Daily Grind: My Less Elegant Far Cry 4 Moments

For those of you wondering what I’ve been doing in all the silence between posts, here it is. Finally, an actual piece of content!

I’ve been playing a lot of Far Cry 4, and while I’m not done with my full analysis or indeed even the game yet, I have had some pretty memorable moments along the way. One of the things Ubisoft promised this game would have more of is emergent gameplay, and I have to admit that this is one busy game. You can’t walk twenty feet without running into some calamity or other, and the random and unique excitement that can spawn rom these situations are really quite enjoyable.

This also means that on a blind run you’re not going to look super slick all the time. Gameplay can get clumsy, even once you start to master the mechanics, because everything is just so insane and unpredictable. This game, more than most, illustrates that even the best laid plans can fall apart at the last second.

So what follows are some of my less suave moments in the game so far. Let’s start with the time I carelessly got spotted by an enemy truck on my way to an enemy outpost, which sped off and severely annoyed a nearby elephant who only wanted some peace and quiet. I pressed onward, and by the time I got within view of the outpost that very elephant was already wrecking their shit. I didn’t have to fire a single shot because the pachyderm slaughtered every last guard.

Speaking of elephants, here’s another outpost takedown involving them, only this time on purpose. Unfortunately I play like a fucking amateur. I don’t remember what my problem was this day, but I must have been half asleep or blindfolded or something because the whole thing devolved into chaos pretty quickly.

This next one is one of my favorites. I don’t play poorly, really, but the radio music in my vehicle lined up almost perfectly with my actions, giving the entire affair a comical officialness.

In this next clip I’m attempting a hostage rescue mission. I take my time, tag the enemies, scope out their locations and patrols, lure a soldier out away from the others for a silent assassination by arrow, only to somehow get the attention of every other enemy in the area. Out of pure luck I was never discovered, despite some very close calls, and manage to kill the final two guards together using a convenient bee hive. Basically, I got lucky.

Along those same lines, while trying to take down a larger outpost I was moving around the perimeter to try to get some good positioning when I stumbled across a rocket sniper standing around a corner. Playing it safe, I tried to lure him out with a rock so I could get behind him without being spotted. Unfortunately, he decided to have another patrolling guard inspect for him. I was almost spotted several times before clumsily taking them both down just in time.

In a less stellar display of AI, at one point I was cowardly sniping down enemies from a hilltop when the three remaining guys got distracted or panicked or something and all ran out of the base and down the road. I took the opportunity to walk in and deactivate the alarms, though I’m not sure why I bothered since the soldiers never came back and I was able to snipe them from inside their own outpost.

Finally, the last video is where I awkwardly but ultimately effectively took down a fortress on my first try using nothing but a bow. My wingsuit fly-in at the beginning is my smoothest act, after that I’m all cautious and stuff.

And so, on my first run through the game, sometimes I play like a filthy casual. That’s okay, though, because it made for some entertaining moments. Hopefully soon I’ll have made it through the main story a couple times and I can write up my full analysis.

The point is, you are alive when they start to eat you.