Far Cry 5 is an amazing addition to the franchise ... until the very ending

THE latest addition of the Far Cry series packs some serious improvements and advancements over its predecessors.

TRAVEL the world, visit exotic locations, meet interesting people and animals, and then shoot them.

If you think that sounds like an awesome adventure, you’ve probably had your copy of Ubisoft’s latest game Far Cry 5 playing pretty much since it was released. I’ve been enjoying it immensely since it was released; it’s very good and a lot of fun right up until the ending, particularly if you enjoyed any of the previous games in the series.

If, on the other hand, you’re opposed to ultra-violence and people using religion to be extremely horrible to each other, then stay away because this game has potentially more triggers in it for you than the Remington assembly line.

The focus of Far Cry 5 is the fictional Hope County, Montana — an idyllic piece of America that has been steadily overtaken by the destructive Project At Eden’s Gate doomsday cult, let by the charismatic Father Joseph Seed.

Your character — and for the first time in the series, your character is a customisable blank slate, essentially putting you directly into the game — is a Deputy Sherriff sent in with a US Marshal and some of your colleagues to arrest Seed for the sundry Federal crimes he has committed — as one does when they amass a private army, stockpile weapons, and start taking over communities at gunpoint as part of a religious crusade.

Far Cry 5 retains the same core experience that has made the series such a hit, while adding some new additions.

It goes without saying everything gets crazy pretty much straight away, and you find yourself on the run from the cult and trying to work out how to rescue your colleagues and take out Seed in the process. Cue the gunfire and explosions.

Far Cry 5 retains the same core experience that has made the series such a hit, while adding some new additions and tweaks to change things up a bit. The most noticeable change is the famous “Ubisoft Towers” (a long-running feature in many of the studio’s games, where your character has to scale various radio towers, pagodas, bonfires, or vantage points to unlock the activities in an area) are gone, replaced with a Ghost Recon: Wildlands-like system in which you obtain information and intel by talking to people, listening to answering machines, reading information left lying about, and so on.

Secondly: You’re not alone this time around. There are a range of “hired guns” available, including a huntress, a pilot, a markswoman, the rocket-launcher toting fan-favourite Hurk Drubman Jr, and even a diabetic grizzly bear with a penchant for cheeseburgers.

One particularly appealing feature is you can play the entire campaign (after the opening tutorial) in online co-op with a friend, for a double dose of cultist culling. This is a lot of fun and well worth trying if you’ve got a friend on the same platform as you; it offers plenty of opportunities to enjoy the craziness that the series is well known for with someone else.

The map is huge and not everyone you meet wants to wash away your sins in a hail of bullets, either — there is a resistance movement made up of locals, many of whom can be persuaded to help you once they realise you have good intentions.

The dynamic environment fans know and love is still there in the latest game.

Combat has been tweaked slightly and enemies can now be incapacitated, calling for help from their comrades — who will revive them if they can get there in time.

Does the game work with its ostensibly familiar setting? Yes, it does — it’s still a Far Cry game, and the setting is very well realised, feeling like a real place — right down to the fact you can even go fishing, should you choose. The series’ moments of absurdist humour are also present — ranging from a chef who needs your help organising a Rocky Mountain Oyster festival to a political candidate who wants to swing the numbers in his favour by arranging for cult members to accidentally trip and fall onto some bullets.

The dynamic environment fans know and love is still there, and the moments of unscripted chaos — such as when assaulting an outpost and an enemy helicopter shows up, gets shot down, crashes into a fuel tank and explodes, which opens a bear cage and lets out an angry and literally fired up bear, who begins shredding everyone around it as the bullets and grenades keep flying — are as strong and memorable as ever.

Hunting is back as well, but this time it’s an optional activity and is joined by the surprisingly relaxing option to go fishing.

Rest assured, you can still go fishing.

The game hasn’t strayed too far from familiar territory in a general gameplay sense, so there’s still a sense of déjà vu in many respects. It also suffers from some very serious plot holes — for example, you literally have access to radios, aeroplanes and helicopters within a few hours of starting the game, but just flying over the mountains and getting the military or someone to come and help simply isn’t an option for reasons that are never adequately elaborated on in-story.

Similarly, no-one apparently else in the state (or the rest of the US) notices that a sheriff, three deputies and a US Federal Marshal have been missing in Hope County for ages and thinks to sends in another team — or the military — to look for them.

There are also far too many instances of the “getting captured by a bad guy and being placed in an easily escapable trap”, including being captured from such impossible places as “a helicopter above a lake in a different region” and “in the middle of a heavily fortified resistance bunker”.

Despite the super fun gameplay, when it comes to the narrative, the wheels kind of fall off at the end.

The series consistently has excellent antagonists and Father Joseph Seed is no exception, magnificently acted by Greg Bryk who turns in a compelling and believable performance as a doomsday cult leader who walks a wafer-thin line between religious zeal and insanity while passionately and genuinely believing he is doing something righteous.

I still had a feeling the game wasn’t making the fullest use of its set up, though — despite the excellent questions it raises and themes it explores, it still comes down to “Shoot all the baddies”.

Not that it isn’t fun, of course — right until the denouement and the ending, when the wheels fall off with so much force it craters the asphalt.

Without getting into major spoiler territory, the game’s endings were both so bad I sincerely hope Ubisoft do a Fallout 3 and retroactively change them.

On a happier note, the game also comes with the versatile Far Cry Arcade, which is a scenario and level builder allowing you to use the game’s building blocks to create all sorts of interesting and entertaining scenarios to play around in.

If you’re not a fan of the series, Far Cry 5 isn’t going to bring about some kind of Damascene Conversion, despite its improvements and advancements over its predecessors.

However, if you enjoyed any of the previous games — or have never played one of them — then despite the ending, this is otherwise an absolute must-buy and an excellent addition to the series.