Gamescom 2017: Hands on with Far Cry 5 – Kill all the nutjobs

When Far Cry 5’s storyline was revealed earlier this year, there was quite an internet storm regarding it. In Far Cry 5, you’re taking on an extremist religious organisation as you the aim to topple their hatred and free the people from their tyranny by using lethal force in all its glory.

Ah, but aren’t so many games and movies stories doing the exact same thing? I mean how many people do we need to save us from Islamic fundamentalists before it stops being something that people get upset about? Oh wait… The problem here is that the religious extremists aren’t actually Islamic but rather good old fringe Christian. Yes, apparently some religions are acceptable to be the bad guys but not Christianity which is responsible for pretty much the same number of deaths as Muslim religious fanatics.

Anyway, back to the game. Thanks to the Ubisoft team for securing me a fast pass for the gameplay on the show floor, I managed to skip a three hour line to take control of my Montana deputy and head into the same demo they showed at E3. Here’s a video walkthrough of that demo to get a feel for what was on offer.

A lot of people are worried that the game won’t look as good as it does in this demo, but I was on the show floor of Gamescom with tens of thousands of people and it very much looked like this. So unless Ubisoft is going to try the bait and switch on Far Cry 5, it will end up being one of the best looking games of 2018 within its current release window of February 2018.

I had chosen Grace as my partner in crime for the demo and was pleased to find out that I could use some strategy to tell Grace where I wanted her positioned before we unleashed hell on the religious bigots. By flanking certain buildings we definitely had the upper hand on the enemy and whilst my aim was a bit off yesterday after a night out on the town (Editors note: KOLSCH!), the county was soon under our control.

However, it did take a variety of weapons and explosives to take over the town and each weapon definitely felt different and worked better in different scenarios. In typical Far Cry fashion, lots and lots of explosions and destruction followed in my wake.

Unfortunately, the hands on wasn’t long enough to truly get a full understanding of the story or characters, which is really what the essence of Far Cry is all about. The actual gameplay was solid and the graphics are, once again, truly breathtaking. I did accidentally fly my plane into a fisherman, which was unfortunate, but it did give me a brief glimpse of the extra side abilities in the game like fishing and hunting.

So far it looks like the next Far Cry game in the series is going to improve on previous iterations and if you were a fan before you’ll probably love this one. If you haven’t played the previous Far Cry games, then this is maybe the one you want to jump in on.

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Last Updated: August 25, 2017