The game of this week is FarCry Primal.
Primal was for me the first experience with the FarCry series of games. I approached this game moved by the curiosity of the stone age setting and I really liked it. However, in order to compare Primal with previous titles of the series, I've recently started to play FarCry 3.
Primal is a FPS game with weaponry that respect the period the whole game is based on. The arsenal goes from ranged attacks weapons like bows, to melee attacks ones like clubs and they all deliver an amazing gameplay and combat experience.
Each weapon can be upgraded to inflict more damage but you will need to collect materials spread around Primal's world. You will often switch between weapons so you will need to upgrade all of them making the research for items even more important and interesting.
Weapons, though, won't be the only things you will need materials for.
In order to progress with the game's missions, you will have to build and upgrade your village's huts too. For all those reasons, you will seek for plenty of collectable items, from plants to animal pelts.
The same beasts you will hunt for their skins, can also be tamed to fight at your side against enemies. Few tamed beasts can be used as mount, to move faster, while other beasts will give you additional powers, such as reducing poison damage.
Use them carefully in combat, though. Sometimes they blow your cover by being spotted by enemies.
Looking for the rarest beasts within the world of Primal will so become one of your main objective, either to tame them or to gain their skins.
This whole part of collecting items, hunting beasts, and upgrading weapons and village's huts, gave to the entire game that survival instinct which enhanced the concept of the stone age setting.
As I mentioned already, the combat experience is great too.
I loved to shoot arrows from distance as I enjoyed to run towards the enemies with the spear and poke holes in their heads.
Moreover, if you finish your ammunitions, you can still craft them even while running for cover. Of course, if you collected enough items.
As you can see, the items collection is really important, even to save you in the worst situation.
Regarding the map, Primal is an open world with tons of places to explore and to conquer.
There are caves, camps, enemy outposts and areas to discovers. Some of them will also be checkpoints that you can unlock and use to move fast within the map.
As shown in the pic below, the checkpoints unlocked show forwarding arrows for the fast travel.
The enemy outposts vary in difficulty and number of enemies. A helpful feature, you could use while trying to conquer an outpost, is the owl.
Along with the tamed beasts, you have an owl which you can actually control.
The owl can give you an overview of the outpost from above to easily locate enemies, and also the chance to drop bombs on them and reduce their number. Use it wisely, though, beacuse a bomb raise always the alarm.
Aside the fact that the protagonist drinks disgusting things, you will know nothing about him. There are no background events but a single fight scene.
The story is short and splitted into two parts. Two different tribes to fight, each with separated missions.
I honestly was a bit disappointed about it.
After completing half of the main missions, I spent most of the time hunting or gathering rare materials to unlock and upgrades all weapons and village's huts. Once I was done with those, I rushed the last missions and finished the story in about 4 hours.
I left some caves unexplored and some outposts undiscovered because, once the story was over, I didn't feel like keeping on exploring the world.
I've started FarCry 3 right after to have an idea of the previous titles of the FarCry series.
Pros:
The material gathering is extremly important giving the sruvival instinct to the game;
The hunting missions are fun to complete and addictive;
The owl feature is of great help;
The weapons are all cool to use making combat a fun experience.
Cons:
The story is short and didn't feel linear;
Some of the missions feel repetitive after a while.
Personal considerations:
Once I started to play FarCry 3 to compare the two games, I realized that Primal was not that different from any of the series.
Setting and weaponry are of course the biggest differences but, after playing FarCry 3 for about 5 hours, I didn't see any improvement from the previous titles.
The story could have been longer and more interesting.
If you like the FarCry series, you will enjoy Primal too but it may disappoint you a bit, in my opinion.
If, like me, you are new to the series, you will like the game a lot and it will actually make you curious to check the previous titles too.
Final Verdict:
I give FarCry Primal a 7 out of 10.