Far Cry Primal review: Those that don’t remember the past…

Enlarge / The game looks and runs wonderfully, especially compared to some recent Ubisoft games.

Let's get the bottom line of the way up front: Far Cry Primal certainly isn't the best Ubisoft game — or even the best Far Cry game. It is, however, perhaps the most Ubisoft game I've yet played. That doesn’t say anything about the game’s breadth, depth, or quality of content. But in terms of how that content is presented, it’s pure, distilled Ubisoft all the way.

This is all despite the game's setting being as about as far removed from previous Far Cry entries as historically possible. The game begins by quite literally turning back the clock more than 12,000 years (though it’s still in Europe, of course). In 10,000 BCE, a prehistoric tribe is looking to eke out a living in the harsh, though still apparently desirable Oros valley.

The time period is just about the only thing that sets the plot apart from the previous pair of numbered Far Cry games. The apparently exceptional central character, Takkar, has the same habit of toppling warlords and leading tribal revolutions as the heroes of Far Cry 3 and 4 did. He simply does so with a club and spear, rather than a bevy of automatic weapons.

Another turn of the Earth

If you're wondering where things go from there; don't bother. Even more than most Ubisoft games, Primal isn't so much a sequence of events as a flat, open-ended plate of tasks to complete, and checkboxes to fill on a list. The lack of a linear sequence plays into the gameplay design, as the "story" missions can be completed in any order (with a few exceptions).

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