I finally got sort of bored with FC5 and decided to fire this up again a few weeks ago. Realizing I was stuck in South Kyrat *forever* unless I went up to Yogi and Regi, the two miscreant trickster stoners squatting in the family manse, and submitted myself to the indignities of Shangri-La: siccing a pet tiger on hallucinated demons and their hot knives (IRL, I substituted a skunk fatty), spinning and ringing bells, and back-stabbing a flame-thrower dude. Done, and done.
Then I did the CIA guy's stuff: killed everybody at an airport, flew up into the Himalayas, killed a bunch more people, got tossed in prison, escaped from said prison, yada (I deliberately shot the CIA guy in FC5, because CIA guy but in hindsight, I had considerable justification).
Ready for the retro review? The game has good points, and bad points. The controls are clunky and the weapons mostly suck. Except for the jizzed-up arrows and bolts mod, which makes the crossbow especially lethal as in, you can actually kill shit with it whereas without the mod, it's more like a nerf blaster.
The fight to cross the fortified bridge separating north and south really highlighted the clunkiness and weakness of the FC4 combat model, though these qualities dependably make an appearance at every firefight and wildlife encounter. The presentation of NPC's veers from not too terrible, to terrible. Kind of like FC3.
I've gone on to scale a couple more bell towers, a generally frustrating and useless exercise except it makes parts of the map visible, and captured a fortress and a couple of forts, which, once you know how (and can remember how), is fairly straightforward.
I'm gonna say this release marks an 'interesting' evolution point in the series. I have a better understanding of the game designers' intentions, and more respect. The scenery is consistently impressive, so extra points for that.
Heavily discounted, as one might reasonably expect for a ~7-yo game.
“The commission posted a video of a child being pulled under the treadmill. (Warning: this video may be disturbing to some.)” |