Yahoo News Far Cry: New Dawn review: Ubisoft's colourful post-apocalyptic adventure is an uneven experiment
Several hours into Far Cry: New Dawn, I found myself manning a turret to protect a sulphur mine as streams of the game’s baddies, the Highwaymen, came streaming down post-apocalyptic Montana hills. Disco tunes punctuated with gunfire and explosions filled the night sky, while my companion Sharky and his babe-in-arms set off pressure traps while making references to Schwarzenegger’s Commando. We're all letting off steam here.
It’s the kind of goofy, b-movie aside that form many of New Dawn’s highlights, an often rickety Far Cry spin-off that doesn’t always hold together or do enough to justify its own existence. Safe to say if you like Far Cry, Ubisoft’s sprawling open-world FPS, then this leaner, more colourful visit to the end of the world will tick all the boxes. If you don’t; move along, nothing to see here.
Newbies, meanwhile, will find a rather curious clash of style. I’ve found Far Cry’s more experimental jaunts --the 80s neon sci-fi of Blood Dragon or the prehistoric Primal-- more intriguing than its decent but increasingly bloated mainline entries. New Dawn certainly puts me in the mind of Primal, just with an arsenal of explosive artillery rather than rocks and spears, its post-nuclear land of Hope County overtaken by nature.
It is the rarest of Far Cry things though; a direct sequel. New Dawn follows on from the explosive end of Far Cry 5, putting an end to the world with a nuclear blast. Following a prolonged nuclear winter, a ‘superbloom’ has seen the US mid-west wreathed in greenery, electric blue waterways and lurid pink flowers.
It’s an undoubtedly pretty setting. Colours leaping out of the screen in an appropriately disarming fever dream. And there is plenty to be said for travelling its roads and scaling mountain ranges to get a peek of its oddly garish beauty. At least when you are not being shot at by bad guys. Which is most of the time.
You are ‘Cap’; head of security and killing folk for a burgeoning settlement called Prosperity. All ski lodge chalets, herb gardens and Mom and Pop idealism. We’re the good guys, it says; look at our vegetables.
Disturbing the peace in Hope are the Highwaymen, a roaming gang of ne’er do wells lead by twin sisters Mickey and Lou. The Highwaymen are a US-wide organisation, splintering into different regions to plunder the land and bring its survivors under their command.
Watchers of The Walking Dead will recognise the parallels between Prosperity and Alexandria; the Highwaymen and the Saviours. But New Dawn lacks even that series’ basic exploration of the grey areas that separate groups in the most compelling post-apocalyptic fiction. Aside from doing a deal with the devil later on in the game, you are left in no doubt that you are the righteous fighting the tyranny of the Highwaymen. Just in case the Highwaymen farming dog meat and making children hold unpinned grenades didn’t spell it out enough.
It’s feels a shame that much of this goes unexplored, as many of New Dawn’s characters have a spark of intrigue; from the twins to Prosperity’s ragtag bunch. The tension between the groups is held firmly between the barrel of a gun.
Still, at least that means you know where you are with New Dawn. Your key task is a straightforward one: battle off the Highwaymen while you make Prosperity more prosperous. Venture into that technicolour milieu, ‘liberating’ ethanol and Titanium from Highwayman trucks that thunder across the land (often with an escort). Clearing out Highwaymen outposts by stealth or force.
You will also need to head off on rescue missions, helping out ‘specialists’, such as the aforementioned Sharky, that are scattered in the wilderness. Recruit doctors and cartographers to the cause; sign up unusually violent boars or wisecracking, sniper rifle toting Nanas to run by your side into battle. Build up Prosperity by upgrading the Infirmary and Armoury with the resources you scavenge in the wild.
It is all perfectly diverting busywork, underpinned by crunchy, if flawed, gunplay. Ubisoft have decided to make New Dawn much more of an RPG than previous Far Cry games with levelled enemies and different rarity of loot and weaponry. This was a trick that the publisher pulled with Assassin’s Creed to great effect, but it is an odd fit here.
One wonders if this is an experiment for the series that it will expand upon in future Far Cry games, but it will need a lot more consideration than this. Higher level enemies tend to be bullet-sponges, hit points floating over their head as you unload an entire assault rifle clip into them before they fall. The gunplay itself, while decent enough, doesn't seem to have been adapted to fit the new system.
This is exacerbated by a clunky weapon upgrade system that doesn’t seem to push your level in step with the enemies well enough, instead the menus are plastered with options to buy ‘Far Cry coins’ in order to speed up your progress via microtransactions.
It isn’t a great look, though feels more clumsy than nefarious, with my progress through the game never overly impeded. Elsewhere there are smarter choices; the upgrade tree for your character is much more cogent than Far Cry 5’s tangle, with you picking up upgrade tokens for completing specific objectives that helps keep things interesting.
‘Expeditions’, meanwhile, transport you to another part of the US in order to scavenge supplies in more linear, authored missions. A tanker off the coast of Florida, the Navajo Bridge, a Bayou fairground. These are diverting detours from the main action, if still niggled at by some of the combat issues, that feel more polished and thought out than some of New Dawn’s other ideas.
It all feels mightily uneven. For every thrilling gunfight or anecdote-worthy encounter in the wilderness are other stories of frustration or key non-player characters wandering away from the objective and getting stuck on a rock. It perhaps betrays the short turnaround since Far Cry 5, with its ideas and changes not given room to flower and make New Dawn the disruptive series experiment it could have been. But if you are willing to look past its niggles and familiarity, New Dawn still provides plenty of post-apocalyptic punch.
