The Far Cry series has always been an interesting addition to first-person shooters. Self-aware, always wryly funny and never afraid to push the boundaries, Far Cry has always made for interesting gaming. Following on from the fantastic Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon in 2013 and the respectable follow-up, Far Cry 4 in 2014, Far Cry: Primal looks to build on the momentum and continue the franchise by going all the way back to its roots. Sort of.

Set in 10,000 BCE, you're Tekkar - a hunter with the Wenja tribe in Central Europe - who's returned to his homeland of Oros to find that most of your people have been scattered due to repeated attacks by the cannibalistic Udam tribe. Using your bow, club and spear, you'll have to fight your way across Oros and reclaim the land from the Udam as well as building up resources and retaking outpots and campfires for your tribespeople. That's pretty much it in terms of plot and, in a way, that's the biggest problem with Far Cry: Primal.

Look at Far Cry 4. There was an in-depth, well-told story with a brilliant villain in the form of Pagan Min. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, easily one of the best games of 2013, took a hilarious swipe at the action-shooters of the '80s and the films of John McTiernan. The mechanics of the game - exploring, shooting, levelling up your character - are all more or less the same, but what made the game more interesting was how engaging the storyline was. Here, with Primal, it's less about the story and more about the setting. While it's interesting enough to play a game set in a pre-historic era, it's not enough to overlook the fact that there's basically no story here.

It's clear that Primal is leaning more heavily on the RPG side of the Far Cry series than it has before, but it seems odd that they'd do this and have so lean a story to back it up. As for the gameplay itself, it's pretty straightforward. The missions range from escort to storming an outpost to hunting a particular animal across the landscape with varying degrees of challenge to it. It's reasonably entertaining for the most part, but the missions do feel like they're more than a bit repetitive at times and it can become a little boring. As for the mechanics and physics, it's about the same as Far Cry 4. Hunter Vision allows you to track enemies and animals across the landscape whilst Beast Taming allows you to control certain animals with various power-ups for each. You can call an Owl to provide with an overview of the area and mark out enemies whilst a Wolf companion can be called upon to attack enemies whilst you go in from a different angle.

Overall, Far Cry: Primal is an interesting addition to a franchise that's already several games deep. The prehistoric setting makes for some hairy moments, but the very apparent lack of a story and the simplistic missions means that it's not realising its full potential. Here's hoping some DLC will pad it out and address a few of these issues.

 

Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Windows (March 1st)

Developer / Publisher: Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft