Far Cry Primal - PlayStation 4 Standard Edition

I'm a huge Far Cry fan. I've been playing since Far Cry Instincts on the original Xbox. Yes, the game has changed a LOT since Instincts, which IMO is one of the greatest FPS games I've ever played, but I like the changes. Far Cry 2 was a bit of a letdown for me, but it was by no means a bad game. It was extremely fun, I just didn't really enjoy the malaria aspect of it, but I guess it made the game a bit harder/stressful. Far Cry 3 and 4 are basically the same game, with different characters. Both were great IMO. I played both of them until 100% completion. So just understand that this review is coming from someone who actually enjoys the games a lot. First of all, the graphics are pretty damn good. Not the best on the PS4, but the game map is HUGE, so I give it a pass. There are some graphical glitches here and there, especially when you're with your beast (no game breaking stuff, just little pop in here and there). The character models are great, the setting is amazing, it really feels like you're 10,000 years in the past. Obviously, the characters are all going to look like Conan or whatever you're imagining. They're ancient humans...they're wearing fur and whatnot. The foliage looks great, the water looks real, no real gripes about the graphics at all, other than the small minor glitches. The game play is where it's at. It's really different from Far Cry 3 and 4 (unless you used the bow and arrow a LOT in 3 and 4, which I did) because the main weapons you use are spears, clubs, and arrows. There are some side weapons like shards and hives as well. The spear is OP, it kills everyone in one throw. You can also use the spear as a melee weapon as well, but it's not as strong. The arrows are pretty weak unless you get a head shot, and the two handed club is pretty OP as well, assuming you're pretty close in range. Overall, the game plays differently, but at the same time, it's the same...I can't really explain it. If you're like me and you enjoy open world shooters, this is a GREAT game. I won't go into the story, since I'm not finished with it yet.

This game adds a very nice and much-needed bit of variety to the first-person action/shooter game genre. I really like how UbiSoft took a different angle on where to take the Far Cry series, taking a game back to prehistoric times was a big departure that many game franchises could not pull off successfully. Far Cry Primal does it, however. The game itself is of course beautifully rendered and detailed, it is incredibly easy to lose yourself (In a good way) in the massive and immersive world. There are plenty of fauna to hunt, plants to harvest, fellow cavemen to fight to the death, and lots of other activities and side quests to keep it interesting for a long time. While it might seem like only having a few very basic weapons would be a huge hindrance to the game play and make it a complete bore, it actually works quite well. There are of course upgrades and classes to the various weapons to give it a touch of variety, the main ones you use being the club, the spear, and the bow. There is just something about charging up a big club swing and bashing in the head of an attacker from a rival tribe, watching his lifeless body tumble off a cliff, and seeing it fall into a field where sabretooth tigers are mauling deer to death while you are riding your woolly mammoth away from the scene. It's that kind of game... Brutal, uncensored, and simplistic. The plot of the story isn't as deep as some of the previous Far Cry titles, but we also can't forget that people who had barely mastered spoken language probably aren't going to have incredibly deep relationships or touching monologues. They are just concerned with surviving another day, and doing it any way possible. By having relatively simple character relationships, I think it even adds an extra element of realism to it. Wonderful execution on what could have been a horribly boring game in the wrong hands. I would highly recommend Far Cry Primal.

If you're looking for guns, bombs, and general high tech rampaging, this isn't the game for you. If, however, you're looking for a caveman simulator the eschews the drudgery of day to day life and focuses instead on primitive warfare and riding/commanding prehistoric beasts...this game is perfect. Don't listen to the other reviewers jaded by years of high powered sniper rifles, moronic titles that mash humans and dinosaurs together, and AI enemies that run twords death like lemmings. If you wanna know what it was to be early man; to be constantly hunted, to be forever on the brink of death, to struggle for your every possession or meal, to rage against the darkness with only a sharpened stick and a pointy stone... with a bit of The Beastmaster thrown in for good measure... this. is. your. game. Beautiful scenery, native language(s), hulking beasts, amazing attention to detail, and ultimately, a very real depiction of convergent/divergent human evolution shaped through the hands of one proto-sapien. It's absolutely everything I ever wished a sandbox game could be. Though it took WAY too long to appear, I can now forgive every complaint I ever lobbed at others for pushing too far into futuristic tech and neglecting the visceral, raw, and terrifying feel of combat and survival in an age when melee was the only way, and every weapon was a precious creation of your own hands. Let your inner caveman out to play, you won't be sorry. Edit: Save for the physical items (and the Blood Shasti Club, which is just a reskin of the standard club in game), everything that comes with the deluxe edition can be had in the standard for Club Ubisoft points, which you earn in game anyway (and you may have earned already with their old Uplay system, I had more than enough points from something to buy it all from start). Unless you REALLY want the CD (and the score isn't bad, so maybe you do), or a physical map, don't bother with deluxe.

I've enjoyed all the FarCry games, so certainly some bias applies. That being said, if you too are a fan of other FarCry games and would enjoy more emphasis on survival and the wilderness, this game is a masterpiece. The most obvious and striking aspect of this game is the wild landscape. The landscape is beautiful and suspends disbelief effectively. Also, it is enormous. Equal or larger than FarCry 4. Equally as impressive as the landscape is the wildlife. From cave bears to wooly mamoths, prehistoric gators and giant aggressive wolves, all threatening to end your life unless you are able to use one of your primitive weapons to bash a skull in, or hit a heart or lung. Of course if the beast is too large, or too powerful your best chance is to run like hell. You play a character named Takkar, and you are a member of the Wenja tribe, with which you're tasked with protecting and growing. Your enemy is a tribe of Neanderthal looking savages who have invaded the homeland of the Wenja. Craft your own weapons, clothes and tools. Built relationships and prove yourself as an effective leader. Tame wild beasts and use your skills (advanceable) and wits to brutally or stealthfully send your enemies into the afterlife. This game is a well thought out and enjoyable adventure, journey and discovery of a time in history that shaped mankind's future.

One of the better in the series. Not as groundbreaking as FC3, but far more original ideas (though not all terribly effective) than in FC4. The game looks great, as expected, and the environment seems untamed and wild. There are plenty of critters to hunt and tame, which is one of the more entertaining parts of the game. Palling around with a giant saber toothed tiger or massive, unique bear is all sorts of good times. The weapons are fun and intuitive to use, though they are not terribly varied. Hey, sticks and stones are all you've got to work with, right? What would you expect. Other than that, the story is something fairly akin to the Land Before Time, in that you are searching out a somewhat lost tribe or legendary people and help them rebuild after some local warring tribes have lain waste to their homeland. The setting is great and the world is huge. If you like sandbox games and are at all familiar or interested in the Far Cry series, I would highly recommend this.

This game took a small adjustment from FC4. But (spoiler alert), when I mounted the saber tooth and rode him for the first time, I was hooked. lol. The gameplay is very similar to FC4, so if you liked that, you should love this one! No guns, for obvious reason (they haven't been invented yet...js), but my favorite weapon (the bow), has many new upgrades that I loved! The spear is (by far) the most fun to me. The story could use a little improvement, I don't feel like I got enough character background or story missions. Granted, the story missions are great, but there is SO much to do in this game! You could ride around hunting and gathering for a long as you like! PS4 graphics are amazing. Loads and saves are short. It's super fun running around in caveman days to me! Defnly recommend it!

This is not the be-all end-all game I hoped for--but no game ever has been. For the record, the closest, for me, were the Mass Effect series and early World of Warcraft. I want a game that is a piece of art combined with incredible gameplay--so that I feel I've become a part of a true other world that I control, that I am a part of. In essence, reality, but different--reality where I can do more than I can in reality, and in a really effing cool way. That said, this game is incredibly fun and, to my mind, very brave of Ubisoft. Yes, it uses the formula of old Far Cry games in the sense that it's "take this outpost/bonfire and acquire these items/skills and craft this and that to get more powerful." However, they make some key controversial changes, the most controversial being that there really are no superweapons in this game. Even the weapons that stretch believability, like the bee bomb or the berserk bomb, still adhere to the feel of archaic nature, of a reliance on a select few strategies to adapt to the world you're given. It's a stripping down, rather than a bulking up. It's a return to our roots as humans. This is smart. Less is more. With less, you must learn more, you must adapt to a world that isn't giving you easy outs. Samuel Beckett said something along the lines of "James Joyce has done everything there is with synthesis, with addition, with putting as much as possible on the page. I'm going to go for analysis, breaking down--not knowledge, but ignorance. I'm going to take ignorance as far as possible." This is, believe it or not, more accurate to reality. We don't master the world, we merely engage it as best we can. That's what's awesome here: the game experience allows for more fascinating role play than any of the others. Here's the thing. I've only played for a few days. But I've read reviews saying that plot is not a strong point in this game. That might seem like a disadvantage, but I think it is quite the opposite. Ubisoft are no masters of plot, in my opinion. The plots in the last few Far Cry games have felt silly and stupid, and I've felt more like a prisoner to them than a happy spectator. It's always been about the fighting and the fun. In this one, the plot is more like a background that fits into the brilliant setting. It's simple: you're in one tribe, and you want your tribe to survive and even thrive. How do you do this? Fight other tribes and fight the wild world around you trying to kill you. See what I mean? The lack of plot is actually an advantage. In that sense, I can feel more invested in this game. Ubisoft has given up the pretense of a story THEY create, so that I can feel like I am creating my own story. This, to me, the player's creation of their own story in a wonderful world given to them by developers, is the hallmark of a good (sometimes great) game. And there's no better time in human history to create your own story than in its early-modern civilization era. A quick note is that I love how this whole strategy to making the game lends fire a new prominence, and that's incredibly fun to explore. Fire was probably the single most important discovery in human history in terms of its influence. It allowed us safety and promoted our evolution into modern humans in countless ways, not least of all: light, warmth, protection and cooking. In my opinion, the only thing that could make this better is more world-building: I would love to be able to get to know my villagers, to be able to build specific buildings and assign tasks and feel immersed in my tribe. Like Fallout 4 settlements, but way better. But I understand that this is too much to ask from a Far Cry game, and I understand why, from a market perspective, Ubisoft wouldn't do this. Anyway, what they did do was wonderful. The night is dark and this floating ball in space is harsh. Fire is heat but it is also light. To borrow some Cormac McCarthy imagery: all you can do is carry the light. Go carry the light. Update 3/30/2016: Okay. So as it turns out, this game is actually like the honeymoon period of a new relationship. The setting, the work done to recreate approximations of archaic human languages, the beasts, and all the rest mentioned above, are amazing and innovative--at first. But after playing for many more hours, these successes also end up highlighting the failures. Ubisoft committed--but only so far. They couldn't quite be willing to send me, a 20th century human, down the creek without a paddle. They damn-near removed story, which at first felt like immersion in a more simple world. Now, with the tasks being the same thing over and over again, this feels like another lacking element. This game hinted at the awesome nature of human history but didn't really and truly bring me inside of it. In other words, the things that I mentioned in my original review as drawbacks that are negligible in light of the positives are biting the gaming experience in the butt. Zero real control (RPG element) over my character or his development, zero control over the village beyond linear, pre-formed upgrades, a plot that is just simple enough to remain linear, but not simple enough to be absurdly open-ended. In other words--if they wanted to drop me into an insane world that felt like I was literally on my own in ancient human times, wonderful. If instead they wanted to drop me into a world where I follow the elaborate and emotional story of a human, to feel what it was like to be a human in 10,000 BC fighting for everything I know to be real, also wonderful. This game ends up straddling the line and going in neither direction. In the end, it still deserves three stars for being incredibly fun to play for a diversion, and for the unique and innovative setting/linguistic elements.

I'm not one for FPS games or any games that are exclusively first person. Mainly becoz I get sick from the wide vision range and the motion blur after a few hours. This game though has far exceeded my expectations. It's a game that has brought me back day after day for a few more hours of play. The graphics are beautiful, the gameplay is fun. I especially love having a beast to fight along side of. It reminds me of Skyrim, just without the magic. I have enjoyed this game and my boyfriend has enjoyed this game. We have hardly ever liked the same game. The map is huge (IMO) and as much as I hate it, I love how predators will hunt you down until you die. My only gripe is how I seem to get stuck by some of the terrain when I otherwise would've been able to jump and get through it.