From the Gaming Desk

Last time we gave the Gaming Desk the podium, we had just completed the game Far Cry 4 and had embarked on Far Cry 5. 

Since then, in keeping with my plan to play all of the Far Cry games from 3 onwards in numerical order, after completing Far Cry 5, I embarked on its sequel Far Cry: New Dawn, and then Far Cry 6.  For the record, I've played all of these games before, but not back-to-back.

Right now, I'm playing through the Inside The Mind Far Cry 6 DLCs.  There are three volumes, and instead of being set in Far Cry 6's Yara (a fictional cross between Cuba and the Dominican Republic), each takes place in variations of the settings of Far Cry 3, 4, and 5.  But those "variations" are from inside the psyche of the games' respective villains, so it's a kind of surreal, phantasmagorical version of the original settings.  As of today, I'm still playing through the first of the DLCs as Vass, the bad guy from Far Cry 3 (played by the actor Michael Mando, best known as "Nacho" in the television series Better Call Saul). So far, it's been a diverting experience, quite different from the original game.

There's a lot of discussion on Reddit and other forums about which Far Cry game is the best and which is the worst, with little to no consensus.  Each game has its admirers, and each has its detractors.  All the games are different in terms of characters, plot, and gameplay mechanics, and my personal opinion is that each game has its own pluses and minuses. There are some things about each game I liked and some things about each I disliked. 

In my own personal and subjective opinion, I thought 3 had the most interesting characters, and the main protagonist had an actual character arc during the course of the story, from naive trust-fund brat to psychotic killer. I thought 4 had the most challenging gameplay and combat (I died a lot), and remember, I rage-quit the game in frustration back in 2017. I thought 5 had the best setting, a lovely Montana countryside, and sometimes it was fun to just roam around the mountains (the game even has a pretty good hunting and fishing simulator mini-game).   

On the other hand, although the game did have a lovely, tropical island setting, I found the combat in 6 a little too easy - I kept checking to make sure the gameplay setting hadn't somehow slipped to the "Easy" mode. I also found several of the NPCs to be just plain obnoxious (some of the more likeable characters are in the picture above). Outside of an intriguing conceptual setting, New Dawn, set in Far Cry 5's Montana after a nuclear Armageddon, has little to brag about.

So instead of ranking the games, I would follow a different internet convention and rank 3, 4, and 5 in the "Good" tier and put 6 and New Dawn in the "Meh" tier.

But anyway, it's all subjective and I had fun playing all of them, but with all the strong opinions out there, I wouldn't dare post my opinions online anywhere but here.