Like the best open-world games, getting somewhere in Far Cry 4 isnвЂ™t a trip. ThereвЂ™s something satisfying about being able to see your objective marker plastered on the side of a mountain miles away and closing that distance over hills, across canyons, up cliffs, past enemies and animals. Massive draw distances make it a treat to look at and explore, especially once you break through into the more varied northern half of the country. For starters, Kyrat proves positively inspiring as a backdrop, drawing on the vistas and traditions of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet to deliver a sense of place, of geography and history and culture, thatвЂ™s wholly absent from most invented locales. Not that IвЂ™m diminishing the quality of the paint job.

Where it matters most, Far Cry 4 feels an awful lot like Far Cry 3 with a fresh coat of paint. Throughout it all, you earn experience points to fill out a skill tree populated by many of the exact same abilities and upgrades. The sandbox of animals, enemies, and your various ways to navigate the world collide to form your own little emergent adventures. You hunt the local wildlife to fashion better equipment and gather color-coded plants to craft syringes. You climb radio towers and liberate outposts to take control of the map, making use of the same stealth and combat tools to do so. The twentysomething outsider who becomes a hero to the locals is Ajay Ghale: Kyrati-born, American-raised, and back in the country of his heritage to scatter his motherвЂ™s ashes and fulfill her dying wish.ДЄnd the core gameplay structure underlying that new setup is virtually identical to Far Cry 3, as well. The questionably sane antagonist this time around is the dapper and charming Pagan Min, who installed himself as king of the fictional Himalayan nation of Kyrat back in the 1980s and has been ruling with an iron fist ever since. The gulf is much less clear-cut with Far Cry 4, starting with the obvious substitutions of the last installmentвЂ™s two leading men. TheyвЂ™re not different takes on the same game with a new story attached theyвЂ™re different games, period. This absence of continuity, allowing each title to tailor its mechanics to better suit its narrative ambitions, has been one of the seriesвЂ™ greatest strengths, and itвЂ™s why thereвЂ™s room for both Far Cry 2 and 3 on my short list of all-time favorites. Beyond the generic descriptor вЂњopen-world shooter,вЂќ the first three games have shockingly little in common with regard to tone, storytelling, or even gameplay. That might seem like unfair criticism of a game with the number four in its title, but Far Cry has always been a bit of an odd duck among videogame franchises. Far Cry 4вЂs biggest shortcoming is that it feels like a sequel.

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