After about 35 hours I finally rolled the credits on Far Cry 4 last night, and I have been at a loss on how to approach my analysis of it. The game has been at times rote, inspired, empowering, frustrating and everything in between. This post is going to be a bit more disjointed than usual as I think the structure reflects how I currently feel about the game. So, without further ado, my parting thoughts on the fourth Far Cry game.

The grind, oh god the grind

I possess a completionist streak in me, but it is more of a compulsion and I tend not to find joy in it. Ubisoft open world games are particularly compulsive for me as they all dole out treasure maps that mark each and every collectible in the game world. Far Cry 4 is no different and I proceeded to spend countless hours collecting every lost letter, journal entry, and treasure chest the first half of the game could offer. I liken it to popping bubble wrap, with the bubble wrap in this case being the world map. However once I broke into the northern portion of the game world and saw hundreds more insubstantial collectibles to gather, my will broke. At that point I made a compromise; I would only collect story related collectibles and not bother with the inconsequential treasure chests. It proved to be a far better experience and did not impact my ability to gain all available power-ups and unlocks.

Clearly I can't say I enjoyed this aspect of the game, but I still can't figure out if the shortcoming is on me or on Ubisoft. On one hand, the collectibles are truly optional and I did not need them to finish the game in any way. On the other hand, the map design is explicitly designed to draw your eyes to the hundreds of icons spread across the world. An argument can be made for both sides, one where Ubisoft is promoting a stagnating game design path to lengthen their games and one where market demands force developers to hit arbitrary “time to completion” counts to justify the high price of their games. I can't say for sure which side of the debate I fall on, but for now it seems that my patience with open world games is growing thin. I feel that I may need to take a break from the genre for a while because of it.

The good and bad of repeating yourself

Far Cry 4 offers some of the best shooter gameplay in modern video games. Although much hasn't changed since Far Cry 3, I would take the shooting of this series over anything else, save for maybe Call of Duty. To that end, the shooter related gameplay in Far Cry 4 is crazy fun. Taking over outposts, running assassinations, and going through campaign missions never got old throughout the duration of the game. This gameplay is married to an excellent stealth system that gives depth to how you approach combat as well as a wildlife system that provides a fun bit of randomness to the proceedings. Ubisoft smartly chose to emphasize these strengths of the previous games and even found ways to bring them further up front. The auto-drive system in particular is an inspired choice so that you can always be focused on shooting.

That being said, Ubisoft also chose to emphasize an aspect of Far Cry 3 that didn't work all that great, the platforming. Here, like in the last game, you must climb towers to reveal portions of the map and proceed to your next objective. These towers, while occasionally frustrating, are for the most part inoffensive. However, as Kyrat is in the Himalayas, platforming and climbing are now integrated into the game world to a major extent. You are given a grappling hook early on to scale these heights and it quickly becomes a necessary tool to access the more interesting parts of the world. At first this all seems very cool, but quickly becomes a slog of cheap deaths. First person platforming has been terrible since the days of Half-Life and much hasn't changed here. I could not count how many times I fell off a cliff because the game did not register me pressing jump at the correct time. The deaths from falling are also very finicky in what constitutes a safe drop versus what will kill you. Oftentimes a simple 10 foot drop would lead to my untimely death whereas other times I would not have a scratch on me. This is especially frustrating as the PS4 version of the game has extremely long load times, which gave me plenty of time to seethe at the latest cheap death. Obviously this is all probably realistic as to what a 10-15 foot drop on to rock would do to a human, but Ajay Ghale can easily shrug off rockets and machine gun fire, so clearly realism isn't the standard here. You can do better, Ubisoft.

I didn't hate the story

After the bro-tastic story of the last game, I was not expecting much from Far Cry 4's narrative. However, upon completion I felt pretty satisfied how Ajay and Pagan's journey ended. The characters in particular helped sell the story. Amita and Sabal were excellent foils to one another and allowed the middle of the campaign to have conflict while Pagan Min was sidelined for a bit. The governors, Paul De Pleur, Noore and Yuma were all well drawn out and kept the story interesting during what otherwise would feel like rote mini-boss missions. And of course, there's Pagan Min. Troy Baker does an excellent job establishing a personality to this larger than life despot that could have easily been a cartoon character. Despite the atrocities he commits, the character remains charismatic enough that I wasn't too perturbed whenever Ajay didn't just shoot him in the head every time they met (although seriously, this trope needs to just die already). The one improvement that could have been made is having wardrobe changes for Pagan Min. He is established to be this vain character who very much cares about his appearance. Why then, over the weeks or months that the story takes to play out, is he always wearing the same purple suit?

The side mission characters are a bit more of a mixed bag. Longinus, the warlord-turned-gunrunner/preacher is by far the most interesting of the bunch. He started out as a man clearly lying to himself and others with his baptism by the gun rhetoric (although I'm sure someone smarter than me can write up something profound about how Longinus reflects that Africa's relationship with Christianity is colored by the bayonet of colonialism). That said, as you follow his quest line you can see that he is genuinely trying to make amends and truly be a good man, even if his methods themselves can be classified as evil. Emerson Brooks deserves a lot of credit bringing this complex character to life. Yogi and Reggie, however, are simply the worst. The drug addled duo will cause Ajay to ingest and inject various experimental hallucinogens for a purpose that isn't fully explained. Don't get me wrong, it's not the drug use that bothers me, it's just the pointlessness of it. These missions are just excuses for the developers to make the world trip out with various colors, and you can almost hear them checking the box saying “make more missions like the weed field/flamethrower one from the last game”.

Final Thoughts

Overall I would say that I enjoyed my time with Far Cry 4, but unless they do something radically different with the next game, I'm afraid it will join the growing pile of series I'm done playing. I'll probably have some more thoughts on the state of open-world gaming in an upcoming post, but that will have to wait until I've had more time to digest this game. Next up, I intend to play a shorter game as a palette cleanser. Right now it is between Grim Fandango Remastered, a game that has been on my wall of shame for quite a while, or Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, which caught my eye after playing (and loving) Lara Croft GO. Let me know in the comments which would be the better bet for to play. See you next time duders!

A very happy Labour/Labor Day long weekend fellow Canadians and Americans! I've got three days with not a whole lot to do, so I intend to game my heart out. I'm still working through Far Cry 4, but haven't made much progress in the story line since my last post. The allure of gathering treasure chests and attacking outposts is too great and it looks like Kyrat's freedom will have to wait just a bit longer. Unfortunately that means I don't have much interesting to say about the game as of yet. Luckily, my phone delivered big time this week and I've been transfixed by Lara Croft GO.

Why did it have to be snakes?!

First of all, a little background. Growing up I was firmly a Nintendo kid. This was not a problem in the NES and SNES eras as those consoles were basically where the gaming zeitgeist was centered. Enter the Nintendo 64, a console that is looked at fondly in retrospect but at the time was considered a bit of a disappointment. As much as I loved the Big N, even I could see that my PlayStation owning friends were getting more games by a large margin. What was worse is that while Nintendo largely played it safe with their output, PlayStation developers were actively pushing what gaming could do with titles like Parappa the Rapper, Metal Gear Solid, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Being an insecure 10 year old I did the immature thing and vehemently defended my precious N64, citing the high quality and "fun factor" of games like Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye. Above all those games, the crown jewel of Nintendo's lineup at the time was Super Mario 64.

I (and many others) will confidently state that Super Mario 64 is one of the greatest games ever as it successfully laid out the blueprint of 3D game design that is still followed to this day. The revolutionary camera control, the simplicity of movement and the wonderfully intricate levels continue to be breathtaking nearly 20 years later. I used this greatness to bludgeon my friends with the fact that Nintendo does platformers "the right way", focusing on playability and joy to craft incredible experiences. Tomb Raider was the antithesis of this philosophy in my mind and I despised the series because of it. Terrible (dpad!) controls, muddy presentation and the gross marketing of Lara Croft as a sex object made it a clear pretender to Mario's throne. While I like to think I've matured a bit since then, and I've enjoyed the later Tomb Raider games (such as the good-for-its-time Legend and the excellent 2013 reboot), the original PlayStation games were still seen as relic of a lamer time.

So what does this admittedly narcissistic digression have to do with Lara Croft GO? Well, unlike the most recent console/PC foray with the English adventurer, this game has Lara back in her iconic turquoise tank-top and actually raiding tombs. It is clearly intended as a throwback to those PlayStation games of yore and I'll be damned if after playing it that I've gained a new appreciation for those old pixelized titles. Lara Croft GO diverges from its pedigree and instead hews closer to the puzzle format introduced by Hitman GO. However, unlike that previous Eidos portable title, which took on a board game aesthetic and played with the stealth, guns and disguises in Agent 47's toolbox, Lara Croft GO is very much informed by its platforming roots.

Lara's latest adventure is a turn-based affair with traps and enemies only ever reacting to her movements. You can take a long as you like considering your options, but the second you swipe to the next node you are putting yourself in danger. Snakes will pounce on you, basilisks will stalk you, and buzz saws will carve you up if you don't carefully ponder every move. Luckily you are equipped with a pair of handguns that will dispatch enemies in a stylish manner, provided you plan your approach properly. You can also use spears and torches strewn about the environment to even the odds further, but oftentimes restraint is rewarded, as you can manipulate the various creatures to trip switches for you or step on a trap with clever maneuvering. This may all seem overwhelming the way I've laid it out, but the game smartly layers these mechanics in such a way that when you've mastered one aspect a new one is introduced. The cycle is game design 101, but the formula works well here. It helps that the puzzles are expertly designed, at first stumping you but encouraging experimentation as a means of progression. The game has a quick restart function and a solid checkpoint system so that you're never set too far back from when you die or get stuck in a puzzle.

The excellent gameplay is also complimented by a slick presentation. The game uses a gorgeous cel-shaded visual style that evokes the old Tomb Raider games while still impressing modern eyes. Lara Croft GO looks sharp and runs well on my quickly aging iPhone 5C, and I'd imagine that those with bigger devices will be in for a treat visually. Creatures look colorful and beautifully textured, the environments are intricate yet easily understood, and Lara herself moves fantastically. Our protagonist's body is a highlight here, but not in the ogling adolescent context of old. Lara moves smoothly in her actions, looking like a tough and capable adventurer, and the transitions between her animations are seamless. When she occasionally adds a flourish to her moves, like an aerial flip while gunning down a spider or cartwheeling up a ledge, you can tell the developers are just showing off what they can do on your phone or tablet. I spent a not insignificant amount of time just moving Lara back and forth to see all the cool animations she possessed.

Through all this, Lara Croft GO manages to capture the joy of exploring dangerous old tombs and coming out with mythical treasures. Minus the direct control, the elements that made the old PlayStation games special are captured here. I don't think I'll be going back to play the original Tomb Raider anytime soon, but I have new-found respect for Ms. Croft's unique contribution to the video game cannon.

New month, new post. Post number 3 in fact! I'm not sure when I'll stop counting my posts, but right now each one feels like an accomplishment. The one piece of advice that I've always heard about getting better at writing is that you need to keep a regular schedule, but boy am I terrible doing that. Anyway, I'll take the small victory and move on.

Looking over my last post, I realized how "review-y" it came across. Not that that's a bad thing, but I think for the next little while I'll try and keep my posts a little less structured. Years of being in the engineering field has pushed my writing to be formal and highly constructed, so I want to use this blog to practice a more loose writing style. But enough inside baseball, let's get to the talking about games!

Some final thoughts on Shadowrun: Hong Kong <Spoilers Below>

I ended up finishing the campaign for Shadowrun: Hong Kong over the weekend. There was actually more left to do than I first suspected, and my final play time came up to about 15 hours. The endgame involved a very interesting mission inside a corporate high-rise that offered a variety of options to complete it, but unfortunately the very last mission had a not that compelling final boss and was a little combat heavy for my liking. Also, the story went a little off the rails with a late reveal of a machine that influences luck. Granted, I get that the Shadowrun universe is a hodgepodge of various mystical tales and so a luck machine isn't completely from left field, but it just seemed a little out there all the same. In any case, the character interactions still managed to keep me interested throughout, so props to Harebrained for their fantastic dialog throughout the experience.

And into the backlog we go

My original plan after finishing Shadowrun: Hong Kong was to start on Metal Gear Solid V. Unfortunately, these bangers started playing out of their minds and now all of my disposable income is being saved up for tickets for what is promising to be an exciting October (22 years in the making). So in an effort to have some compelling content to write about, I am delving into my backlog. First up, Ubisoft's Himalayan opus, Far Cry 4.

Do you know what the definition of insanity is?

I swear every time I tell myself that I am done with Ubisoft's open world formula, there's another game that does it so damn well. Far Cry 4 isn't all that much different from Far Cry 3, but the cycle of climbing up towers, taking over enemy outposts, and doing side missions is as addictive as it was back when they perfected it in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. I'm only 4 hours into the game but I can already see myself scouring the map for every piece of loot while I have a podcast, ballgame, or Giant Bomb video in the background. While the gameplay itself is getting long in the tooth the developers smartly freshened up the setting to deliver a new experience. The Himalayas are not exactly a common environment in video games, and it is good to see it represented here. Also, the examination of a fictionalized Nepal (known here as Kyrat) allows for a fascinating representation of the unique fusion of Chinese and Indian culture known to that part of the world.

I can't really speak to the authenticity of the setting, seeing as I've never been to the Himalayas, but I do feel a sort of kinship with the protagonist, Ajay Ghale. I am a child of first generation immigrants from Sri Lanka, itself a war torn nation in the Indian subcontinent, and I've definitely felt the pull of Eastern versus Western culture that Ajay seems to be experiencing in the game. The game doesn't push this aspect of Ajay's character to the forefront (at least not this early in the story), but there are some subtle hinting to this inner conflict. For instance, the pronunciation of Ajay's name varies depending on the speaker. Ajay and other more westernized characters call him "Ay-jay Gail" whereas the easternized characters refer to him as "Ah-jay Ghal-ay". It's something I've heard growing up as I have a cousin named Ajay and he went through the exact same thing. It's striking to me that Ajay prefers the westernized pronunciation of his name, and through it I infer that he has subconsciously chosen to embrace his identity as an American to the expense of his Kyrati heritage. It's the quintessential immigrant conundrum in the Western world of how much of the old world do you bring with you to the new one, and there is usually no right answer. I'm curious how much this thread will be developed over the course of the game and if Ajay finds a new balance between his chosen identity and the past his parents came from. At least in the meantime I get to attack outposts with a rocket launcher on the back of an elephant, so there's always that.

Next up on the blog

I've been summoned for jury duty this week, which so far has been a whole lot of waiting at the courthouse for my number to be called. It's given me an excuse to fire up my Vita as well as get back into iOS gaming. I've got Lara Croft GO and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath queued up, so I may discuss them depending on how much those games pull me in. Of course, I'll probably have gotten further into Far Cry 4, so expect to see more on that. Later duders.

Time for all the mirrorshades, awkward slang and anachronistic future technology that your chrome-augmented body can handle; its cyberpunk hour with Shadowrun: Hong Kong! I’ve been playing this Harebrained Schemes joint for the better part of the week and, despite a wealth of scripting bugs, I am enjoying the hell out of it. Let’s journey through the shadows, shall we?

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is based on the tabletop game that essentially is one big stew of all things science fiction, folk tales and traditional fantasy served up in a delicious bread bowl of terribly outdated 80s cyberpunk. The setting is that of a not-too-distant future where corporations run rampant and magic has returned to the world. You typically play as the eponymous shadowrunners, marginalized people who live off the grid and eke out a living by carrying out shady jobs for corporations and individuals. Campaigns have your team of humans, elves, dwarves, orcs and other species use whatever skills they have to finish the job. These skills can be anything from smooth talking and hacking to firearms and magic spells. It’s a crazy universe and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the lore. I recommend checking out the Shadowrun wiki if you’re interested in losing track of the next couple of hours.

Despite the re-brand this is essentially the third campaign in the Shadowrun Returns system and so folks who have played Dead Man’s Switch or Dragonfall should be able pick up Hong Kong’s mechanics in no time. You start with a new character for the campaign that you will need to spec out as you would in most other WRPGs. From there it is on to an intriguing opening where you return to Hong Kong after many years away, only to discover the father figure who beckoned you back is either dead or missing. At this point an ambush kills several friendly shadowrunners who met you at the dock. You quickly become ensconced in the seedy underbelly of the harbor city's criminal elements trying to sort out what went wrong. In that time you will take on jobs from various factions and do the usual money/XP grind. You will hack, manipulate, lie steal and engage in some X-COM-style turn-based combat as you gain infamy in the shadows. This is all buoyed by some fantastic writing that expertly straddles the line between compelling and cheesy, with only occasional forays into verbosity.

There have been some noticeable improvements that help differentiate Shadowrun: Hong Kong from previous campaigns. For starters the game as a whole looks sharper and more detailed, likely owing to the fact that Harebrained Schemes opted out of making a tablet version. The other major improvement is the overhauled hacking system (known as “decking” in Shadowrun parlance). Previous instances of decking involved you entering a computer world, which essentially played like the normal world except with tedious and slow combat. The developers wisely expanded the system to include a stealth system and a hacking minigame that provides more options on how you navigate the matrix. The combat is still there, but only if you want to engage with it.

I’ve so far put about 10 hours into the campaign and it feels like I’m getting close to the endgame. My team has finished all of its side jobs and the only mission left to me comes with an ominous “there’s no going back” warning that screams final dungeon. I’ve been cruising on easy difficulty so you may be able to wring more hours out of the game if you aren’t a wuss like me. Unfortunately I’ve run into about a half dozen mission critical scripting bugs in that time. Some simply required a reload but other bugs had me restarting a mission that took me upwards of 30 minutes to complete. Hopefully we will see a patch fix these issues, but in the meantime, I recommend that you save early and often (and don’t try and touch mission objectives while in combat!). Despite these bugs I can give this a hearty recommendation for fans of the series and newcomers alike. See you in the shadows, chummer.

There’s no good way to start a blog. At best this post will be a starting point for something more interesting as it develops over the weeks/months/years; at worst it will be an epitaph for yet another abandoned venture. Either way, first blog posts are never terribly compelling. They are used to provide background on the author and introduce a theme that later posts will likely diverge from, which make them more important for me, the writer, than you. In any case, I thank you, dear reader, for starting on this meandering journey with me.

My name is Naveen, and I live in Toronto with my lovely wife. I am a chemical engineer as an occupation, but it’s mostly to pay the bills. I’ve been playing video games for over 25 years and my first system was the NES that came with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. I’ve accumulated quite a few systems over the years, but I guess the ones that I’ll be playing for the blog’s purposes are my PC, PS4, PS Vita, PS3, and Xbox 360. In terms of game genres, I do like to dabble in a little of everything, but I tend to gravitate toward games with strong narratives. Above all I love talking about my experiences with games and comparing them with other people, which brings me to the purpose of this blog.

I’m starting this blog for a few reasons. For starters it is something I said I’d do for years and never got started. While I’ve always enjoyed writing and have taken stabs at games writing on the internet before, it’s always been something I placed on the back burner as I developed my “real career”. I hope that this blog will get me in the habit of writing more and taking a more rigorous approach to the way I experience video games. I also hope that it will get me more engaged with all of you wonderful duders and force me to get out of my gaming comfort zones. Any and all (polite!) feedback is much appreciated.

So enough about me, what can you expect to get out of this blog? For now expect my posts to be on the shorter side and mostly be thoughts on what I’ve been playing. I hope to eventually get comfortable enough to review games, discuss the industry at large, and maybe post a few things not entirely related to video games. I’m thinking that I’ll update 2-3 times a week depending on how much gaming I’ve been doing at the time.

Anyway, thank you again for taking this ride with me. I’m excited to begin this voyage and can’t wait to see where it takes me. I’ll likely have another post by this weekend and it will probably be focused on my time with Shadowrun: Hong Kong.