very easy to accidentally swap weapons instead of looting a body. I've been without my SMG a couple of times because I left it with a dead guy and walked off with his gun
• Shooting grouse is damn hard.
• Even on Easy difficultly I'm dying. Turns out that those bad guys, the ones in The Division that are bullet sponges, they show up here as VIP bad guys, hopped up on drugs. Not guys you want to melee with.
• I've had a couple of glitches, one bad guy who swam from the water to under the bank and was stuck in terrain, and a neutral who somehow became part of a huge rock. But those have been the only ones, so I think that's acceptable.
• There's been only one "stupid" mission. I'm supposed to stop a vehicle but not destroy it, which ended up as a round and round chase through the back roads. By the time my buddy and I had put in enough bullets to kill the guy, the vehicle would blow up. I must be missing something.

My "arrow in the knee" is feeling better, but I'm still using a cane. My wife, who has had three total knee replacements and really, really knows a lot about when it's just pain and when we need to see a doctor, tells me to wait until tomorrow and see how it is doing. And happily, I can sit at my desk with my leg propped up and play to my hearts content. So it's all good

[Ralph-Wiggum]

I don't have much interest in the game, but it sounds like the soundtrack is pretty good.

[killbot737]

I'm having fun with it. I feel like I'm taking on real-life (so to speak) Hubologists, or those crazies from that Kevin Smith movie Red State.

The dog is cool. Very useful. I too was confused by the perks, but I'm not having problems with it now. Hopefully there are enough points to be able to get every perk, like you could get every skill in all the games so far. I would hope that's true.

Is anybody else having issues with scripted NPC speech not coming through on their center channnel speaker? I've seen some comments about it, and I do have the same issue with Primal. It seems to come and go. Sometimes there's no speech, sometimes it sounds like they're talking quietly inside a bucket, sometimes it's fine. It's very odd. I think it only happens during the "cutscenes" where you have to watch and can't do anything, not when you're just running around and people are talking.

[jztemple2]

I've had to turn off the incidental music in the game because it gets really loud in the middle of a fight and it pretty distracting.

According to Uplay I have just over eight and a half hours in the campaign. I think it's shorting me an hour. Anyway, I'm having fun. I just did a three mission arc with a very odd character that was rather weird but lots of fun, and challenging too. The side mission mix has a lot of variety and quite a lot of charm, especially compared with FC3 and FC4, which for the most part was somewhat dry.

I did spend about twenty minutes in an Arcade mission. It was a lot of fun and I can see that it's going to be Ubisoft's answer to GTA5 Online.

[coopasonic]

I did spend about twenty minutes in an Arcade mission. It was a lot of fun and I can see that it's going to be Ubisoft's answer to GTA5 Online.

Did you know you can get perk points from leveling up in Arcade?

[Max Peck]

According to Uplay I have just over eight and a half hours in the campaign. I think it's shorting me an hour.

Uplay has me at 9.5 hours while Steam shows 12 hours. Maybe Uplay stops the clock if I'm in a menu that pauses the game, while Stream is just logging the time from when I launch the game to when I shut it down.

[jztemple2]

I did spend about twenty minutes in an Arcade mission. It was a lot of fun and I can see that it's going to be Ubisoft's answer to GTA5 Online.

Did you know you can get perk points from leveling up in Arcade?

Yup, it gave me several, I reached level 4 on the first Arcade mission, which was weird. I wonder if it will be as generous if I play the same map over again.

[GreenGoo]

I've never been big on the FC games, but was considering picking this up so I could put my new gaming PC through it's paces (supposed to arrive tomorrow). After reading reviews, though, I think I'm going to pass. It sounds like there is a fun sandbox to play around in, but that the actual story is mediocre to just plain bad. If a game doesn't have a good narrative, I tend to lose interest pretty quickly, so this one will have to wait until it hits bargain bin status.

This might be the first Far Cry game I play because I find the setting interesting. Not sure how the story plays out, but a cult in middle America might be fun. If there isn't much else to it, I guess that's not enough to hold my interest.

We'll see.

[GreenGoo]

[*]There's been only one "stupid" mission. I'm supposed to stop a vehicle but not destroy it, which ended up as a round and round chase through the back roads. By the time my buddy and I had put in enough bullets to kill the guy, the vehicle would blow up. I must be missing something.
[/list]

This might be obvious, but did you try shooting out the tires?

[jztemple2]

[*]There's been only one "stupid" mission. I'm supposed to stop a vehicle but not destroy it, which ended up as a round and round chase through the back roads. By the time my buddy and I had put in enough bullets to kill the guy, the vehicle would blow up. I must be missing something.
[/list]

This might be obvious, but did you try shooting out the tires?

Didn't seem to work. Finally did it by sniping the driver.

[GreenGoo]

Fair enough, was just a suggestion.

[jztemple2]

I almost rage quit this afternoon. There is a mission called "Wrath" which involves John Seed and his airplane. I'll avoid any spoilers, so I'll just say it took me almost an hour to get past it, since not only was it ridiculously hard (for me at least, and I'm playing on Easy), but there was no way to quit the mission. Quitting out of the game and restarting dropped me back into the mission. And the mission is buggy too, at least on a couple of what must have been ten playthroughs. If you have gotten past this mission, good for you. If you get stuck, here's my eventual solution in spoiler tags. Do not read unless you need it or have gotten past the mission!

Spoiler:

The mission of course is shooting down John Seed's plane, which I couldn't do, over and over again. And then there were problems with no plane for me being spawned until I restarted the game, and one time John fell out of his plane but became invincible because I still had to destroy his no longer existent plane. I finally beat it when, on the third time when the two planes collided, instead of restarting the mission on the ground, the game showed pity on my and respawned me in my working plane while John's was finally down. Play continued from there.

[Max Peck]

I almost rage quit this afternoon. There is a mission called "Wrath" which involves John Seed and his airplane. I'll avoid any spoilers, so I'll just say it took me almost an hour to get past it, since not only was it ridiculously hard (for me at least, and I'm playing on Easy), but there was no way to quit the mission. Quitting out of the game and restarting dropped me back into the mission. And the mission is buggy too, at least on a couple of what must have been ten playthroughs. If you have gotten past this mission, good for you. If you get stuck, here's my eventual solution in spoiler tags. Do not read unless you need it or have gotten past the mission!

Spoiler:

The mission of course is shooting down John Seed's plane, which I couldn't do, over and over again. And then there were problems with no plane for me being spawned until I restarted the game, and one time John fell out of his plane but became invincible because I still had to destroy his no longer existent plane. I finally beat it when, on the third time when the two planes collided, instead of restarting the mission on the ground, the game showed pity on my and respawned me in my working plane while John's was finally down. Play continued from there.

Spoiler:

I beat it in spite of my crap flying skills by bringing two guns-for-hire with me: Grace Armstrong as gunner in my plane and Nick Rye flying his own plane. They shot down John Seed's fighter with little help from me other than my not quite managing to crash. Nick even finished Seed off for me by dropping a bomb on his stupid head after he parachuted to the ground.

[jztemple2]

Sheesh Max, I wish I had thought of that . I hadn't gotten to Rye yet. In fact I made a big of a mistake by taking on a sibling mission before doing all the others. I should have known better. Killing off a sibling doesn't remove any missions or activities, but it makes the section of the map pretty much devoid of cultist activity except for their outposts.

So fair warning to folks who haven't gotten as far as a mission to take out a sibling; there's no warning saying "if you proceed with this mission the map in your area will be a whole lot quieter".

[jztemple2]

So, thirteen hours played and I've pretty much closed out everything in one of the three regions. All specialists have been recruited, all cult properties destroyed, all outposts captured and 47 of the 52 missions completed. One of the non-completed ones is a Clutch Nixon stunt flying challenge and after several tries I gave up. It's the other four that have me stymied. I have scanned closely over and over the map, making sure I've visited every point of interest, no matter how lowly. And I can't find a one I haven't visited. And when I get a hint from an NPC, it's always about the two regions I haven't visited yet. This is going to bug me

I played a solo Arcade mission on Tuesday and today I played a couple of PvP missions. The maps voted by the participants were crappy. I lost one match, then won another, but I think I'll be passing up any more Arcade PvP opportunities.

Overall, the problems I had with that one "boss" mission rather colored my perceptions about the game for awhile, but I'm back to thinking I'm having more fun than not. I have unlocked the ability to have two companions, and I also have unlocked the two extra holster slots for long guns. I'm being very miserly with my Perk Points, I don't want to not have points to buy something I might really need.

Tomorrow (actually later today ) I'll move to the next region and start again. I'll be careful about not taking on the next big sibling take down mission until I've really exhausted the region of other stuff to do. Overall I've got a feeling that this might be a shorter Far Cry campaign than FC3 or FC4. I still haven't done much fishing and really don't intend to, nor hunting grouse or ducks, which are pains to hit. There's a lot to like in FC5, but doing a bunch of sideline activities isn't in the cards for me.

[killbot737]

John Seed looks sort of like a bearded Ryan Reynolds.

[jztemple2]

John Seed looks sort of like a bearded Ryan Reynolds.

They are all annoying skinny too. But wait till you enter the Faith territory. She will get on your nerves. She resembles the most annoying flower child left over from the sixties. Except she kills people by destroying their minds.

I have seventeen hours in right now. I would be rather tired of the gameplay except that the story missions are varied and interesting and sometimes relieving weird and funny. Also I've upgraded my weapons and picked up new ones. But fishing and hunting got boring pretty quickly. Also, in FC3 and FC4 there was a lot of collectible collecting so just traipsing around the map looking for those added to the gameplay time, and honestly, in my opinion, those two games, especially FC4, had more interesting maps. Now the specific buildings and points of interest in FC5 I think have more appeal, but the rest of it, like the real Montana (and to be fair, most places outside of cities), tends to look the same if you walking from A to B.

You know how Assassin's Creed Origins kinda reinvigorated the AC series? Well, FC5 didn't do that for Far Cry. Yes, the towers are gone, as is the endless collecting of collectibles, but the gameplay on the map still feels the same. Now if you liked FC4 I think you would like FC5 because they removed a lot of the annoying, dull things like I just mentioned, but you are still capturing outposts and doing sideline activities and occasionally going on very scripted story missions.

Surprising, the new companion system doesn't really seem to have that much of a impact. Yes, it does give you more to do by having to manage them and they are helpful at times, but sometimes you have to keep them back so they won't spoil a surprise raid or run in front and block your shooting. And my companions have shown a tendency to get themselves wounded and I have to go rescue them... or let them bleed out. Overall they are a plus, I just wish I could set them to be more passive and perhaps to be quiet when I need them to be quiet.

[Smoove_B]

Is there a autogyro in Far Cry 5? Because that's probably my most favorite in-game vehicle ever.

[jztemple2]

Is there a autogyro in Far Cry 5? Because that's probably my most favorite in-game vehicle ever.

No, but there are landplanes, floatplanes and helicopters. So I think you're covered.

[Max Peck]

But wait till you enter the Faith territory. She will get on your nerves. She resembles the most annoying flower child left over from the sixties. Except she kills people by destroying their minds.

I'll take Faith's trippy vignettes over the John Seed torture porn sequences any day of the week.

[tjg_marantz]

Is there a autogyro in Far Cry 5? Because that's probably my most favorite in-game vehicle ever.

No, but there are landplanes, floatplanes and helicopters. So I think you're covered.

As much fun? Cuz I have to admit, that gyro was fun as hell and will be missed a lot.

[jztemple2]

Is there a autogyro in Far Cry 5? Because that's probably my most favorite in-game vehicle ever.

No, but there are landplanes, floatplanes and helicopters. So I think you're covered.

As much fun? Cuz I have to admit, that gyro was fun as hell and will be missed a lot.

I think so, the helicopters certainly.

[tjg_marantz]

Cool beans

[coopasonic]

One of the non-completed ones is a Clutch Nixon stunt flying challenge and after several tries I gave up.

Four times I failed that one at the finish line. It was pretty rough, but got much better when I switched to my xbox controller. The plane seems to handle much better that way. I think it still took me about 10 tries.

[jztemple2]

At twenty hours into the campaign I've finally defeated Faith Seed. After what I thought was a premature start to the John Seed "boss" mission, I was going to hold off while in Faith's region, but once the resistance points meter filled up it wasn't too long before the Faith "boss" mission triggered and I had no choice. And it was very cheesy in that Far Cry 3 & 4 hallucinating, mind tripping way. But now that it's over, there's still of lot of badness to be dug out of her (well, ex-her) region, although now hopefully she won't be showing up, floating around and babbling.

[Brian]

there's still of lot of badness to be dug out of her region

[IceBear]

Singing "Cluuutch! Dixon!"

[killbot737]

So, thirteen hours played and I've pretty much closed out everything in one of the three regions. All specialists have been recruited, all cult properties destroyed, all outposts captured and 47 of the 52 missions completed. One of the non-completed ones is a Clutch Nixon stunt flying challenge and after several tries I gave up. It's the other four that have me stymied. I have scanned closely over and over the map, making sure I've visited every point of interest, no matter how lowly. And I can't find a one I haven't visited. And when I get a hint from an NPC, it's always about the two regions I haven't visited yet. This is going to bug me

That Hollywood monstrosity on the hillside is quite an eyesore.

[Gryndyl]

Is anybody else having issues with scripted NPC speech not coming through on their center channnel speaker?

This is a chronic problem with Ubisoft's engine. I haven't had the issue with FC5 but I had it with AC Origins and Watchdogs. The usual fix is to set your sound output on your speakers/headphones to stereo instead of 5.1 or 7.1

Ubisoft support always defaults to "you have your device set up incorrectly" despite the fact that it works fine for every game that's not theirs.

[killbot737]

Be sure to assign Hurk and Sharky to your party at the same time. Their banter is awesome.

[raydude]

Don't know if this is considered spoilers, hence the spoiler tag, but here's my experience with the fighters and specialists so far:

Spoiler:

Got Boomer the dog first. He's great. His growls let me know something's up and he points in the direction of the threat. Plus when the threat is in range the game shows an outline of the threat with a marker icon on top. I once liberated a whole outpost undetected because Boomer and I snuck into a room and the game showed me outlines of people standing just outside the door with their back to it. I knocked em out one by one and dragged their bodies back into the room. Except for the last two, they wouldn't stand by the door so I had to take them out the old fashioned way: by shooting them.

Then I got tired of having to babysit Boomer when I wanted to drive. It was interesting to walk everywhere at first but then it got annoying because the game kept spawning enemies to kill and civilians to rescue. So I went with a random fighter - a sniper chick. She was actually pretty good. Her catchphrase when we got in the car was:" Tranform and roll out." So I kept her for a while.

Rescued Nick Rye (the pilot) next. Replaced sniper chick with him. He's ok. Helps to keep the enemy air off my back. And his bomb runs were cool. He actually helped me when I went to rescue Grace (the specialist sniper). His strafing and bomb runs were real helpful in fending off the PEGies from the Church. But then I did an escort mission and watched Nick get shot down.

Now that I had three specialists I unlocked the perk for getting two guns for hire, so I replaced Nick with sniper chick. Now I have two snipers and I also carry a sniper rifle. So far I'm liking it. Also, Grace seems pretty accurate with the .50 caliber on the Death Wish.

[coopasonic]

I've played about 20 hours now and have liberated all three areas. I was pretty thorough in the first area, a little extra time in the second area and basically the minimum in the third area. I have no doubt that you can get all the perks if you are pretty thorough with prepper stashes. I think I am at around 36/50 right now and I don't see much use for the rest of the perks (mostly upgrades for weapons I don't use or specialists I don't use).

[Max Peck]

So, the moral of the story is...

Spoiler:

Nothing that you do matters, and you can't win. I wonder if the ending is Ubisoft's way of telling us that there won't be a Far Cry 6...

But the shooty-shooty stuff is fun.