Compared with its most recent predecessors, Far Cry 5 makes some big changes to how you upgrade your character. Almost all of those changes are for the better.

This won't help you much if you're only playing on PC, but if you're in the market for some top console games then Target has some cracking offers.

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.

The experience of playing Far Cry: Primal is immersive and visceral, an achievement that can be attributed at least in part to its phenomenal score, which fuses modern recording techniques with ancient instruments.

If you come across a group of three bad guys in Far Cry Primal, two of them will attack. The third guy usually won't. He'll run away.

Far Cry Primal is something of an spinoff for the series -- a stopgap release meant to fill the hole between Far Cry 4 and Far Cry 5. So it's no surprise to see it recycling things from its predecessor.

There aren't many modern first person shooter franchises that could release a game set 12,000 years prior to all previous entries and not miss a beat. Without some kind of clumsy alien or time travel conceit, the likes of Call of Duty or Halo would have a tough time on an Earth lacking firearms. But then, the shooting was never what made Far Cry so interesting.

Far Cry Primal is a game about a caveman who explores a new land. If you play on the game's default settings, it's also about a caveman who methodically conquers that new land thanks to his helpful smartphone GPS.

Far Cry Primal is frequently violent and occasionally, unexpectedly sweet. The caveman action game is an excellent concept best experienced by people who haven't been playing every entry in Far Cry, another of gaming's perpetual franchises.

Today on Highlight Reel we have savage prehistoric cats, close street fighter calls, quiet meetings between muscular men and killer streaks!

You know how sometimes you do a high five, but the high five is too powerful so your hand really, really hurts, but you pretend it didn't hurt because high fives are supposed to make you look cool. And you really want to look cool.

In Far Cry Primal bears don't care about that stuff. They just keep on high fiving until one of them is dead.

That's commitment.

Who needs guns in a video game when you can tame and command bears and saber-toothed tigers to kill for you? That's what I've been doing in Far Cry Primal, though there's something to be said for just stopping and petting these furry four-legged instruments of death.

It's also pretty funny, but it's also weird.

There were no easy opportunities for any of the characters in today's new Stone Age Far Cry Primal game to overlap with those of 2014's modern-day Far Cry 4, but publisher Ubisoft has found a way to confirm they're in the same universe.

Pop quiz: What makes Far Cry Primal different than all the other games Ubisoft has released over the past year? No, it's not the mammoths. Not the fake language they made just for this game, either. Give up? The answer: There's no season pass.

Everyone else is talking about the games they can't wait for this year, and I want in on the fun! I don't know much about what the second half of the year will bring (or if we'll have another Fallout-style announcement), but there is a huge amount of quality in the first half of the year. So here's what's on my radar.

2016 is looking to be an odd one for game releases, at least from this side of the year. Big AAA releases are few and far between, with no hugely anticipated games like last year's Fallout 4. Even Assassin's Creed is rumoured to be giving it a miss. In fact, one of the year's most anticipated games is No Man's Sky, being developed by a small team over in the UK. 2016 could easily turn out to be a great year for both indies and new IPs.

Don't you just love the smell of freshly-purchased gaming silicon? Well, if you haven't upgraded your PC in the last decade and want to give Ubisoft's Far Cry: Primal a crack, prepare to be nostril-deep in electronic odours -- the publisher has just released minimum and recommended specs for the upcoming title.

We've already seen that the main guy in Far Cry Primal will be pretty chill with animals, taming and commanding them after suppressing their whole eat-the-human instinct. But lead character Takkar will have some gnarlier interactions with his fellow humans. As in "ears cut off and kept as trophies".