In recent years, the Far Cry series has done a fine job of taking gamers on semi-regular holidays to tropical locations. Sure, you often find yourself fighting off vicious honey badgers with your bare hands, or accidentally joining an armed rebellion against a warlord, but that’s just part of living like a local, right?
But Ubisoft’s latest excursion isn’t just in a different continent, it takes place in an entirely different time. Primal is set in the Mesolithic period of around 10,000BC, where it’s sabretooth tigers and woolly mammoths you have to worry about, not some pesky woodland critter (although admittedly one with a very bad temper).
That means your position on the food chain is far more precarious than normal, as you’ll have to hunt to survive, using whatever primitive weaponry you can craft from foraged wood, stones and bits of old bone. It’s a long way from the rocket launchers you used to conquer Kyrat in FC4. You play as Takkar, the only surviving member of a clan, which makes you an easy target for other tribes looking to nick all the stuff you’ve hoarded.
If previous Far Cry games are anything to go by, you’ll probably find yourself dabbling in the supernatural, although with the internal combustion engine and even the bicycle still a few thousand years from being invented, it’ll be interesting to see how Ubisoft deals with traversing the land of Oros’s high peaks and vast forests without vehicular assistance. But then that’s all in a day’s work for a Stone Age homo sapiens.
