‘Far Cry New Dawn’ Feels Like A B-Grade Action Flick

Far Cry New Dawn is like a kid’s playground – bright colours, sturdy building blocks, and enough to hold your imagination for a whimsical afternoon, but not quite as magical once you start wanting more.

Out February 15, Far Cry New Dawn is the latest entry in the Far Cry video game series. Ubisoft’s first-person shooter is a direct sequel to doomsday cult-focused Far Cry 5, featuring many of the same characters and locations. However, the Hope County players once knew is virtually unrecognisable. Doomsday has come and gone, and its survivors have been left to rebuild in its wake.

The game takes place 17 years after a nuclear catastrophe, and nature has reclaimed much of the world during the six years humans lived underground. Wild deer wander the forests, and a flurry of flowers blanket the hills and highways. But nothing gold can stay, and with the re-emergence of humans comes the re-emergence of horrible murder.

I spent three hours with Far Cry New Dawn’s single-player campaign last week, and enjoyed my time with it despite not having played the previous Far Cry games. The lurid colours dazzle, and one-shotting an enemy by launching a saw blade into their chest cavity feels great.

I also got satisfaction from completing quests to upgrade my home base, inviting specialists to take up residence there and improving its facilities. It’s a fun shooter, and its bright palate is a welcome relief from the many grey-brown offerings in the genre.

Still, I was left feeling unsatisfied. At times the game felt unpolished, and not quite what we’ve come to expect from big studio games in the year of our Lord 2019. Everyone looks as though their faces have been injected with too much Botox. The AI is questionable. Water remains undisturbed as you drive through it. The marking of goals doesn’t feel clear.

Structures with objectives in them may be covered in hot pink graffiti, but it’s harder to recognise that significance when the ground is also covered in hot pink flowers.

The opening cutscene is put together well. In it, Carmina Rye, who you meet as a baby in Far Cry 5, tells the story of how the world as it is came to be. She recounts how she sought help from the player and their leader Thomas Rush after her community was raided by the Highwaymen, led by twins Mickey and Lou.

However, as soon as the scene ends, it dumps you into your home base Prosperity with little connective thread from cutscene to gameplay.

Far Cry New Dawn is an open world, allowing you to deviate from the main story and tackle sidequests at a pace that suits you, so it makes sense that it isn’t too didactic. Even so, the first main story mission to rescue Rush isn’t clearly woven into the opening of the game. It simply pops up as a goal, your only indication that he was even captured being its existence in your quest log.

I’m a sucker for a story, so for me, this was disappointing. I gathered that I had been in some sort of tussle with the Highwaymen, but I didn’t have details on any of it. Were Rush and I friends, or was I rescuing him due to some sense of duty? How did I manage to escape, while the rest of our crew were presumably slaughtered? I know the world’s story, but I don’t know my own.

The characters that populate the world also feel more like props than people.

Riding shotgun as I auto-drove to a set waypoint, my gun-for-hire Carmina fired her pistol as we passed some Highwaymen, then said, “Not dying. Not yet.” as though her drive-by had been a close call. She seemed more like the idea of a person than a person, and it was as though I could see her programming. “I love going fast,” she commented as we drove, apropos of nothing.

This lack of reality extended to character interactions. In one quest I ran straight into a near-naked man I’d been chasing, and it was like running into a brick wall. He didn’t react at all, not even to stumble. If there was an option to tackle him it was not apparent.

The chase only ended when he finally stood still and allowed me to speak with him, but there was no reason why he should have stopped. He wasn’t out of breath or bent over exhausted. He didn’t trip and fall, or find himself at a dead end. He just stopped, because we were finally far enough away from the beginning for this to be the end.

Even though what I played lacked some polish, Far Cry New Dawn has the building blocks for a solid game, and there were nuggets of joy to be found.

I’m happy to report that you can absolutely pet the dogs, who will always look very pleased to see you. You can even have a canine companion named Timber as your gun-for-hire, who will give you good boy kisses when you pet him. The quest to unlock him has you rescue a bunch of dogs too, which makes you feel pretty good about yourself.

I was also delighted to discover that choosing to play as a woman does not bar you from having facial hair. Upon realising this I immediately gave myself a magnificent handlebar moustache and shaved my head bald.

The game is in first person, so these customisation options mainly affect the body you see after you die. Still, it’s nice to know my AI companions have to look at my ridiculous lip rug while talking about matters of life and death.

From my short preview, some elements of Far Cry New Dawn felt a bit out of date, as though the game were released a few years ago. If you prefer to stalk flighty deer rather than running up to a sedentary animal and launching a saw blade in its face, I’d recommend mitigating your expectations.

But Far Cry fans may not mind, and even new players can expect to have some fun here. Far Cry New Dawn looks like a bright romp through the post-apocalypse that’s closer to a B-grade cult action flick than an Oscar winner. It’s rough and may not be for everyone, but sometimes it’s fun to just revel mindless action.

Far Cry New Dawn hits PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on February 14.