When “Far Cry 4” came out last year, the game was met with a lot of excitement – people were already hyped up for it even before the release, but once they saw the actual game the moods shot through the roof as everyone was quite happy with how the title was developed. It was a solid successor to the previous entries in the franchise and it developed the concept even further, and in the end it offered many hours of fun to its fans.
Critics were very positive towards the title back then, and over the last year, its popularity has diminished a little bit but it’s still ranking quite highly in general and people keep playing it all the time. There were some negative comments about the way the storyline progressed, but most people claimed that this game isn’t supposed to focus on telling a good story as it’s mostly all about its action, explosions and solid graphics.
And on those fronts, it definitely managed to deliver quite well, perhaps going above some expectations that fans had for it. But it’s also important to note that some of those features required a little polish before they were brought up to the high-quality state they’re in now.
Firing up “Far Cry 4” feels surprisingly… modern. One would expect that the game has aged a bit after one year, but it actually still looks fresh and new just like when it came out. The setting is particularly well done and holds up perfectly, as the rendering engine does a lot to convince the player that they’re actually on the island.
That’s probably because the initial release of the game was actually pushing the boundaries of the hardware available at the time to some extent, and that was one of the points on which it was criticized too. Now, it runs smoothly on most available platforms, but at the same time its graphics look in touch with modern trends and the game doesn’t feel/look outdated.
Of course we wouldn’t expect this to last for much longer – it will be a different story one more year from now, most likely – but it’s definitely a significant achievement for the developers, and one example of the fast progression of the gaming industry.
One of the things “Far Cry 4” still does better than most other games on the market is to just let the player stand still and take in their surroundings. There’s so much to see and do all around that a player can never really feel bored with the game, and even if they’re not chasing the main quests and storyline, there’s still so much to explore that it can be hard to put down the keyboard and mouse.
Indeed, it’s been nearly one year since the game launched and some players are still discovering new things in its world. New videos keep popping up on YouTube showing amazing feats, like shooting a truck’s driver, forcing the truck to swerve into a river and crash into a boat that the player was originally targeting.
It boils down to one word: fun. This is a game that had to make a few compromises with some of its features, but in the end it all added up to making the game more fun and exciting, and prolonging its lifetime. But the people behind it obviously know that players just want to have fun when they launch a game, they don’t necessarily want to follow a convoluted plot or watch detailed characters having in-depth conversations.