Far Cry® Primal

The setting is the Earth before humans began to change it. Mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers are the masters here, while giant trees and beasts shape the look of the world.

The main character Takkar is the last surviving hunter of his group, and his whole story is built around the struggle for a place in this world and the confrontation with the tribes.

Far Cry Primal brings the series' familiar formula to the Stone Age: instead of assault rifles and jeeps, you get spears, bows and your own hands. The series has taken players to the tropics and the Himalayas before, but this is the first time it has gone so far back in time. It is a single-player open-world action game from Ubisoft, released in February 2016. You play as Takkar, the only surviving hunter of his group. Beasts rule the world: mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and elk, and humans stand almost at the bottom of that order. You need to craft weapons, fight off predators, take territory back from hostile tribes and show who the hunter is here. The events take place in the land of Urus: dense forests, snowy mountain slopes and swamps. The action is set around 10,000 years before our era. For atmosphere, all dialogue is recorded in invented languages built on a reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, and Russian subtitles are available for understanding. It feels unfamiliar at first, but this is what separates Primal from the other games in the series more than anything else. In essence this is the familiar Far Cry in different clothes: the open world, resource gathering, crafting and clashes with tribes all stay in place, while the setting changes completely. There are no vehicles, and weapons and gear are made from what nature and hunting provide. Critics received the game with restraint, and its Metacritic score is 74. If you like the games of the series but are tired of firearms and cars, Primal offers a different take on the familiar formula. Those who expect a deep role-playing system should remember that this is first of all an action game about hunting and survival.