14 DAY TRIAL // With Far Cry 4, the various teams at Ubisoft working on the first-person shooter series might be determined to see how much insanity they can pack into one single experience without causing the fan base to drop up its hands in frustration and just quit playing.
The E3 2014 demo for the title starts with a choice asking the player to decide how he would like to attack one of the game's outposts: stealthily, using a crossbow to silently take out enemies, from the air or riding an elephant.
It was easy to choose the third option and ride the huge pachyderm around, smashing the entrance with his massive bulk before using his trunk to take out a few enemies that were stupid enough to try to stop us.
Elephant riding is a selectable skill in Far Cry 4, although it's not yet clear how many animals will be available in the game world for the player to use.
In the outpost, I dismounted, leaving the animal to keep some guards occupied, and moved around the world on my own, trying to battle one enemy at a time in order to stay alive.
The difficulty level of the Far Cry 4 E3 2014 demo is pretty high, which means that I was soon overwhelmed by the reinforcements that an alarm brought to the outpost.
I also tried to execute the outpost assault using the stealth options, which also include a grappling hook and throwing knives, but after a few silent takedowns, I was spotted and again overwhelmed by the guards who also got support from jeeps with mounted machine guns, despite my use of a snow leopard to thin their ranks.
It will be interesting to see whether Ubisoft plans to tweak the difficulty level of the title or if it actively wants gamers to struggle and develop their own unique ways of dealing with outpost assault.
Far Cry 4 is already a very solid shooter, with some impressive firefights, smart enemies and great environmental interaction.
The trailers for the title have been great so far and I am happy to report that the game looks equally impressive up close, with a smooth frame rate and incredible detailed world, which only has small issues despite the early stage of the development process.
Far Cry 4 will be delivered on November 18 in both North America and in Europe and can be played on the PC, the PlayStation 4 from Sony, the PS3, the Xbox One from Microsoft and the older 360.