Unfortunately Far Cry Primal didn’t hit the mark for me and I dropped it after loosing interest.
I played the first 3 Far Cry games back in the day and really enjoyed them, along with Blood Dragon later, but back in 2014 Far Cry 4, despite the fact I enjoy FPS games, it didn’t seem to offer much over Far Cry 3. Ubisoft was starting to get not such a great reputation and I was busy with other stuff. The other games followed a similar path, looking less and less interesting.
Primal looked a bit different though with it’s Stone Age setting, and I was always a little curious, and eventually last year it was on sale for a couple of quid in a sale so I grabbed it. This year, kinda stuck in a rut not sure what to play, I liked the idea of getting stuck in. I always enjoy a historical game, and in this case the pre historical setting with no real fantasy (other than visions and being able to tame animals) did appeal.
Initially I did enjoyed the game. It obviously runs well for a 10 year old game but it looks great as well. Combat versus the human enemies was fairly punchy using the bow and pretty enjoyable. There was effort to craft the Wenja language spoken by the characters and make the world feel wild and untamed.
Unfortunately the game suffers from typical Ubi slop, in that they shovel content in front of you without thought and subtlety. In this case, despite it being set in the prehistoric wilds I couldn’t go 50 feet without running into an enemy patrol or a wild animal that would attack me. I felt I had no time to breath in the game in a way that games like RDR 2 or Witcher 3 give you by creating some space, let alone the fact that despite being pre historic the area seemed massively populated.
Combat descend into a rinse and repeat with the bow and head shots for the most part, and while satisfying at first, swiftly became a bit rote. The pre historic setting really works against it because it limits the weapons and tools unfortunately. I found the survival elements just busy work. Bearing in mind the games opening shows you working as a team to take down mammoths, and this team work was a key survival strategy that marked humans from animals, none of this was really on display in the main game. You have members of the tribe wandering around but you are a lone wolf for the most part, aside from animal companions.
The plot seemed dull, consisting of mostly going and finding new characters for the village and doing quests to bring them back to unlock more upgrades. The characters are stone age stereo types that jump around and while they felt of the time and not modern, swiftly felt annoying. There was some trippy vision quest stuff that I was just starting to get into and apparently gets a little inventive further in the game, but it didn’t really seem to be offering much depth to the characters or the world.
I did think about trying the survival mode to see if it would tackle some of my issues about lack of tension, but as I was unenthusiastic about continuing at that point and this mode seemed to mainly add more friction and busy work, I decided to leave it.
I may pick the game up again and then update my review in the future, if I do get a hankering for pre historic stuff, but right now I’m leaving the game on hiatus as it swiftly just became mediocre and boring for me.
