Ubisoft’s caveman adventure Far Cry Primal has been one of the stranger, more beguiling games of 2016. Last week, they added a free survivor mode for console and PC players. If you’re willing to start a new game to try it, it makes things much more interesting.
I initially played Primal for about six hours, until the thrill of playing as a prehistoric survivor wore off and I found myself playing just another Far Cry. As I wrote at the time, I was playing in a difficult, distinct way: No minimap, no fast travel and no subtitles. I never knew what anyone was saying, though I was able to decipher the simplistic story through gestures and gist.
I tried to play unencumbered, carrying only as much as I thought a caveman might carry. But, before long, I found myself loaded up with a huge arsenal of weaponry, able to destroy whole platoons of enemy cavemen. When Ubisoft announced at the end of March that the game would get a survival mode — called Survivor Mode — I decided to wait and play that. I’m glad I did.
In order to play survivor mode, you have to start a new game. That’s a major obstacle, given that most people who bought the game when it came out in February have probably already completed it and moved on. If for some reason you didn’t — and if you like engaging, difficult survival games — you’re in for a version of the game that feels more complete.
Survivor mode mostly functions through a new stamina bar, which sits right below your health bars. Your movement drains it slowly. Running or fighting drains it faster. If it bottoms out, you’ll slow down and lose the ability to quick-heal, putting yourself at a big disadvantage. You replenish a bit by eating food from the animals you’ve hunted, and a lot by sleeping.
There’s a laundry list of other tweaks. Your pet animals now cannot be revived if they go down in combat. You must carry less of everything. Crafting is slower, and hunting vision is less effective. Night is more dangerous. You can also choose to play with permadeath turned on, meaning that if Takkar dies, you have to start a new game. (I don’t play with permadeath. I ain’t got time for that crap.)
At its best, vanilla Primal made me feel like a small part of a large, dangerous ecosystem: I never knew when a deadly predator might attack. But before survivor mode, Takkar was just too much of a terminator. Soon enough, I was able to power through night after day after night after day, healing endlessly, fighting tirelessly, dominating everything in my path through sheer persistence.
Now, I have to rest. I’m terrified to go out at night. I have to keep hunting and hunting, and will continue to do so even when I’ve crafted every item in the game. I really like that, not because it makes the game more “realistic” or makes me feel more like a caveman. I like it because it forces me to engage with the game’s systems from start to finish.
I like playing open-world games with the assists turned off. While part of that is about making the game more immersive, a lot of it is that I hate to see good game systems go to waste. I loved using the talking in-car GPS in Grand Theft Auto IV because it was a great system that was rendered redundant by the ever-present minimap. I love navigating through Fallout 4 visually, using distant points of interest, because the world is designed so you always have something you can use to orient yourself. Like the prehistoric men and women in Primal, I like to use every part of the video game buffalo. Or in this case, the video game yak.
I have a feeling that Primal will be a “Steam Sale Surprise” for a lot of people; something they pick up later this year for twenty or thirty bucks and really enjoy. If and when you do play it, I recommend playing with survivor mode on. Don’t think of it as a special mode. Think of it as the way the game is meant to be played. Put down your preconceptions of how these games are supposed to work and you’ll find the most interesting, engrossing Far Cry game since Far Cry 2.
Comments
11 responses to “Far Cry Primal’s Survivor Mode Makes The Game Feel Complete”
Got the game with my PS4 but was not interested in playing it. Now I might be.
I don’t get why no subtitles. Your character understands what is being said right?
Its not exactly a dialogue heavy game. I enjoy playing the Dynasty Warriors games with full Japanese voices, no subtitles, and I don’t speak a word of it. You don’t need to know the language to know if someone is impressed or upset or in need of help or just died.. you can tell in their voices. I’m guessing thats what they were going for with Primal.
I will never understand the way you can supposedly start a game like this in February and be able to move on from it by March or even mid-April.
By completing the main storyline. I bought this in Feb and completed it a month or more ago. I did a heck of a lot of the side quests, but once the main story was finished there is really nothing left.
some people have more time to play games than others.
It took me 6 months to finish MGSV and it was more or less the only game I played at the time.. but cast back to 5 years ago and I was clocking 30 hr games every week. Now I’m lucky to play an hour in one sitting.
because nobody gets invested in games anymore.
even before they’ve bought the latest iteration of COD or what have you they’re announcing the sequel.
Plus kids these days have ADHD
What’s not to understand? I got a platinum trophy after about 2-3 weeks totalling under 30 hours. The game was done.
perfect timing, was about 1/3 the way thru the game, but stopped playing because it was an easy grind. may as well restart in survivor mode & be challenged.
Would have been nice at launch..
Pretty sure this is what’s going to tip me over the edge into buying into the far cry games. Sounds like a distinct and different experience.
Kirk is spot on, survivor mode is f***ing legit.
But taming sabretooth tigers is so damn hard now.