Far Cry Primal (PC) Review

An hour into the dense forests of Far Cry Primal, and Takkar of the Wenja tribe will meet a - surprisingly - good-looking Stone Age cutie, craft crude-but-effective weapons, hunt goats, boars, and mammoths, tame wolves, bears, and even sabre tooth tigers, fight rival cavemen, and, finally, enter a "dreamworld" (after drinking blood mixed with eyeballs) in order to get in touch with his spirit animal. Drawing inspiration from the Shamanic/Spiritual branch of fiction, realism is obviously not the main focus here, and nor should it be so.

Sadly, and while there are definitely plenty of fantasy elements available, Ubisoft has been strangely conservative. There are no dinosaurs, weird Palaeolithic fauna and flora, and nothing extraordinary besides forests and snowy mountains… and not a single leopard-bikini-wearing Amazon warrior. After a Spartan - yet effective, immersive-wise - countdown from the 21st Century towards 10,000 BC (accompanied by sounds from the myriads of wars that humans have fought throughout the millennia), the protagonist of this story will start his odyssey with a mammoth hunt, and this will be the moment when it will be realised that this is yet another Far Cry with fantastic audio-visuals.

From the breathtaking mountain range in the horizon and the behaviour of animals, to the sounds of the surrounding biome, everything is perfect, and runs pretty good even at 60fps - and wait until you see the humans. Besides their insanely flawless animation, facial expressions, and overall design, the Canadian developer was smart enough to have some linguists create a unique, yet extremely convincing language, which sounds very African (as it should), and at the same time very original.

The problem is that the first few hours into this prehistoric epic will offer everything there is to do here, and while it can all be quite fun, it's not something special. Fighting is all about mashing the attack button and waiting for the other guy (or beast) to die, or sneaking behind an enemy to carefully aim at the back of his head. Takkar can also tame predators, and while each one provides a unique perk, the only thing that matters is their position on the food chain: if it's big and mean, everything will run away, and if it's small, it will need a juicy steak once in a while in order to remain standing on its four legs.

The biggest problem is that it takes little skill/strategy to do anything here, something that decreases the fun factor quite a bit, because nothing, from this woolly rhino, to that pack of wolves, can really pose a threat to Turok… err, Takkar. Not to mention that this makes the same mistake as many sandbox games, where becoming stronger doesn't really mean that it's possible to approach harder areas, instead that the world just becomes even less dangerous.

For the most part, and like many of Ubisoft's creations (*cough*Assasin's Creed*cough*), this is a very casual-friendly array of checklist ticks. In other words, it's all about activating all checkpoints, finding, all - otherwise useless - collectibles, crafting every piece of equipment, upgrading Takkar's village, bringing all secondary NPCs to it to unlock more skills, and, of course, completing all quests. It's easy, it's simple, it's repetitive… and, yet, it's great fun. Make no mistake, though, while this certainly caters to the OCD nut inside us all, it can safely be described as "little content, stretched over much game time."

Unfortunately, there is a deeper problem at hand, and that's that there's little incentive to do anything. The story of Far Cry Primal is just… there. Once or twice it may seem like it tries to go somewhere, but it really doesn't. In fact, the plot synopsis can be summed up in one short sentence: Takkar must unite his fellow tribesmen, and fight their common enemy - that's it. It's the weakest storyline in the series' history, and that's saying a lot.

Those willing to approach this should definitely know what it is, and what it isn't. It's not an RPG - it's a big, green open-ended valley, where the name of the game is an endless loop of killing, gathering, crafting, finding, and capturing… it's an Elder Scrolls title, but without the deep lore. Furthermore, anyone tired of the Far Cry recipe should best avoid this for the simple fact that it is just like any other release in the franchise, except with a Stone Age re-skin - instead of guns, bows, instead of radio towers, campfires, and instead of jeeps, mountable tigers and mammoths.