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Preview: Far Cry 4

My friends, you haven’t lived until you find yourself on the back of an elephant, laying waste to an outpost and its inhabitants. Trust me on this.

Stevivor was lucky enough to take part in a hands-on demo of Far Cry 4, and while there were five demos to take part in -– single-player and co-op combined –- I always found myself going back to the elephant. I named her Carnage. Too on the nose?

Far Cry 4 is a much-prettier version of Far Cry 3, set in the Himalayas. In place of an island setting in 3, Far Cry 4 takes place in a valley, giving it that same cut-off feel. Jumping in the first single-player game, I elected to use the new gyrocopter vehicle to get a sense of the world around me. I could see snow-topped mountains, and in the centre of a valley, a lush, less frigid outpost, bustling with guards.

farcry4gyrocopter

It’s Far Cry, so I stopped gawking at the scenery and decided to start shooting at the baddies.

The gyrocopter is very hard to control, but that’s on purpose. We’re not talking Grand Theft Auto flight controls, but we’re not talking easy, either; that balance is that Ubisoft was after. In the gyrocopter, I could use a rifle or grenade launcher to pick normal guards apart, untouchable from on high… or so I thought. The game’s balancing act kicked in, and I nearly died courtesy a one-shot from a very accurate sniper. Attempting to dodge subsequent shots, my lack of experience on the gyrocopter meant I basically crashed into the middle of the outpost, gyrocopter a useless heap of metal.

At that point, the on-foot combat was like Far Cry 3. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Liberating the outpost, I tried Carna—the elephant sequence next. Jumping on the back of a nearby elephant, we strode up to the very-locked front door of the outpost and smashed through it with one quick flick of my right-stick/slash of my elephant’s trunk.

farcry4elephant

I felt like a god, running around the outpost, not bothering to fire my gun, right-sticking anything that moved so they could meet the end of Carnage’s trunk. When reinforcements were called, I strode up to the first oncoming Jeep and had it meet the trunk too. The Jeep did a barrel roll and landed on its head, most of its occupants killed. Those that weren’t… well, they met the end of my shotgun. By jumping off my elephant, we became a co-operative team of our own; I dispatched enemies with on-foot combat, melee and gun kills, and my elephant continued, enraged through the camp. Remember how you could release a tiger from its cage in Far Cry 3 and have it help you? Yeah, that, but in this game with a towering behemoth.

Cocky as never before, I jumped into two-player co-op with an Ubisoft dev – and don’t forget, we’ve covered how that all works for free on PlayStation – and rushed in on my elephant. That didn’t work so well. In co-op, the game’s difficulty ramps up, and my poor elephant bore the brunt of the outpost’s inhabitants’ attacks. It fell quickly, leaving me and my partner on our own. We did fairly well, until reinforcements came in the form of an overhead helicopter, complete with a skilled sniper. While we eventually walked away victorious, both of us were downed a number of times.

farcry4outpostattack

Far Cry 4 takes the well-established – and very excellent – formula of Far Cry 3 and adds some super-fun gameplay in a colder climate. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it certainly is damn fun.

Far Cry 4 will be available on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and Windows PC.


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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.