Far Cry 4 has been the most awaited game this year for lots of reasons. One being the fact that it has a lot to relate to India more specifically Nepal/Bhutan. So as you start the game hidden in the towering Himalayas lies a country steeped in tradition and violence. You are Ajay Ghale, returning to the country of your birth, the lush forests and harsh snow-capped summits of Kyrat, to fulfill your mother’s dying wish of spreading her ashes.
This vast and unpredictable country offers visitors opportunity and danger. You quickly find yourself embroiled in a rebellion to overthrow the oppressive regime of Pagan Min, a figure known as much for his sense of style and charisma as for his cruelty and naked brutality. Navigating the treacherous landscape, you find your fate increasingly determined by the choices you make because in Kyrat, and every second is a story. Kyrat’s wilderness delivers on the promise of a true open world anecdote factory.
Gameplay
Far Cry 4 presents fans with a new setting, story and characters while giving them what they love about past games, from outposts to platforming puzzles in the form of towers to satisfying stealth and first-person shooting combat. Even treading familiar ground, Far Cry 4 offers more than enough to make trekking through the fictional country of Kyrat a treat.
The world features a huge assortment of things to do, but the missions set atop the snowy peaks of the Himalayas are particularly entertaining. Wind howls and snow swirls, making traversing the wilderness dangerous and exciting. It was easy to use the blinding environment to my advantage and sneak up on unsuspecting guards. I relished every opportunity to explore the jagged mountaintops because traveling to them was only possible through a handful of missions.
But there’s plenty of beauty to be found in the rest of Kyrat, from the forest to the lakes, though it all starts to run together after a while. No distinct landmarks separate one side of the country from the other, so it’s easy to lose your way, especially considering the play space’s immense size. I spent the first 10 hours of the game in a section of land that made up maybe 15 percent of Kyrat, and as I explored and the map expanded, I realized how huge my virtual sandbox really was. With hidden locations and secret nooks and crannies, there’s certainly plenty to explore.
One of the biggest changes since Far Cry 3 is the ability to shoot while driving. To do this, aiming is controlled with the right thumbstick and driving is mapped to the left. That makes controlling a car challenging (at least at first), but pushing down on the left thumbstick engages autodrive, which automatically steers your car to your current waypoint, leaving you free to shoot out the window to your heart’s content. If there’s no car around, maybe you’ll find an elephant, which you can use to ram people and vehicles alike, or perhaps you’ll spot a hang glider and soar above the land, shooting grenades at the bad guys below. Vertical ascension is easy when you don’t have access to a helicopter, too, considering the easy-to-use grappling feature. Some of the coolest things I did in-game happened when my feet weren’t touching the ground, and performing a takedown by jumping from my vehicle into an enemy’s never got old.
Of course, Far Cry 4 offers plenty to the loud and boisterous types, too. I earned tokens to call on my Golden Path brothers in times of need (though I never felt compelled to use them). And if you’re trying to take down one of the Kyrat’s four fortresses (which are basically huge, extra-challenging outposts), a real co-op partner doesn’t hurt. I would’ve loved to cause chaos with an online buddy or battle in the five-versus-five multiplayer matches, but whenever I tried, the servers crapped out on me, which is disappointing for such a huge, recently launched game. A nice distraction from the campaign that does work, however, is the map builder. Using an array of tools, it’s possible to create custom maps, outposts and missions others can play and vote on. We haven’t seen a feature like this since Far Cry 2, so it’s nice to have this time around.
Far Cry 4 Experience on NVIDIA powered Gaming Rigs
If you’ve played previous Far Cry games you know the franchise has a reputation for spectacular graphics, and Far Cry 4 is no different, rendering a fictional Himalayan area called Kyrat in incredible detail, with unprecedented scope, size and verticality. And as with the previous games, Far Cry 4 looks and plays best on PC thanks to improved textures, effects, assets, additional control options, faster framerates, the ability to render the game at higher resolutions, and of course, extra PC-exclusive graphics technologies.
- NVIDIA HairWorks adds dynamic, realistic fur to many of the animals found throughout Far Cry 4‘s Kyrat. Built using advanced tessellation techniques, HairWorks’ Fur can be fully shadowed and shaded by the game’s lighting, our HBAO+ technology, and our PCSS technology, right down the skin layer of an animal, increasing image quality massively. Additionally, layers react to external forces, such as wind and character movement, as one would expect, improving realism.
- NVIDIA HBAO+ adds realistic Ambient Occlusion shadowing and shading around objects and surfaces that occlude light, with a higher degree of precision than other AO techniques, significantly improving image quality in every scene.
- NVIDIA Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS) add contact hardening soft shadows throughout the game, increasing image quality in every scene.
- NVIDIA TXAA temporal anti-aliasing eliminates the distracting movement of anti-aliased lines and edges, and also eliminates other artifacts associated with anti-aliasing, improving every element of the game.
- NVIDIA God Rays enhance Far Cry 4‘s volumetric lighting system with tessellated crepuscular light rays, significantly improving image quality in many scenes.
Far Cry 4 is a massive game, and the PC version offers the same gameplay features and systems as the current-gen Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles. Accordingly, Ubisoft recommends a well-equipped system for smooth gaming at 1920×1080. For this you can check out the PC specs here.
Dunia Engine 2
Far Cry 4 utilizes an updated version of the Dunia 2 engine previously seen in Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, but unlike other recently-updated engines, Dunia 2 has merely been upgraded rather than reinvented. Arguably, this approach is superior, enabling developers to iterate upon the tools and code they know so well, using available time to optimize and fine-tune, while also adding a few new doodads here and there.
By using this iterative model, Far Cry 4’s Dunia 2 has a familiar look and feel, though that’s no bad thing: Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon are highly-rated games with fast-performing engines, massive open worlds, dynamic foliage destruction, and lovely high-fidelity graphics that stay true to the tropical paradise aesthetic composed by the original Far Cry.
What we see in Dunia 2 then, is a beautiful-looking, tightly coded, mature engine that performs well with a new layer of polish, bringing Far Cry 4 up to modern day standards with additional headroom for exclusive niceties that give the PC edition of the game a clear advantage over versions found on current-generation consoles.
Here is a summary of how good and well the game can be tweaked, here it is for you to see and drool 🙂
Far Cry 4 Experience on NVIDIA powered Gaming Rigs
Far Cry 4 Experience on NVIDIA powered Gaming Rigs
Far Cry 4 Experience on NVIDIA powered Gaming Rigs
You can find a detailed and a very handy performance guide here.
Final Word
Exploring and goofing around Kyrat is wonderful, and the myriad of distractions and content kept me busy for dozens of hours. Unique Balance of Power missions add re-playability as well, the Shangri-La sections are beautifully done as well. The game does show some niggles in multiplayer and we would have loved if co-op could have been splitscreen as well.
To sum it up it is an amazing & immersive world on offer in Far Cry 4. Everything you could want from a sequel to Far Cry 3. We would recommend this to anyone. Good value for your money.
Note of Thanks
The game was reviewed on the PS4 and PC powered by the latest NVIDIA Maxwell GPU. We thank the folks at E-Xpress games and NVIDIA India for sending across the game copies for the review.
