Far Cry Instincts was originally released in 2005 for Xbox. The campaign focuses around a man named Jack Carver. Jack owns a small boat that he uses to haul tourists around in. A tourist named Valerie Cortez hires him to take her to Jacutan, an island off the coast of Micronesia. Upon arriving at Jacuton, Cartez offers Jack more money to borrow his jet ski, which he accepts, and Cartez heads off alone. Jack decides to take a nap while he waits. A helicopter that opens fire on his boat awakes Jack. He nearly escapes the fire as he makes his way to the island.
Once on the island, Jack finds a headset that allows him to talk to a man who goes by Doyle. He learns that Cortez is actually a CIA agent sent to rescue Doyle but in turn is captured and now needs to be rescued. Jack agrees to go find her but during his search, he is captured as well.
After being captured, he meets a mad scientist named Dr. Krieger and his partner Crowe. Dr. Krieger has been testing on humans trying to enhance their physical abilities. Dr. Krieger decides that Jack would be a good test subject and has him injected with a serum.
After being injected, Jack becomes stronger and now has special abilities. He is able to go into “instinct” mode to access his feral abilities. This allows him to run faster, jump harder and be able to detect other people’s scent. Jack uses this gained strength to escape and sets out to find Cortez and take down Dr. Krieger and Crowe.
Far Cry Primal was released in 2015 for Xbox One. The campaign follows a man named Takkar in the year 10,000 BCE. The game starts with Takkar and his tribe searching for the land of Oros. A sabretooth tiger takes out Takkar’s tribe but Takkar narrowly escapes. He continues on his way to Oros when he runs into a woman named Sayla. After another encounter with a sabretooth tiger, they make it to the land of Oros. Sayla then inform Takkar that Oros has been invaded by the Udam and Izila who kill the Wenja, the natives of Oros. Takkar sets out into Oros to defeat the Udam and Izila and reunite the Wenja.
When moving to Farcry Instincts to Farcry Primal there is a huge noticeable difference right away and that is the graphics. When looking at Instincts, the overall display has an animated look. Objects tend to look a little blocky when you examine them. There are a lot of distant lines on the edge of objects and objects do not blend together very well. Colors often look very vibrant and distinct such as when an explosion occur, the fire is its typical yellow-orange and red to indicate it is fire but under closer inspection, it doesn’t appear to look like fire at all. Instead it is more of a layering of colors.
Primal is a lot more realistic looking. It is as though you are watching a filmed movie instead of a created picture. Objects such as trees and bushes have realistic shapes that blend together and have depth. When looking at the fire in Primal the colors are blended together well and the flames are constantly changing, making it look very realistic.
The game play in Instincts and Primal are vastly different as well. The game play in Instincts is linear. As you play, you are pushed through the world/map. You cannot return to previous locations and you are also limited to the area you are in. You are locked out from exploring the world around you. Primal is the exact opposite. It is an open world map that gives you freedom to explore and revisit any area. You gather items from your surroundings, giving you incentive to revisit areas to collect items that are native to that area.
When looking at the goal of each game, the goal of Instincts is simplistic, take down the bad guy and escape the island. There are some smaller goals they you run into through the game but the gameplay pushed you towards them. There is no choice as to what and when you will accomplish a goal. As for Primal, you explore the world around you searching for objectives that you can then play out. As well as playing through the main objective. It gives you the freedom to choose what you want to do when. It also allows you to potentially discover objectives and challenges that you are not able to conquer at your current state, giving you more incentive to keep moving forward.
In conclusion I would say I enjoyed playing Primal more than Instinct. It offered more abilities and creativity when it comes to usable objects. The open world map was a newer game experience for me. Most of the games I have played and been linear style maps but being able to revisit areas and being able to choose where to go and what goals/missions to play was very enjoyable. Although I enjoyed both games, I became board with them both as well. I completed Instinct with about 15 Hours of game play and by the end I was just running and gunning to move the game along. I lost interest in the storyline and although it did tend to get harder towards the end, it became repetitive. I will say that I did start to loose interest about mid game but then I developed a new skill set which kept me playing.
In Primal I have about 20 hours of game play and about 35% of the game completed. I lost interest in Primal not due to the story line, which I may go back and play through the rest of the game to continue, but because the missions became very repetitive. I was doing the same thing just at different parts of the map. I developed almost all of the skill sets in the game by now so it is just going to each area, killing the enemy and saving the Wenja. The game was very entertaining to play up to that point though.
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