Far Cry Primal looks great on consoles, but it’s just another Ubisoft sequel

 

 

 The folks over at Ubisoft are well known for finding a formula that works, and then iterating on that idea over and over again until the public is sick to death of their once-loved franchise. Unfortunately, the well-liked Far Cry series is on the receiving end of that process now. Today, Ubisoft released Far Cry Primal for both the PS4 and Xbox One to decent reviews, but it’s abundantly clear that it’s little more than Far Cry 4 dressed up in a new suit of clothes.

As the title implies, we’re not dealing with a modern setting here. In the same way that Blood Dragon took the Far Cry 3 formula, and applied it to a campy 1980s sci-fi theme, this game applies these well-worn concepts to pre-historic man. Instead of guns and jeeps, you get clubs and saber-toothed tigers. This new direction switches things up a little, but the gameplay is just more of the same.

You’re hunting, crafting, and killing people just as you’d expect, and paying a full 60 bucks for it.

Over at our sister site IGN, this release received a score of 7.9/10. That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at, but there’s clearly diminishing returns here. Far Cry 4 received an 8.5/10, the low-priced Blood Dragon got an 8/10, and Far Cry 3 was awarded an impressive 9/10. Over at Metacritic, the aggregated reviews of these releases show pretty much the same pattern. While the original Far Cry and Far Cry 2 were flawed games, they were at least meaningfully different from each other. Ever since the massive success of Far Cry 3, Ubisoft seems unwilling to deviate from the core of that 2012 release.

 Watch Far Cry Primal PS4 Performance Preview

While Digital Foundry hasn’t taken an in-depth look at the retail versions on each platform yet, they did get their hands on a pre-release PS4 build a few weeks ago. Just like Far Cry 4, Primal delivers a near-perfect 30fps at all times. It did drop a few frames here and there, but the built-in adaptive v-sync means that you’ll only see some brief tearing at the top of the image when it does happen. Meanwhile, early reports of the Xbox One version shows a similar level of performance.

The PS4 version runs at a native 1920×1080, but it seems that the Xbox One version is probably using the same scaled 1440×1080 resolution that we saw used on Far Cry 4. It’s not a perfect solution, but we saw with Rise of the Tomb Raider that it can still look surprisingly solid when implemented properly.

While the PC version will most certainly be capable of delivering a solid 60fps on a relatively modern gaming rig, we won’t know for sure until it’s out in the wild on March 1st. The PC version of Far Cry 4 had some stuttering and controller issues back when it first launched in 2014, but hopefully they’ll get most of that nailed down before launch this time.

It’s also worth noting that the recommended specs call for a Core i7-2600K and a GTX 780, while the minimum specs only require a Core i3-550 and GTX 460. If you’re willing to tweak the settings a little bit, this game should theoretically run acceptably on even the most modest of gaming PCs. Even so, it’s worth holding off on making your purchase until we see how it holds up under real world conditions.