First released 20 years ago, the Far Cry games are some of Ubisoft’s most popular series, and for good reason. The first-person shooter series is largely considered the most important franchise in which the developer and mega-publisher cemented the open-world model of gaming that has become so ubiquitous in recent years, not just from Ubisoft itself, but from other developers as well. The “Ubisoft” model really took off with Far Cry 3 in 2012, before becoming the hallmark of many of the studio’s franchises, such as Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs, and now you have the opportunity to buy the entire series for the price of a single game.
This weekend you can grab every full game in the series – Far Cry, 2, 3, Blood Dragon, 4, Primal, 5, New Dawn and 6 – at an insane discount on Steam and Humble Bundle. If you want a package with all of these components, it will cost $51.45. That’s tens of thousands of camps to blow up, drug fields to burn down, and hallucinogenic trips to experience, all while stumbling problematically through a lot of conflicts that are best left to stay out of!
If you want to have them all piecemeal instead, that’s an option too and you just have to choose what you want. The Far Cry games are many things and not all of them are great, but if there’s one thing these games can do, it’s transport you to alternate realities, different eras of human history, and vast new environments around the world.
Let’s start with the most recent entry. You can pick up Far Cry 6 both on Steam and Modest packagefor just $15, plus a villain-themed expansion pass and sci-fi DLC for an additional $24. Set in a fictional mix of real-world island nations (mainly Cuba) under the thumb of a cruel dictator played by Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad, Do the Right Thing), Far Cry 6 puts you in the role of a guerrilla fighter trying to overthrow a fascist regime. Each of the game’s three villain expansions then pulls off a strange trick, letting you play as the villains from the previous three numbered entries.
A final DLC called Lost Between Worlds continues the series’ tradition of jumping over the hump (more on that in a moment) and throws you into a sci-fi expansion that makes absolutely no sense, but if you want the most polished and latest incarnation of the formula, you can’t go wrong here.
Far Cry 5is now available for $9, and you can also grab the expansions for the same price, including a zombie-themed DLC and another that takes you to Mars. Although the game caused controversy with its handling of the Montana setting and the ideologies of Hope County residents, it was also likely the last title released before Far Cry fatigue fully set in. It also spawned a spinoff title called New Dawn, which took place in a post-nuclear apocalypse that came out of one of 5’s optional endings. Yes, these games are crazy and You can buy New Dawn for the incredibly low price of just $8.
Far Cry 4 and its prehistoric sequel (no, you didn’t read wrong) Far Cry Primal are also available on special offer for $6 and $7.49 respectively. Far Cry 4 is the last of these games that I was excited to play and I thought it was pretty good at the time as it was a successful evolution of the tried and tested formula in a setting and story that I thought was better executed than anything the series had done before. Alternatively, if you want to ride a woolly mammoth, I think you can do that in Primal. I guess that’s a different matter.
The first three games are all even cheaper. Far Cry 3 costs just $5 and is a neon-soaked 80s fever dream of a side game, Blood Dragon,
is $3.74. Far Cry 2which is now celebrated as a classic that really made the series a deep open-world game with conflicting systems and factions, costs only $3. The original and often forgotten Far away can be purchased at the same low price.
Overall, the Far Cry series is probably a great way to explore the evolution of shooters and open-world games from the mid-to-late 2000s to today. And even if you’re not interested in most of the stories told in them, they’re endlessly interesting considering how much Ubisoft designed the games around evolving moments. And in case you needed any more convincing, it’s almost time for Ubisoft to announce a new game, so you might as well start catching up now!
