image: concrete

After a very good introduction, introducing a fascinating baddie, I find the game’s designers have forgotten to include a save command. For God’s sake, why do game companies keep making this fundamental mistake?

I am extremely disappointed. Without such basics, any game is unplayable.

I know there was a fashion among juvenile game designers a few years ago to ship games without a save command, but I’d thought the industry had … well, bluntly … grown up. People have lives, and lives interrupt games. A save command is necessary. How could the designers who put Far Cry 4 together not know this? Were they so disconnected from life that they did not understand it?

I’m particularly annoyed because I’d stopped checking whether games had this flaw. I shouldn’t have to: it’d like having to check whether the new car you want to buy has brakes.

I’ve looked online, not in any great depth admittedly, and can’t find any humble apologies, stories of firings, or even patches. It seems the game’s big bosses haven’t done the honourable thing. Some hackers have, understandably, put together some bodges to cover Ubisoft’s arse, but, really, that’s not good enough. The error should never have been made, and, having been made, it should have been fixed.

Far Cry was exciting yet tedious. Far Cry 2 was forgettable — well, I presume so, because I’ve forgotten it. Far Cry 3 was unplayable because of poor game implementation. Far Cry 4 is unplayable because of poor game implementation. Where does that leave Far Cry 5?

I don’t think I’ll buy any more Ubisoft games, whatever their reviews. Too many are too broken.