E3 Hands On — Far Cry 5

While at E3 2017 I was able to see Far Cry 5 in a more intimate setting than just a trailer. Here’s my take on Far Cry 5 from E3.

Given all of the hype around Far Cry 5 and the big announcements just before E3, it is not too shocking that it was on the show floor and out there to be played and experienced to our heart’s content. At least as much as Ubisoft had for us, which was a nice solid look at the Heroes for Hire function of the game that will be a big push. We are now up to five in Far Cry 5 and maybe more before it launches on February 27^th for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It seems like enough and seeing as each have their own style to it all, it will make each mission and play through a little different each time. Thankfully, I had a chance to give one of them a go out there.

For my Far Cry 5 experience I opted to use Boomer, the dog, which turned the whole mission more into a stealth experience instead of the usual run and gun style of missions that the franchise is usually known for. He’s not really a hire if you ask me, but it still counts as this is your buddy and he brings in a few options to go through and take on everything. The mission here was nothing more than a usual outpost style mission for Far Cry 5 where we needed to take out all of the enemies and try to save as many of the innocent as possible. This is where Boomer’s first addition came in nicely as he can be used to scout and stay relatively unseen. At least as long as he isn’t attacking anyone in the open.

The controls to do this took a little getting used to as it required me to aim with the right trigger and then use the D-Pad to give the order for him to move or attack as the case may be. This is how all of the other characters in Far Cry 5 will be directed as well and not just Boomer. It gets a little hard to remember and use when the heat of battle begins though. I was more focused on my shooting instead of giving orders so it seems a bit odd to have it set this way, but maybe this is just me. I guess that is why Ubisoft has the buddies set up to do their own thing all the time when orders are not being given. Although that seemed a little less useful that expected here for Far Cry 5.

Outside of the new Hero/Buddy for Hire aspect of Far Cry 5 everything else pretty much flowed as your usual FPS title. The only weird aspect of it all was the fact that there looks to be a bullet drop mechanic mixed on in there that seems to be a little over sensitive. For instance, I was trying to go completely stealth with Boomer and found a sniper rifle in the tower. I had an enemy completely in my sights with the target on the top of their head. Somehow though when I fired the bullet dropped so low that it went between the enemy’s legs and alerted everyone that I was in the area. I wish I was exaggerating here but this actually happened in my play of Far Cry 5 here.

Of course, this is all based on an early version on Far Cry 5 and hopefully will be fixed by the time the final build comes. I know that this isn’t supposed to be a stealth game and a little more on the free-fire side of things, but given the current build it was hard to play the way I wanted to which was one of the selling points of Far Cry 5 since they opted to start talking about it all. I’d like to think that half a year more of development time will tighten it all back up and give us just what we want out of the game. Mainly as it is already pretty solid from what I was able to experience. There are just a few imperfections and plenty of time to fix it all.