Review: Far Cry 6 – a Caribbean cornucopia of gunfire, explosions & chaos

Far Cry 6 is a great addition to the Far Cry franchise and a lot of fun too.

Far Cry 6 was developed and released by Ubisoft for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

Far Cry 6 is the latest addition to Ubisoft’s weapons-filled action-travelogue series. Fans will be pleased to know it’s a lot of fun too.

Developed and released by Ubisoft for PC, PlayStation and Xbox, the setting this time is the Caribbean island of Yara – clearly inspired by Cuba – which has been stuck in a trade embargo since a revolution in 1967.

As it happens, the country’s El Presidente, Anton Castillo (played by Giancarlo Esposito) has a plan to turn Yara’s fortunes around with a new and highly effective cancer treatment his scientists have developed.

Unfortunately, he has also decided the best way to cultivate the tobacco and poisonous bio-agent which turns it into medicine is via slave labour. He has started declaring people who oppose him “Fake Yarans” and “Outcasts” and is putting them to work on the plantations or just killing them.

Your character, Dani Rojas, player’s choice between male or female, decides they have had enough of Yara being a fascist tropical hell. They try to escape on a fishing boat.

Anton Castillo intercepts the boat and has nearly everyone on it killed, but Dani survives and ends up washed ashore on an island being used by a rebel group to stage a guerrilla war against the Yaran military and regime – and decides to join the guerillas.

From there, it’s a delightful Caribbean cornucopia of gunfire, explosions, chaos and mayhem involving a range of conventional and improvised weapons as you fight to overthrow Anton Castillo’s regime with a quirky cast of revolutionaries.

Scene from Far Cry 6 by Ubisoft for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

In keeping with the ‘blockaded island isolated from the world for decades’ aesthetic, there are a range of home made “Resolver” weapons in the game, including backpack weapons such as a homing rocket launcher array pitched as being especially powerful, and you can upgrade a lot of the game’s weapons with extra items such as suppressors, telescopic sights, extended magazines, and different ammunition types.

I found most of the “Resolver” weapons to be less useful than the conventional guns. There was no reason to craft a homemade suppressor which wasn’t very good when I could also craft a really good military-grade suppressor that worked more effectively.

The enemy AI in the game isn’t very bright either. Stealthily taking out an entire outpost undetected is not much of a challenge, even later in the game when stronger enemies are present.

From a gameplay mechanics aspect, it’s standard Far Cry formula with a few tweaks, such as how weapons upgrading works and a slightly less surreal approach to some elements of the experience.

Yara is a huge island and there is a lot to do. The main campaign took me around 30 hours, and there were still a lot of side missions, treasure hunts, fishing opportunities and assorted optional tasks left to do.

It is almost shameful how little screen time Giancarlo Esposito has as Anton Castillo. He is an incredibly talented actor who brings a great deal of gravitas to the role, but we only see Castillo in a few cutscenes and hear his voice on background radio addresses.

The various things you can do, ranging from taking out checkpoints to launching assaults on heavily defended ships to rescuing prisoners from work camps.

They have several ways of being tackled; I found a stealth approach with a silenced rifle was most effective but kicking in the door, firing an AK-47 and throwing Molotov cocktails everywhere was also a viable option provided you didn’t mind dealing with the reinforcements that will continue to arrive in escalating capabilities while you do so.

Scene from Far Cry 6 by Ubisoft for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

While primarily a single-player experience. Far Cry 6 has a co-op mode as well, allowing you to team up with a friend to take on the Castillo regime too.

Interestingly, the game looks and plays better on an Xbox Series X and Samsung QN900A 8K TV than it does on my gaming PC, not least because the high definition textures for PC need a GPU with at least 11GB RAM, and extremely few GPUs have that at present. I also encountered some graphical issues with accessory textures on the PC version which I didn’t experience on console.

The Xbox version does look amazing on a decent TV thanks to its HD texture pack capabilities, and cruising around Yara in a car, boat, aeroplane or even on horseback is a visual treat. The Spanish Colonial-style architecture that features in some areas is really nicely done and the whole island feels like a believable place for the most part, at least from a scenery and visual perspective.

Far Cry 6 does a great job balancing its more serious elements with silly, over the top fun. While there are important themes in the game around revolution, dictatorship, and whether the ends justify the means, the same game also encourages you to blow things up, gives you animal companions including a crocodile with a gold tooth and a psychopathic rooster with sharpened fighting spurs, and even has a new-age therapist who phones Dani in mid-gunfight to comment he sounds stressed.

The story wasn’t the most original I’ve ever seen but it was engaging and thought-provoking at times. The ending was better than the one in Far Cry 5.

Despite some of the game’s quirks, I really enjoyed Far Cry 6. It is now tied with Far Cry 4 as my favourite game in the series, and I really liked the different gameplay experiences the Caribbean location offers.

If you’re tired of the Far Cry formula, there’s nothing here that’s likely to convince you to change your mind. If, like me, you enjoy the series and the adventure possibilities it offers, then there is a lot to like in Far Cry 6 and it’s a must-play, strong return to form for the series.

Scene from Far Cry 6 by Ubisoft for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.