Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I quit writing game reviews because the youth of our society is suffering hard from Fanboyism. Negative reviews are shunned and ridiculed, even if they're spot-on accurate. "You don't like what I like so I'm marking your review as unhelpful even though I own the product already and completely misunderstand the purpose of this system..." Anyways, as this was is a product I was pretty stoked for, I felt compelled to dust off my opinions and do the whole "game review" thing again. This is essentially Far Cry 3-and-a-half. We meet a psycopathic antagonist right off the bat, and get tossed into a chaotic story in the midst of a tropical environment. Within hours we're climbing radio towers and liberating outposts, hunting wild animals to craft basic improvements, just as we did in the last game. It's all very, very familiar. Now, I can't in-good-conscience climb onto my soap box and say this is bad, as Far Cry 3 was - in my humble opinion - one of the greatest video games to grace the now-dying previous generation of consoles. What I can say however is that this is a new console generation, and a new game, from a reputable developer, and I have to think that we should be getting more bang for our buck these days. Far Cry 4 is just more of what we loved in Far Cry 3. There are more outposts to raid in whatever manner you see fit. There are more animals to hunt, there are a few new enemy types, a few new guns, and a few new vehicles. The grapling hook addition is nice, but it's still only allowed in pre-determined locations, making path-finding still feel very scripted and guided. The new "Karma" game-mechanic has some merit - where you're given the chance to intervene in small, skurmish-based confrontations for a chance to earn some extra scratch, as well as tokens which can be used to call in backup when you find yourself in too much hot water. However, these events seem to crop up a bit too frequently; sneaking in to an outpost and suddenly there's gunfire going off behind me as a skirmish spawns just a few yards behind me. Even worse, the guards at the outpost are completely obvlivious to it - imagine the "wow" factor if a few wandered off to join the fight, completely changing the plan-of-attack on the outpost. The map is allegedly huge, but FEELS very small. For example, when hunting, you travel to an area of the map that shows an image of the animal you need skins from. You expect that you'll be sloughing through the woods for a few minutes at least, only to realize that the hunting "area" is only a few yards off of a road, and when you DO get there, you find that a karma event has spawned there, or at the least a group of rebels are standing around, shooting at everything that moves, and as a result, the game engine refuses to spawn the one thing you're actually there for. And speaking of animals, they've become something of a pain. I can't take two steps in any direction without being blindsided by the quitest Rhinos I've ever seen, and every attempt to hunt will be interrupted by Eagles, swooping down to nick off a few healthpoints without any type of game mechanic to allow you to kill them. Now, at this point it's customary to see reviewers telling you what you should do - "Don't buy this" or "rent it instead" - but I'm going to skip that step. Far Cry 3 was epic. Far Cry 4 is basically more of the same. It's ordering a box of the same chicken nuggets you always get and adventurously ordering two different sauces. The thing is, that second sauce costs 50 cents, and this game costs 60 bucks.