The series’ looming Big Bads are part-narrator, part-finishing line and totally, seductively unpleasant. The only reason you remember the definition of insanity is because the guy telling it to you was so damn interesting.
Far Cry’s best trick is never more obvious than when it fails to pull it off. Primal - a new spin-off set in Central Europe, circa 10,000 BCE - attempts to include two villains, totally failing to make either feel threatening or engaging. Suddenly, it all becomes clear - in an open world, where you can go anywhere, being fed choices almost constantly, that evilly grinning focal point is there to keep you on an even keel, keep you working to set things right. And when it’s not there? Well…
Primal’s problem is one of focus. It’s almost mechanically identical to the previous two main games - an enormous open world crossed in first-person, peppered with quests, creatures, crafting and opportunities for psychotropic drug trippery - and as such carries the same simple pleasures. There’s a huge amount to kill, build, upgrade and discover, to the point that you end up essentially tripping over new things to do - but without the nagging sense that there’s something truly bad out there to stop, it quickly becomes a parade of busywork, with very little reward.
You play as Takkar, a man on a journey to the land of Oros, who reunites with the fragments of his lost tribe, the Wenja. The Wenja suck. Oros is also home to Neanderthalic cannibals, the Udam and technologically savvy farmers/firebombers, the Izila. The Udam are stronger, the Izila smarter - by Darwinian terms, the Wenja deserve to be extinct, and if the game is suggesting that we’re descended from them, humanity got a bum deal. It’s Takkar’s job to tip the balance. His course through the game leads him to collect together the scattered remnants of the tribe, forming a strong leadership, and building a functioning village in the bucolic valley he calls home. He does so by murdering almost everything he sees.
View the full review here Gamesradar.