Review - FAR CRY 5: HOURS OF DARKNESS should be renamed "Hour of darkness"
You can pretend you're Rambo, coming from British Colombia in Rambo I to Vietnam in Rambo II.😁
| Store | Platform | OVERALL RATING: 65% |
| Buy it on Amazon | PC |
+ THE POSITIVE
- Vietnam's jungle atmosphere- Interesting stealth mechanics - Perfect soundscapes! - The badass and epic "Action Movie Mode"
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THE NEGATIVE
- WAY TOO SHORT - Too simple and a bit boring - Doesn't add many interesting things to the core game - We don't want to kill Vietnamese anymore |
| Buy it on Amazon | PS4 | |
| Buy it on Amazon | Xbox One |
WHAT IS HOURS OF DARKNESS?
"Hours of Darkness" is the first DLC for "Far Cry 5", best open-world FPS of 2018 so far.
(GET IT ON AMAZON)
You play as Wendell "Red" Redler, a resident of Hope County, exploring your memories of the Vietnam War.
You'll be facing the Viet Cong in the dangerous Vietnamese jungles, to rescue your squad mates who were taken prisoner, and then do everything you can to return to your extraction point safely!
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| Viets stopped hitting Rambo because their hands started to hurt after a while. And also, Rambo fell asleep. |
This expansion brings new gear on the table, new skills and two new game modes that will be accessible AFTER completing the DLC.
- Survival Mode (in which players will have limited resources to survive)
- Action Movie Mode (You're over-equipped with big guns, helped with friendly A.I., and will experience some rather intense movie-like action scenes😁. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.)
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| I told him that practicing the Russian roulette alone was a bad idea, but... |
GAMEPLAY - WASTED POTENTIAL😢
The story is pretty light, but well, don't tell me you watched Rambo 2 for the script.
(Love that movie, though. Don't get the wrong idea.😁)
You know the drill. Plenty of outposts to capture, P.O.W.s to rescue, and re-spawning dumb enemy soldiers to put down. Except, "Hours of Darkness" focuses way more on improved stealth mechanics than the core game, which looks good on paper.
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| Shake a leg, ragdoll! |
Unfortunately, the new rather unfair enemy A.I has been gifted with superpowers, including super sight,super accuracy, and increased bullet damage. Great.
As you can imagine, exploring and combat are tedious and not very rewarding.
The map is actually huge, with plenty of things to find and places to explore(Ubisoft NEVER disappoint in this field, at least), but there's not much incentive to find them all, as the entire point of the linear DLC is to walk from the beginning of the map to the end so you can get on a helicopter and leave, that's it. You don't have ANY side-missions.
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| "GET TO DA-...Oh nevermind." |
- Disable anti-aircraft guns
- kill officers
- rescue POWs
- find lighters
- destroy propaganda speakers
- liberate camps
- find comrades
Although none of these tasks are necessary, they're still good fun.
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| I tried to grab the fog, but I mist. Yes, I'll see myself out now. |
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| The Survival Instinct Perk System! |
Instead of earning perks permanently, you have FOUR stealth-oriented perks available at all times, but here's the huge drawback: they must be activated by chaining together 4 stealth kills.
If you are spotted by any enemy, you will lose those stealth perks and have to regain them, but this isn't so hard, because the game is strangely way more forgiving if you play stealth than if you play Rambo-like.
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| Are you Vietnamese? Because I'm falling Pho you! |
Yep, you do not want to fire your gun in this DLC, as it would instantly make extra enemies spawn, wherever you are. Also, "Hours of Darkness" doesn't give you access to as many guns as in the core game, and you'll have to scavenge whatever you can, which gives a certain "survival" feeling to this DLC, which has been lacking(for better or for worse?) in most Far Cry games so far. You'll feel a bit overpowered once you find the silenced sniper rifle, though. But man, this is so pleasant to use.
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| Doesn't it remind you a bit of the famous "explosive arrow" scene in Rambo 2? (Unfortunately, no such arrows in the game, by the way!) |
TIP!
You can call in airstrikes with "airstrike tokens", which you earn every time you clear an enemy camp! (As long as the area you are in is ALSO cleared of AA guns!)"AA guns are usually marked on your map by any intel you find through rescued prisoners or dead commanders."
Note!
Unlike in Far Cry 5 base game, in "Hours of Darkness", your friendly buddies are NOT invincible!! Even after you’ve rescued them they can be permanently killed in combat. Always keep an eye on their health and be ready to revive them, and keep in mind that they can also revive you!
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| I'm so well-disguised as a bush that Viets really thought I was one and peed on me. Siiigh... "To survive a war, you gotta get peed on." No wait, I think that's not the correct saying. |
GRAPHICS - SEEING BEAUTIFUL VIETNAM THROUGH GREEN-TINTED GLASSES🌳😵
Because you're merely exploring "memories", and not a real world, the developers decided to give the graphics a constant blurry and dreamy green filter, which makes the game a bit nauseous looking after a while. It was really totally unnecessary and a more realistic look would have worked just as well.
Overall, the fog effect is way too extreme, and the sweaty jungle constantly looks like some green toxic gas was spread all over the area.
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| It looks like the jungle in Predator after Arnold Schwarzenegger and his friends cleared it up with miniguns. |
On the other hand, the beautiful textures and models are as good as the core game.
It's too bad we can't disable the green filter, because this could have been potentially one of the most beautiful and realistic Vietnam game ever made!
Something is missing though: there's not enough wildlife! 😢🐍🐘🐹
MUSIC - VIETNAM AT ITS CREEPIEST😖
We thought we were going to Vietnam, but many tracks make us feel like we're visiting some middle-eastern countries instead, although you can tell from the choice of instruments that it wasn't the intent of the VERY ill-documented composer.
(Sometimes, the strings melodies sound more like an Arabic "oud" than a Vietnamese "dàn bâu"...)
Even weirder, the whole OST sounds more fitting for a horror game...
Most tracks are extremely dark and creepy, featuring industrial long drone sounds and ear-piercing screaming strings. It would be nice in a more slow-paced stealth game, but despite the improved infiltration mechanics of "Hours of Darkness", it's still a basic action-FPS, and a more pumped up OST would have been better.
You can get this soundtrack on Amazon here.=> BUY THE OST
We're very far from the "epicness" of the soundtrack created for Rambo 2, for example.
SFX - PURE PLEASURE😎 🔊
Weapons sound like real ones, and are extremely satisfying to use.Reloading a bow has never sounded so good!
Explosions are loud, powerful, echoing, and resonate in the entire jungle, creating an "organic" battlefield soundscape.
Also, the team has managed to create a very lively and convincing Vietnamese jungle, featuring dozens of insect sounds which you'll NEVER want to get acquainted with(always carry a flamethrower with you, just in case...), and also good voice acting(AND funny!
Listen to the propaganda radios!), which is rare enough to be mentioned, especially the too rare Vietnamese voices.
RATING BOX
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VERSION TESTED: 1.0
Publisher:
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| GRAPHICS: 87% | |
| Textures and models are very nice, but we wish we had a way to disable the annoying green fog! It seems that some weapons are only lazy reskins of the base game. (M16 = AR-C?) | |
| MUSIC: 64% | |
| Actually not that bad in itself, but very inappropriate for the setting, AND the genre of this game. | |
| SOUNDS: 95% | |
| A VERY good job, whether it's the ultra-realistic weapons or the swarming jungle sounds surrounding you all the time. | |
| GAMEPLAY: 61% | |
| The satisfying shooting part is still working wonders, but we're skeptical about the questionable stealth improvements. The real problem comes from the lack of incentive to do anything in the game, besides going from point A to point B. Add to this the lack of replayability in an already very short game and you get something pretty average. | |
| OVERALL RATING: 65% | |
| Not nearly as bad as what some people claim it to be, the perfectly decent "Hours of Darkness" DLC's #1 flaw is the ridiculous gameplay time: 2-4 hours, at best. It would have deserved to be its own game, and with some gameplay refinements, could have even become quite good. What a waste! | |
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